Birchez Associates LLC

Town of Ulster, 8/30/2010: Mike Hein joined the Senior Residents of The Birches at Chambers in their Community Room for a lively and informative discussion on senior resources and programs that are available through Ulster County. “Too often these resources are untapped, and the people who need them the most don’t know how to tap into services,” said Hein. (Alice is shown to the right of Mike Hein in the lead photo.)

Organizer of today’s event is Alice Tipp, the Senior Advocate for Birchez Associates, who services their four affordable senior communities in Ulster County. Alice works to coordinate services with the over 325 seniors who live at The Birches at Chambers, The Birches at Esopus, The Birches at Saugerties, and Chambers Court. Alice Tipp served as a county legislator for thirty years and is not shy in getting the right resources to “her” residents. “I am delighted that the County Executive took the time to be with us today. His enthusiasm is contagious and I know we all learned a great deal today,” said Ms. Tipp. Also welcoming Mike Hein were Steve and Judy Aaron the principals of Birchez Associates who built and manage The Birches at Chambers.

The Q&A portion of the program hit some topics outside the scope of strictly senior resources. Mike Hein in response to questions about taxes spoke of the need to consolidate services that are now duplicated between towns and the county. Following the formal presentation, the County Executive had the opportunity to speak briefly with many residents. Included was Joe Vanacore, a World War II Vet, who is concerned about the level of veterans’ benefits especially as he is dependent on a wheelchair these days. (Joe was recently featured in the book The Liberators: America’s Witnesses to the Holocaust by Michael Hirsh for his work with General Patton’s Tank Corps in liberating death camps in Germany.)

Harold Schumann, another resident, spent eleven years bouncing from hospitals to nursing homes before finding the appropriate ADA compliant, fully handicapped accessible home at The Birches at Chambers. He spoke to the County Executive about how happy he is now that he’s settled in his own apartment.

The Birchez Associates website, www.Birchez.com, has links on their communities pages to the resources Mike Hein spoke of in the Ulster County Care program, in addition to a variety of senior related, local recreational, historic sites, and more. To visit one of the links pages, click here.

Editor’s Note: Michael P. Hein, Ulster County Executive, was one of the presenters at the dedication of The Birches at Chambers on July 8th. For a video of his remarks, click here.

Published: Wednesday, August 25, 2010 ESOPUS — The Birches at Esopus is one of three developments financed by state of New York housing agencies* to be named finalists in Affordable Housing Finances’ sixth annual Reader’s Choice Awards.

The Birches at Esopus is the first affordable housing community for senior citizens in the town of Esopus and provides 80 energy-efficient apartments for low-income seniors. Units are accessible to people with disabilities, and the development includes outdoor and community space, craft and media rooms, an exercise studio and an on-site nursing program, which provides services like physical and speech therapy, health and wellness programs and health aides.

Nationwide, 33 projects were chosen from 140 nominations on the criteria of community impact, cost-effective or innovative design or construction, and energy-efficient and sustainable development.

The other New York finalists are the Atlantic Avenue Residence, a 107-unit development in Brooklyn; and the 24-unit Nelson Hopkins Apartments, the Elizabeth Pierce Olmsted Center for the Visually Impaired, in Lockport, near Buffalo.

The winners will be announced at the 2010 Affordable Housing Developer’s Summit in November in Chicago.           Photo and asterick information added for website.

* nyhomes and DHCR (Division of Housing & Community Renewal)

August 20, 2010: Paul Tesoro, Director of Communications for Central Hudson, hosts a daily broadcast called Almanac aired on multiple Hudson Valley radio stations. We were pleased that he featured The Birches at Chambers and The Birches at Esopus in today’s broadcast. Paul highlighted the amenities that our communities offer and how they contribute to the quality of life for our residents. In addition, the broadcast covered the green aspects that ultimately contribute not only to health but also affordability. To listen to the broadcast, click here (it takes a moment for the intro to kick in).

August 6, 2010: On Wednesday, August 11, at 7pm, at the Rosendale Community Center on Route 32, members of the Rosendale community will have the chance to offer input on Birchez Associates’ recent proposal for affordable senior and workforce housing and a new town hall in the Town of Rosendale.  Invited by the town to submit a request for proposal (RFP), Birchez looks to continue its track record of bringing top quality, affordable senior housing to Rosendale, while also providing a unique solution to the town’s need for a new base of municipal operations.

