Few hoteliers are eager to be the first to test an untested market. But Sims and Kirsten Harlow Foster see it as a calling card. Their Western Catskills-based company, Foster Supply Hospitality, has built a quaint empire, opening rustic inns in what they call “unexpected places.” The couple’s latest project will take place in their most unexpected location yet: downtown Newburgh, NY
Since 2019, the Fosters have been carefully navigating the financing, permits and debris surrounding the acquisition of three landmark early 20th-century buildings on Newburgh’s Grand Street, a block from the riverfront.
Their plan is to convert a former American Legion base and defunct YMCA complex into a sprawling 74-room boutique hotel with a retail component. The four-story Masonic Temple next door will house several restaurants as well as conference and event spaces. In a until recently hidden corridor lined with lockers for Masonic ceremonial equipment, Mr. Foster envisions a martini bar overlooking the Hudson. The $45.9 million project broke ground in December and is expected to open as early as late 2027.
Foster Supply Hospitality only engages in projects that “make a positive difference” in the community, said Ms. Foster, who has previously worked in microcredit programs in developing countries. The company’s James Beard-approved restaurants and design-focused fly-fishing lodges have boosted tourism to rural communities including Livingston Manor, the Sullivan County hamlet that five generations of Mr. Foster’s family call home. The economic recovery has become known, as The Times-Union first put it, as the “Foster Supply Effect.”
But Newburgh is an ambitious piece, and not just because an urban center of 28,000 is more complex than a rural hamlet of 700.
The Fosters had heard of New York’s notoriously high crime rate, which was already exceptional in 1975 and surpassed neighborhoods like Brownsville and the South Bronx in 2011. Although still high for the state, there has been a relatively steady decline over the past 15 years.
In terms of tourism, the city hasn’t had a hotel since the 20th century – the last comparable project, the Palatine, opened its doors in 1893; It was razed to the ground in 1970 as part of urban renewal.
Still, the Fosters saw potential and envisioned weekend vacationers from New York City, whether headed to West Point or Dia Beacon, or simply looking for an experience in an “undiscovered” destination that offers architectural character, a growing dining scene and “a pedestrian-friendly city experience” along the river, Mr. Foster said. “I was excited — and confused because the narrative that was out there about Newburgh didn’t match the version of conversations I was having with people who had just moved here or had lived here a long time.”
One of those conversations was with Naomi Hersson-Ringskog, an urban planner who recently moved to Newburgh and is trying to “make a bigger impact” in her field than she would be able to in New York City. When she and her husband arrived in 2017, there were 700 vacant commercial and residential properties within a four-square-mile radius.
“You need density to improve parks and have local businesses and child care,” Ms. Hersson-Ringskog said. Coffee shops had just opened along Liberty Street. A wine shop moved in. But given the city’s urban development needs, she thought, “We needed a hotel. We needed to bring people here.”
She added that tourism represents “a low barrier” to creating an industry that could boost the economy.
In 2019, as president of Fullerton, a local community development and civic organization, she cold-called Mr. Foster. For her, his company’s backcountry projects — like DeBruce, an upscale 12-room fly-fishing lodge with a tasting menu — represented the right “sensitivity to place and local.” She told him she could name a dozen vacant or underused buildings in downtown Newburgh that are available for adaptive reuse and eligible for historic tax credits, which could make the project more financially viable and help finance it. Would he be interested?
It was a new idea for the Fosters, but within weeks they had toured the houses and buildings on Grand Street and expressed interest in purchasing them from the county.
The historic preservation aspect of the project was particularly appealing. “People react and feel differently,” Mr. Foster said in older spaces, and the couple was inspired by the opportunity to “preserve the details and the intangible elements that create that magic,” as they had in their previous projects in the Catskills.
The county conducted a request for proposals (RFP) and received two proposals for the three buildings: one for housing and one for the Fosters hospitality campus.
Foster Supply Hospitality then secured a 12-year Payment in Lieu of Taxes (PILOT) – an agreement with the City of Newburgh to make reduced payments for the next 12 years instead of paying the full, new tax rate. Their 2021 PILOT application estimated the total cost of the expansion at $24.4 million. But due to tariffs, inflation and other factors, they were finally able to close the financing in late November 2025 at the new estimate, 88 percent higher.
The only building of the three that was used was the Legion, home of the Boys & Girls Club’s Newburgh Performing Arts Academy. The academy was able to move to another room in the same block. According to founder and longtime director Kim Turner, the change has been welcomed and plans to expand its Pilates, yoga and other classes to appeal to future hotel guests.
Ms. Turner isn’t the only one thinking ahead about how new foot traffic could be beneficial. Around the corner at Hip-Hop Heaven, a locally owned clothing store since 1999, Mann Hall, the owner’s brother, sat outside selling watermelons he brought from Georgia. He grew up about five blocks away and used to play basketball at the Grand Street Y.
Repurposing long-vacant landmarks to attract tourism would be “a good thing for the community, period,” Mr. Hall mused. He just hopes that visitors will make an effort to “fit in” with the people already here and also visit the city’s long-established businesses.
Others just hope this project doesn’t let everyone down – again. “We’re just excited to see the project move forward,” said Jacqui Jarmann, who opened her Newburgh Mercantile store a block from the hotel site 12 years ago. “Newburgh doesn’t need another unfinished building complex. We’ve seen that happen a few times.”
The first such heartbreak occurred in the 1960s and 1970s, when Newburgh used federal urban renewal funds to demolish 50 acres of streets, residential and commercial buildings in its historic waterfront district. However, the promise of new development that came with it never came true: the city was left with a sprawling grassy lot. It’s still there.
When developers make big promises that go unfulfilled, “longtime locals relive that trauma,” Ms. Jarmann said. But this feels different.
The Fosters’ attitude — not to mention the progress at the construction site, where heavy moving equipment is floating around and dumpsters are gradually filling with materials as the interior is renovated and reinforced — “so far doesn’t look like what we’re used to,” her husband, Eric Jarmann, added. It could “change the reputation of the city.”
For other Newburgh residents, the Fosters’ project made a difference in its early days.
Mike Pomarico, an architect, grew up in the Newburgh area. After living nearby for decades, he and his wife Karen Ghostlaw, co-founder of the international art magazine The Pictorial List, opened a physical Pictorial Foundation art space in February. The 1,500-foot-long gallery is located a fifth of a mile from the future hotel in an industrial-chic garage on Ann Street.
After hearing rumors about the Fosters’ project last year, Mr. Pomarico said he reached out to a city employee. “She told us about the hotel and I thought, ‘This is exceptionally good’ – because now people will come wanting to do something,” he said. That news made them realize that now was the time to open the foundation’s space — and in fact, Ms. Ghostlaw said, they felt they couldn’t afford to wait.
“You get to that critical mass and there’s enough energy to keep the reaction going — and we’re so close to that limit right now,” Pomarico said of Newburgh. “I think we’re really close.”