Irish heritage spurs plans for growth

Cultural group gets funds to build indoor shopping facility, business incubator at former electronics plant

EAST DURHAM -- Every day for the four years he has operated his pub on Route 145 in this hamlet, Sean Frey has had to look across the street at an abandoned electronics factory.

"It's an eyesore," said the owner of Darby's Irish Pub and Restaurant as he stood by his front entrance Wednesday morning.

But these days, Frey said he also sees the former home of Becker Electronics as a symbol of hope for economic revitalization in rural Greene County. An East Durham nonprofit organization last month secured a $500,000 grant from the U.S. Small Business Administration to help convert the plant into a retail center and business incubator.

The center would be part of a much larger project under development in East Durham called the Irish Village East Durham, which local leaders envision as a living Irish history museum modeled after tourism destinations such as Williamsburg, Va., and Sturbridge, Mass.

"To be able to walk out of my establishment and look at the Irish village, of course I'm excited," said Frey, a Dublin native. "It only enhances everything I'm doing over here as a traditional Irish restaurant."

Since 1994, the $17 million Irish Village East Durham project has been a top priority of the Michael J. Quill Irish Cultural & Sports Centre Inc., a nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving and promoting Irish and Irish-American culture and history.

Today, the organization plans to update the community on its progress. In addition to the $500,000 grant from the federal government, secured by Reps. John Sweeney, R-Clifton Park, and James Walsh, R-Syracuse, the project will get a $100,000 state grant that will be announced this afternoon by state Sen. James Seward, R-Milford.

"This money helps in terms of leveraging other funds," said Neal Fox, the Quill Centre's managing director. "And it gives a legitimacy that is helpful."

Although the organization expects to open the village no sooner than 2005, several pieces of the broader plan are already in place, including an Irish sports field, a fairgrounds and a 1-acre brick replica of Ireland. As its main fund-raising tool, the Quill Centre will engrave messages in the bricks for $100 each.

This summer will bring a new structure to the site -- a cottage made with stones from a similar structure in Ireland. It will be one of several cottages placed outside the village, which will be designed to replicate 1860s life in the Irish province of Munster.

The next major project at the site, though, is the retail center. Becker Electronics left its 150,000-square-foot structure in 1988. The building's lack of use since then is apparent, with cardboard boxes and pieces of the stereo speakers that had been made there littering the floors.

But the building has held up well structurally. Plans call for creating an indoor shopping center by next year, with 30 to 50 merchants selling their products. The facility also would house an exhibition hall and incubator space for entrepreneurs.

"The shopping center is going to be the commercial lead-in to the village," said Ken Dudley, president of the Quill Centre's board and a Greene County legislator.

For Dudley, a lifelong resident of the county, Irish Village East Durham is an opportunity to bring back some of the tourism dollars that once made this community thrive. In the 1940s and 1950s, Irish natives living in New York City vacationed in the county because the landscape reminded them of the countryside in Ireland.

The rich Irish heritage is apparent on the drive into East Durham, which is a 15-minute drive from Exit 21 of the state Thruway. Streets shooting off Route 145 have names like O'Connor and O'Sullivan, and about a dozen motels, pubs and specialty shops have shamrocks on their signs.

"This can be an economic engine," Dudley said, estimating that more than 100,000 visitors a year could visit Irish Village East Durham. "It's bringing tourism back into Greene County."

Contact:
JEREMY BOYER, Business writer
First published: Thursday, March 13, 2003 - Albany Times Union