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This is Safe Harbors is a new, four-episode podcast hosted by Executive Director Lisa Silverstone. In each episode, Lisa interviews special guests--from founding team members to current residents, staff, partners, and artists--taking listeners on an epic journey as Safe Harbors has pursued its mission of transforming lives and building community through housing and the arts for the past 25 years.
Greetings from Safe Harbors of the Hudson, where our mission is transforming lives and building community through housing and the arts. We're here in Safe Harbor Studio in the city of Newburgh, New York in the heart of the Hudson Valley, launching our mission onto the airwaves. This is Safe Harbors is a new podcast miniseries from Safe Harbors Radio that tells our story through interviews with the extraordinary people who have contributed to our mission over the past quarter century. We would like to thank our presenters, Resorts World, Rhinebeck Bank, and the Rowley Fiorvanti family for their generous support of Safe Harbor's twenty fifth anniversary. Episode one, Intrepid Beginnings.
Lisa Silverstone:Hello. This is Lisa Silverstone, executive director of Safe Harbors of the Hudson. Welcome back to Safe Harbors Radio for inaugural episode and in celebration of our twenty fifth year. We are delighted to have in the studio today Safe Harbors founder Tricia Hagerty Wenz. Hello Tricia.
Lisa Silverstone:Welcome to Back to Newburgh.
Tricia Hagerty Wenz:Hey Lisa. It's great to be here.
Lisa Silverstone:Tricia is now the director of development at a wonderful organization called Real Artways in Hartford, but we're not gonna talk about Real Artways today. We're going to talk about safe harbors of the Hudson. And I'd like to hear from you, Tricia, like the origin story. How did things get started here at safe harbors?
Tricia Hagerty Wenz:Okay. Oh my. Well, so to take it back even further, I have an incredible sister-in-law that founded an organization in the early 90s called Common Ground in New York City. And their first project was taking over the former Times Square Hotel and turning it into affordable supportive housing and I had the good fortune of volunteering there multiple times spending my Thanksgivings there and just in awe of the work she did. Cut it now, it's now 1999 I am in a Masters of Social Work program which I never finished and I'm in group therapy and a woman, Norma, speaks up and says, it was like you know when you have to do your, what is that called, the work that you have to do while you're in a master's program like Fieldwork?
Tricia Hagerty Wenz:Fieldwork and she says I live in the Hotel Newburgh and I have no heat and it started a whole conversation amongst people. I live in the Hotel Newburgh and I put my dresser in front of my door at night because of people are knocking looking for drugs. And I'm hearing about this place that sounds horrific and I'm thinking about the work Roseanne does. So I called Roseanne up and I said there's a hotel in Newburgh, you should buy it. Thinking it'd be easy, You should do it.
Tricia Hagerty Wenz:This is what you do Roseanne and so she said she said why don't you get more information and get back to me. So I actually drove here and I came inside and I was first assaulted by the smells. It just smelled like urine and smoke. It was an awful smell and it was sad. It was just sad place.
Tricia Hagerty Wenz:So I started doing a little research. I went to the city manager's office. I was like, I'm just getting this information for Roseanne. So Roseanne came up here. She looked at it.
Tricia Hagerty Wenz:We sat down at the waterfront before there was no waterfront. There was nothing. And she's like, wow. The city needs this project. And I'm like, great.
Tricia Hagerty Wenz:You're gonna buy it? She's like, no. You are. But she's like, don't worry. I'll I'll tell you how to do it.
Tricia Hagerty Wenz:And you know and, it's one of those moments in your life where your naivety and you're just like, okay, I'll buy a building.
Lisa Silverstone:I remember you telling me when we first met and you first started this project you said, if I knew what it was going to take or if I knew that I couldn't do it, I never would have started to do it. It was just that, like you said, that naive like, oh I can do this. Anybody can do this. Sure.
Tricia Hagerty Wenz:I mean she made it look easy. I quit school, and I started the next day. And I started with my son Nick's leftover composition notebook, opened it up. I met her in NIACC and I said what do I do and she's like well you have to start an organization, so I literally wrote step one, start organization and I was like how do you do that? She's like well you have to get a lawyer.
Tricia Hagerty Wenz:Step two, get lawyer. So it was kind of funny, she's like, why don't you go to New York and meet with the Corporation for Supportive Housing? They have money, they'll be helpful. So I brought my notebook, took the train into the city, I met with a man there and he said, okay, so you're gonna wanna buy this building and he said, who's on your development team? So I opened my notebook up and I said, what's a development team?