In an effort to maximize sustainability and provide the town with a long-lasting building, Birchez Associates hasproposed that the long-vacant Tillson School be rehabbed as the new Town Hall.  The Kingston School District had vacated the Tillson School over 10 years ago and today it sits, on 8.4 acres, just attracting the occasional vandal. Instead, Birchez proposes transforming the existing school plant to a flexible and expandable Town Hall that could accommodate not only current needs but unforeseen needs in years to come (preliminary artist’s rendering pictured). In the interim, the Town could use 14,000 to 20,000 square feet of the structure and dedicate an additional 7,000 to 10,000 square feet to related town offices, community use and/or office rental, creating a Town Hall campus or complex. The site will provide plenty of parking, which may be an issue if the Creek Locks Road site is used for the Town Hall. Plus the location may serve as a magnet for Tillson businesses in this hamlet of the town of Rosendale.

Birchez’ proposal for the rehab of Tillson School envisions a LEED/sustainable approach to this adaptive reuse. “There’s no better way to recycle and be green than to reuse a building for something new,” said Judy Calogero, CEO of the New York Housing Conference and President of Calogero Partners who has participated in Birchez’ proposal. Ms. Calogero is former Commissioner of the New York State Division of Housing and Community Renewal, a key player in affordable housing in the state.

The Residential component in the proposal consists of the construction of up to 72 rental units. Some of the units may be designated rent to buy in the work force housing component; the majority are slated to be affordable senior apartments. The final composition is subject to further input from town residents. Landscaping plans incorporate public access to the Creek which hugs the property. This intergenerational housing concept would be LEED Certified and would incorporate extensive green and sustainable features such as solar photovoltaic, solar thermal, “green/living roofing” and pervious parking.

Birchez Associates recently completed its fifth affordable housing community in Ulster County, The Birches at Chambers, a 67 apartment complex adjacent to both the Chambers Elementary School and Chambers Court, a 72 apartment complex and the first affordable housing community Birchez built just six years ago. The Birches at Chambers, already certified by the New York State Energy & Development Agency (NYSERDA) as an Energy $mart Building, is on track to be the second largest multifamily – anywhere – to be certified as LEED (Leader in Energy & Environmental Design) Platinum by the Green Building Council.

Last year Birchez completed The Birches at Esopus, an 80 unit affordable senior community in Ulster Park. This was the first low-rise multifamily complex to be certified as an Energy $mart Building by NYSERDA. The Birches at Esopus garnered the 2010 Project of the Year – Upstate award by the New York State Association for Affordable Housing (NYSAFAH) and is currently one of four national finalists for Senior Project of the Year in a competition sponsored by Affordable Housing Finance Magazine (the winner will be announced in the November issue). Details on the existing Birchez Associates communities can be found on its website: http://www.Birchez.com.

The full proposal from Birchez Associates can be found on the Town of Rosendale’s website here: http://www.townofrosendale.com/forms/Birchez.pdf.  The executive summary can be found at pages 18-19. The proposal includes summaries of the proposed Town Hall project at the Tillson School, the Residential project on Creek Locks Road, and the Sewer Upgrade & Backup Water Supply project to which Birchez has proposed contributing substantially to the cost of grant submissions. (Note: the file is large, and will take a few minutes to open or download.)

Contact: K.J. McIntyre, Director of Marketing, Birchez Associates, 843-532-7528 or kjmcintyre@birchez.com

Though she’s originally from Brooklyn, Emanuela Mauro (Ela to her friends), made her way up to Saugerties back in the early 1950s, when she moved with her husband, Mike, back to his hometown.

“Mike was born right here in Glasco.  So I moved up here with him and my two children at the time.  And that was ’50 or ’51,” she says.  “Then we built a home right here on Route 32 outside of Glasco.”

After raising her kids and retiring from a job in sales, Emanuela and Mike moved to Florida, where they lived for the next 20 or so years.  But when her husband passed away from a stroke in 2000, Emanuela knew that it was time to come home.

“My kids are here, so if something happened to me, I didn’t want them worrying, like they did when my husband had his stroke,” she says.  “They had to jump on a plane and out they came.  I had to consider them too, so I came back.

“So, here I be, like they say.”

After living in an apartment building on Simmons Street in Saugerties, Emanuela decided that she was tired of the landlord’s lax attitude toward taking care of problems.

“I heard of The Birches at Saugerties apartments being built at one of our senior meetings in the Town of Saugerties.  I think Steve [Aaron] had come in and spoke to us, to the elderly people, about wanting to put up a place… I put my application in, and I was eligible.  I didn’t know if I was eligible or not, never having applied for any kind of help.”

Part of what makes living in The Birches at Saugerties good for Emanuela is that she can afford it on her fixed income. “We didn’t get a raise in social security, so we don’t have any extra income,” she says.

Fortunately, there are amenities in place at The Birches at Saugerties — like Senior Advocate Alice Tipp — that help residents like Emanuela live well without breaking the bank.