Tricia Hagerty Wenz:And he looked at me and he's like, it was like a Tuesday, he goes why don't you get me an eight page concept paper by the end of the week thinking I'm not gonna do it, so I did.
Lisa Silverstone:So you wrote what is a concept paper?
Tricia Hagerty Wenz:That was the next step. But yeah, it was putting together a board of directors, finding really good people like Doug Covey.
Lisa Silverstone:Who's coming up next on our program.
Tricia Hagerty Wenz:I contacted my neighbor, Neil Dresley. Hey, I'm start gonna an organization, do you want to be on my board? And he was like okay. And you know just finding people that had enthusiasm and like let's make this thing happen and so we incorporated in 2000 and it took two years from incorporation to the purchase of the building.
Lisa Silverstone:Which is nothing really when you think back two years is so fast to go from an idea and a marble notebook to owning a building.
Tricia Hagerty Wenz:Yep and then it took another year to get the funding right and then construction started in 02/2004.
Lisa Silverstone:02/2004.
Tricia Hagerty Wenz:So it was 2002 we purchased the building, took a whole year to get all the funding. I think it was like a $21,000,000 project and then 2004 we started construction. So it was, yeah it was one of those instances like just not knowing what you were actually doing was probably a good thing you know And and Newburgh was a little like the Wild West back then too. Right? You could just do things like, oh, what do you mean I needed to pull a permit for this dumpster?
Tricia Hagerty Wenz:Right?
Lisa Silverstone:Well now that I'm working so, building on the good work that Tricia did and I wish you listeners could see this building now compared to what it was because it's an absolutely it's a beacon of hope and beauty and respect and support here in our city. And it's a tribute to you Tricia and your intrepidness and bravery really. But when I, so I'm working with a development partner to build more housing in the city of Newburgh and I'm saying, well we can do this and we can do that. Tricia did that and the development team looks at me and the lawyers look at me and the accountants look at me like, no, that doesn't happen that way anymore. There's rules and regulations now for all of that.
Lisa Silverstone:So I do think it was a special time. Like you said, it was kind of a first in. Right? There was nothing like this going on in the city of Newburgh. You were really one of the first big developments in the city of Newburgh in decades.
Tricia Hagerty Wenz:Yeah. I mean there was a smaller developer who did small housing who actually ate up all of the state funding at that time. When I showed up he
Lisa Silverstone:wasn't too happy. We're not going to name
Tricia Hagerty Wenz:not names. Going name names. And tried to stop the project multiple times because it was like wait a minute I have a I'm supposed to be getting all the state money. So we were pretty much pioneers down here. Even with the gallery, right?
Tricia Hagerty Wenz:I mean we were the only gallery in the city for a long time. I mean I think, I don't know if SUNY has a gallery.
Lisa Silverstone:They do. But we were the first in for many years. That kind of leads me. Tell me a little bit about, you started talking about building this place for the residents who are living in absolutely deplorable conditions here. Tell me a little bit about the inspiration for the arts and why the arts because it's certainly a unique model.
Lisa Silverstone:Yeah, so you know
Tricia Hagerty Wenz:this building not only was it horrific, it had a horrible reputation. Right? I mean people can point to it and say that's where bad activity takes place, that's where the homeless live. And I inspired a little bit by my research and what was happening in Providence and what they were doing around artists in Providence and there was a project in New York. It wasn't a common ground project although they managed it.
Tricia Hagerty Wenz:That was housing primarily for actors and it was an actor's equity project, so I was like, well actors aren't gonna come to Newburgh, but what if we added artists? And I thought it would do two really important things, was like you know, if we bring artists into the building, people can't point to the building and say well that's where the homeless live and then the people that lived in the building are residents that maybe had a mental health diagnosis or were formerly homeless. I can be an artist, no one knows my background when I'm walking in this building and it did those two things I felt really remarkably but it did a third thing that I didn't expect which I really loved was the intersection between the people who lived in the building and the arts. You know when we opened the Ann Street Gallery and we'd be at an opening and I'd see tenants there and I'd see them looking at the art and I remember early on when we first redid the lobby before the construction like we're going to we decided to do improvements the first year just to show the tenants were serious, things are going to change.
Tricia Hagerty Wenz:We brought security in right away, we did a clean up, we changed how things went here. We put paintings up from a local artist all in the building and one of our former tenants Billy Ford would sit on the couch and he said I can't stop staring at that painting. Because I'm trying to figure out whether she's happy or sad. And it just really moved me to think how art could, introducing art into our tenants' lives whose lives probably had been difficult and really on deciding to get from point A to point B, So I think bringing in the art gallery was also a really beautiful thing for the tenants. Yeah.