“Living here, we found out that the [Ulster County] Office for the Aging offers a lot of different help we can get,” she says.  “I didn’t know that when I lived in my other place. Here, Alice will tell us different things.  At the end of this month, they’re going to give us a $20 booklet towards produce at the local Farmers’ Market.  That’s fresh vegetables we get to have. Lots of different things like that that we wouldn’t know about if we weren’t here.”

For Aleta Elsworth, a nurse’s aide for 27 years who was born and raised in Kingston, there’s simply no place like home.

“My husband and I went to Florida for seven months,” she says.  “Only seven months — we came back to Kingston.  All our family was here.”

Aleta has a big family.  Between her and her husband, Clarence, there are 10 kids (three of her own, seven step-children), and she has two younger (twin) sisters who live in the same community as her at Chambers Court in the Town of Ulster.

“A lot of people think we’re triplets, but I’m the oldest,” says Aleta of her sisters.  “They’re twins.  They’re funny, and a lot of people here get the biggest kick out of them, because they bicker at each other,” she laughs.

Things weren’t always so easy for Aleta and her sisters, though.

“I lived on Franklin Street with my sisters and my mom,” she recalls.  “I took care of my mom, and she lived with me for quite awhile, and then she passed away.  Then we couldn’t afford it  anymore because the rent was too high, and we had to pay all the utilities…so we had to find another place.  I had had an application in here at Chambers Court, but Birches in Saugerties was opening up, so I lived there first.  And then when a cottage unit became available at Chambers Court, I moved here, because I really wanted to be here.  This is convenient to everything — you can go to ShopRite, you can go to the mall — it’s really, really nice.”

Since moving to Chambers Court, Aleta has enjoyed all of what it and its neighboring community, The Birches at Chambers, have to offer.  She and Clarence are frequent visitors to the fitness studio, and Aleta makes routine appearances at the regularly held community tea parties.

“And I know they have the computer lab — I really don’t know anything about computers, but I want to learn.  So I’m interested in that,” she adds.

But it’s not just the fun stuff that makes Aleta love her home: the convenience of having a handicapped accessible apartment has truly improved her quality of life, as she’s sometimes unable to get around without a wheelchair.

“I’ve had four different surgeries on my feet and I have two more to go, and it’s great that my apartment is handicapped accessible,” she says.  “It has a roll in shower, because when I have my surgery, I can’t walk.”

Aleta is also a strong supporter of Alice Tipp, the Birches Communities’ official Senior Advocate.  Without her, says Aleta, she would have been lost.

“I took my brother-in-law in because he had had a stroke, and my husband and I had power of attorney, and we were his healthcare proxy,” says Aleta.  “Alice helped me because I didn’t know what to do, because we were legally responsible for him.  She called and got me an appointment with an attorney at the Ulster County Office for the Aging. They helped us take care of that situation and resolve it.  She’s wonderful.”

And Alice Tipp isn’t the only member of the Birchez staff that Aleta appreciates.

“Steve Aaron — each place he builds is better than the last one.  I’ve never had a problem.  I’m very happy here.”

Brian Rubin for Birchez Associates, birchezassociates@gmail.com

When it comes to seeing wonderful places, you’d be hard-pressed to find someone more knowledgeable in that department than Mary Jackson, a Manhattan-native who moved up to High Falls in the 1960s to work as an elementary school teacher.

“I really like travelling,” she gushes.  When pressed for where she’s been, she replies, “Oh, gosh!  I visited most states in the United States, including Hawaii and Alaska.  I’ve visited England, I’ve visited France, I’ve visited Greece, and Turkey, and Mexico, and Africa, and, of course, Canada.”

Then she remembers that there’s still a location she has on her list that has yet to be checked off:  “There’s only one place that I really hate that I didn’t get to see, and it was because the state department at that time said I shouldn’t go, because of the problems in Egypt — I wanted to go see the pyramids.  We were getting ready to go, and they said, because of the disturbances at that particular time that it wasn’t advisable, so we didn’t go.”

In fact, Mary’s travels have a bit of a reputation among her friends for the trouble she tends to find.

“M y friend used to joke with me, saying, ‘I don’t want to go anyplace that you’re going, because you have run into two or three revolutions.’  And he said, ‘they wait for you to come.’”

But she hasn’t given up hope: “I have a friend now who says, even though we have to limp, maybe we’ll go,” she says with a laugh.  “I would love to see the the pyramids.  I can’t imagine how people were able to build those things without the machinery of today.  Only back-power.  I would love to see it—I’m just unhappy that I won’t be able to climb them—just be able to see them.  Those in Mexico are not quite the same.  They’re great, but they’re not quite the same.”

Mary’s discriminating taste in construction is apparent; and as such, it’s especially telling when she discusses how she feels about The Birches at Esopus, her home for the last year.