Tricia Hagerty Wenz:And I'm sure you still see that I hope.
Lisa Silverstone:Absolutely and the performing arts?
Tricia Hagerty Wenz:Yeah. So well you know when I went through this big building with the former owner, one of the first times I came here, he's like hey I'm going to show you this thing and I looked down and it was you know it was four stories of cavernous space with a stage and he said this was a theater, this was original theater. So I went right from that meeting to the library, to Newberg Free Library and through microfiche back in the day and I discovered this amazing history with the Ritz Theater. You know, the connection with Lucio Ball, Red Skelton, Frank Sinatra, all these incredible Louie Prima people that performed there. So I'm like we have to save the theatre, we can't.
Tricia Hagerty Wenz:So early on in my composition notebook days I met a
Lisa Silverstone:Save theatre.
Tricia Hagerty Wenz:Save theatre. I met a man who was going to be our development consultant to do all the applications and he said knock down that theater, you can make another 45 units of housing and I said why would I do that and he's like he said to me first of all you're not even in the business of housing, what makes you think you could be in the business of theater?
Lisa Silverstone:Just watch me.
Tricia Hagerty Wenz:So I didn't know what to do. Here's this really smart guy with a pedigree telling me not to save the theater so I called Roseanne up and I probably got the best advice that I and this is what I stuck with for my entire time here and always. I said, so and so wants me to knock down a theater and make housing and she said, well what's your instinct? I said my instinct is to save the theater and she said Trisha always go with your instincts. So I did.
Lisa Silverstone:Good advice.
Tricia Hagerty Wenz:He signed off, would not participate in the project. Good riddance. Good riddance. I did give him a big smile when we won project of the year. You know, little nod to him in the audience.
Tricia Hagerty Wenz:He happened to be there but not for us just because he was at the event. But yeah, so saving the theater to me felt like, you know, when I look back, when I look at this project and it's still this ongoing, what you continue to do here, Lisa, is amazing and it's, you've you've imagined things that I didn't even know could exist here and it's just I I couldn't be happier. But when I look at this project and I think, well, the housing change transformed 128 lives and continue to. But it's the theater, it's the gallery, it's what you've done with the green, that's transformed the community. Right?
Tricia Hagerty Wenz:And that's why projects like this need to
Lisa Silverstone:be so much more than just housing. I mean your inspiration really has created this incredibly innovative model for downtown redevelopment that can co locate housing and the arts creating equity, right, in housing and also downtown redevelopment, economic development, cultural access, and really like you said destigmatizes the homeless housing kind of nimbyism that people often have and yeah it's an incredible model and I do think that you have built something incredible here and I am just proud to have carried on your legacy and when I took over from you and you were being compared to Mother Teresa, I thought, where do I go from here?
Tricia Hagerty Wenz:They don't know me that well.
Lisa Silverstone:We're gonna continue our conversation and we're going to be joined by Doug Hovey, Executive Director of Independent Living, who provides, case management here in the building. So we'll be right back with Doug and Tricia. I would like to introduce Doug Hubby into our conversation here. If I'm not and Doug Hubby, as I said, is the, CEO of Independent Living and they provide case management services here in the building and I'll let you speak to all of the other good work you do here in the city of Newburgh. But Doug, you were here, if I'm not mistaken, your team was here even before Tricia purchased the building.
Lisa Silverstone:Is that right?
Doug Hovey:We were. We we actually opened our office on the Second Floor here in 1999 with funding through the New York State Office of Mental Health. And we were working under very, very difficult circumstances as you can imagine. And and you know that because you both were here early on and you saw and and Tricia talked about it and described and characterized the condition of the building and the condition of the people that lived here. It was just terrible, so it was so difficult for me and my staff to really make a meaningful difference.
Doug Hovey:And then I had the great great opportunity of meeting Tricia when she came here with this incredible vision. And I'm I'm just getting chills listening to your conversation a few minutes ago and listening to the story all over again, you know, through Tricia's lens and Lisa through your lens too because you came in and then you, as Trisha pointed out, you have really carried the torch and have done an amazing job of continuing the transformation of this incredible space and making it more than just a home for the people that live here. But back in ninety nine, two thousand, when I first met Tricia, she had this crazy idea that she was gonna buy this building and there was a lot of skepticism in the community, particularly from some of our legislative leaders. And I remember at that point, Tricia invited me to participate in a series of meetings We went out and we visited with just about every legislator, every county official, every city, town, local official that we possibly could. And we met with a lot of the community based organizations and still there was a level of skepticism like who is this young girl who thinks she's gonna buy the Hotel Newburgh and transform it into a beautiful place to live, you know, for 128 people and introduce the arts?