“Really, I think that more people should take a look at this sort of place and see what’s being done for us,” she says of the building and the community.   “It really is a lovely place.”

It’s not difficult for Mary to enumerate the many reasons she’s a fan of her home.  Like when she lists the places she’s visited, the list of things she likes about The Birches at Esopus comes easy and without hesitation.

“The apartment is spacious; it’s easy to get to, because so many of the things we do, we do in Kingston.  It’s quiet, and they have done a marvelous job of doing the landscaping. And I don’t worry about maintenance — there are people here who work here that seem to come right away if something goes wrong, so I don’t have problems with upkeep.”

But that’s not all—the building’s fitness studio is one of Mary’s favorite features as well.

“I love the fitness studio.  Lately I’ve been going each day or so.  Mostly work on my own, but the trainer is a marvelous young lady —  I think she does very well with all of us.”

Mary also belongs to the community’s Residents’  Club, by whom she’s been asked to teach and lead crafts sessions.

“I love crafts,” she says.  “And I’ve been ask to teach them about making certain boxes, and origami, and things like that — I’ve done a lot of that.”

Brian Rubin for Birchez Associates, birchezassociates@gmail.com

When it comes to sewing, Indiana-native Bobby Taylor has plenty of experience.  Having once run her own handmade doll company — called, appropriately, Taylor Made — these days Bobby is lending her skills to the Residents’ Club at The Birches at Esopus, where she’s lived for the past year.  In addition to serving as the club’s treasurer, she creates table covers for the community room where the club meets, and her current project is to sew grocery tote bags for her fellow residents.

“I’m making tote bags, and what I’m trying to do is make it so that everybody here can have at least one grocery tote,” she says.  “I gave one to each of the other three officers in the club, and they say it works great, and holds a lot of stuff. That’ll be my project for the next business meeting, and I hope to have one for everyone that wants one.”

However, it’s not just her sewing skills that she brings to bear in the club.  Her position as treasurer is well deserved: “I have the background for it.  I spent forty years working with big budgets and money and stuff.” Bobby got her start with budgets when she got her first big job, working for the Sansabelt Slacks Company.

“When I started there, I didn’t know what an invoice was,” she says.  “When I left, I was in charge of my own department.”

While sewing and keeping track of the residents’ club’s finances, Bobby has taken note of the benefits her home in The Birches at Esopus, which she shares with her husband George and their daughter, Nikki, who acts as their caretaker.

“Oh, the building is so nice,” she says.  “We don’t have to go outside for anything except to buy food.  You don’t have to schlep through snow and ice to get rid of your garbage or pick up the mail.  You don’t have to carry laundry baskets next door or anything.  It’s very nice to have it accessible.”

Brian Rubin for Birchez Associates, birchezassociates@gmail.com

It was around the time she moved back from Florida that “the depression” settled onto Gerry Mazur.  Having moved there after the death of her husband fourteen years ago, she met and wed her second husband.  Sadly, he passed away as well and Gerry decided to move back up to the Hudson Valley.

“I began to miss my family,” she says.  “I came back up here, expecting that my grandchildren were going to be as they were when I left — you know, small, who would come sit in your lap, say, ‘Hi grandma, read me a story.’  But fourteen years is a long time, and these kids are grown now and going out on their own.”

Gerry sank deeper into depression and she found it easy to isolate in the duplex apartment she rented. Finally, the family became involved and one of her daughters told her about The Birches at Esopus, where she’s lived for the last year and a half.

That’s when things started to turn around.

“I like it here very much,” says Gerry.  “And there’s alot to do if you want to do it…I get to play bingo, and tomorrow night will be movie night.  I’ve been to every one of them so far that we’ve had here.  The theater is very comfortable.  We had new movies and ole. Jerry Lewis was in our first movie, and we laughed so hard.”

As for the depression that had descended upon her return from Florida, Gerry says, “I finally got with people, people to talk to.”

The key, it seems, is not just being active, but being social.  Being able to talk to other people has allowed Gerry to find happiness at The Birches at Esopus.

“My next door neighbors on both sides of me are very nice,” she says.  She does crafts with the Residents’ Club, plays bingo on Tuesdays and Fridays, and makes sure to catch every one of the movies on show in the building’s media room.  “In between, even when you walk to the laundry room, you meet people, talk to them,” she says. And Gerry gets out to the patio to visit with new friends.

“I just do what I want to do, when I want to do it, how I want to do it,” she says.  “Once you’re retired, you’re pretty much on your own.  Of course, it’s harder to live.  You can’t go out and buy things like you did when you had a good pay check coming in, but you got to realize that life is going on, we’re getting older…we laugh here, and say ‘I’m not old, I’m getting old.’”

Brian Rubin for Birchez Associates, birchezassociates@gmail.com