Doug Hovey:Well, I tell you, not for a minute was I skeptical about the vision. Shortly thereafter, Tricia invited me to go to New York City and we went to the Times Square Hotel, which as she mentioned before, Roseanne Hagerty was the founder of Common Ground in New York City, and they had transformed the Times Square Hotel into 600 some beautiful apartments. And I remember walking through the building with Tricia and her pointing out that you don't know who's who in the building. It could be a doctor. It could be a a CPA, a lawyer, or it could be a somebody that was formerly homeless.
Doug Hovey:You just didn't know the difference, and that was the total integration effect of of common ground, which is what Tricia emulated here at the Cornerstone residence. So it was really an exciting time. And I can talk about the construction period too. We had so much fun during the construction period where Tricia made sure that I was involved and the contractors would literally carry me in my wheelchair through the building so I could see phase one, phase two, phase all the various stages of development to make sure that it was fully accessible to all members of our community. It was an exciting time.
Tricia Hagerty Wenz:I remember those meetings with legislators. I had a meeting with one, a county assemblyman who told me that this project was never gonna happen.
Doug Hovey:I remember that.
Tricia Hagerty Wenz:And he said matter of fact, I will make sure it doesn't happen. He said and I'd like to never see you in my office again.
Lisa Silverstone:And then was he one fighting for the ribbon cutting?
Tricia Hagerty Wenz:One of them, but the funny thing was the next day I woke up and I had a meeting with a nun that was over at Newburgh Ministry and I'm like what's the point? He holds the key because he needed to sign the letter that goes to DCD, the funding source in the state to say that he supported it and he already told me he would sign an opposite letter if I ever, you know, tried to get this project started. So I'm meeting with this nun, and I'm sitting there, and she offered me a glass of warm V eight. And I'm like
Doug Hovey:I think that was sister Joanne.
Tricia Hagerty Wenz:No. No. No. No. Not sister Joanne.
Tricia Hagerty Wenz:She said, have you met with so and so yet? And I said, actually yesterday, and she said, well, is he supportive? And I said, no. She said, I am godmother to his child. She said I am going to call his office right now and tell him that he needs to get you a letter of support.
Tricia Hagerty Wenz:And she did. Unbelievable. You gotta love the numbers. Unbelievable. Really love the numbers.
Tricia Hagerty Wenz:They're getting stuff done. So that is a true story. If it wasn't for her, maybe none of this would have happened.
Doug Hovey:And I remember at the time, there were, I don't know, maybe 60 people still living in the building at the time. And Tricia was running around trying to, we've got to figure out where we're gonna relocate these people. We can't make them homeless. That's antithetical to what we're here for. So during the construction phase, right?
Doug Hovey:And we tried, we tried. I mean, I've looked at the hotel up the street that fell through. We looked at other alternative sites over on 17 Ks and around the region to try to relocate folks during the construction phase. But as it turned out, we kept people in the building. Phase one, phase two, phase three.
Doug Hovey:And I remember going through that process where we would renovate one section of the building into beautiful new apartments and move the people into that section. And then we do the next section and keep kinda moving people around until we're done with phase three.
Lisa Silverstone:And when you see the pictures of the construction, that's astounding. Unbelievable. Because it just looks like it was gutted from end to end. So the fact that people were able to live here and you were able to figure out how to checkerboard them is incredible. Yeah.
Doug Hovey:Now, I used to be heavily involved with the Newburgh Rotary Club, and I was actually chairman of the rotary back in 02/2001. And I had a gentleman after the construction was done, so it was a few years later, mister Roth, Bob Roth and his wife, Roz, they wanted a tour of the Cornerstone. So I said, sure. Come on down. I take them for a tour.
Doug Hovey:We're in the green room, and I gave them a few minutes. And I noticed they were getting a little bit emotional. They were holding hands as they were walking around the perimeter and looking at pictures on the wall. And they came back and said to me, we were married here in 1962. And this is such an emotional experience for us.
Doug Hovey:Thank you so much for sharing this. And I explained to them that Tricia was the vision behind this entire transformation. And they were so grateful that this building has been restored. People come back often with stories like that. I had my first date here in the Ritz Theater.
Doug Hovey:I actually had a woman at
Lisa Silverstone:a program not long ago, an elderly woman, who was an usherette in the theater when Pearl Harbor was bombed. Wow. And she was telling me the story of we were usherettes and the theater closed and we were all walking home. So this building holds so many memories for people and people who had happy times here and then saw it go into this very sad decline where, like you said, it was just this terrible smell of death and urine and just grim and to come back and be sitting watching a movie, going to an art opening, seeing healthy happy people walking around the building is, it's an incredible full circle. Because so many people from Newburgh, they're Newburghers for life, right?
Lisa Silverstone:So there's a lot of those kind of stories of people who have their first year or have had so many occasions, happy occasions here.
Tricia Hagerty Wenz:And know, Lisa and Doug, I think what a project like this can show is that you could do such a positive transformation without pushing people out. Right. You know that gentrification is not the way. No. Know that
Lisa Silverstone:anyone It's centering people and solutions. That's what we need to do. We don't need to say, oh it's time for us to redevelop and re energize our downtown. So we're going to make housing for you folks out there. No.
Lisa Silverstone:Right. You can be centered in all of those solutions. Absolutely. I think you And be part of the solution. And be a part of the solution.
Lisa Silverstone:And and that's the model that you Yeah. Welcome back to Safe Harbors Radio. We're in the studio today with Tricia Hagerty Wenz, the founder of Safe Harbors of the Hudson and Doug Hubby, CEO of Independent Living who does provides our case management in our building. Tricia, can you take us back to the early days when Doug was working in the building as he was telling us about earlier with his team really struggling to make a difference in people's lives. You came along with this incredible vision.
Lisa Silverstone:How did you partner? What did that look like?
Tricia Hagerty Wenz:Well, so there was a continuum of care early on. I was out in Goshen, those meetings and I would go to those and our colleagues in the world of social services were very skeptical of this project. When I first showed up and I explained what we're doing and after the first meeting Doug came up to me and said I love it, my offices are in there, how can I help, I want to see this happen? So Doug became a really valuable and important ally to this project. He's so well respected for the work he does in the community but he got it.
Tricia Hagerty Wenz:He got it right away. He got the value of it and he wanted to be a part of it. So you know there was an immediate connection between the two of us, I trusted him right away. And then we got 1,500,000 from the Office of Mental Health and dedicated 39 apartments here for people with a mental health diagnosis and every one of those people that were skeptical wanted to be our support service partner. I got letters from everybody and it just was going to be Doug from the beginning because Doug knew what the value of this project.
Tricia Hagerty Wenz:So he was in the trenches early on with me and with, the tenants and, they were able to, I think back in '99 and 2000 before we bought the building their work was more demand responsive because of limited resources at that time. It was helping people in emergency situations, but because we've actually Doug brought a significant amount of people over here, we built a foundation of support that went beyond just being demand responsive and made all the difference in the world for people because the most important thing was at the very least, to keep people housed and to make sure that we had people on-site that were willing to do what they can to ensure people that they were still able to pay their rent, they were getting to work, that they had job opportunities. So yeah, it was an easy partnership from day one.
Lisa Silverstone:And tell us about how things changed for you when the building transformed into what it is today.
Doug Hovey:Yeah, mean amazing transformation. But as soon as Tricia and I met, we connected right away. And it was instantly obvious that she was most concerned about the people. The people that lived here and the people of this community. That's what her motivation was and that's what drove the vision behind the transformation.
Doug Hovey:But the supportive housing model, that dynamic, and this was the project of the Northeast. Recognized all around the region. And I'm not just talking about this region, I'm talking about the Northeast really because it was such an innovative and progressive design. That concept of bringing a not for profit partner that provides services together with a developer and building operator and then bringing in a state agency partner like the Office of Mental Health, who as Tricia pointed out, really sponsors 39 of the beds here. And we did that all in one fell swoop.
Doug Hovey:In one year, we had 39 beds supported. So we were in a very good position to demonstrate the power of this very progressive model. We hit it off right from the start. We got along very well. And as I said before, we left no stone unturned in terms of who we spoke to to talk about the mission, the vision of safe harbors.
Doug Hovey:It was just a great time, a great experience.
Tricia Hagerty Wenz:Doug offered me a level of legitimacy that I couldn't have had here. People sort of Doug was like, okay if Doug supports this then this has to be good. And Doug was able, like even early on I think, getting Senator Larkin involved and to Senator Larkin's credit he actually got the project and was supportive and always supportive of it. Doug facilitated that connection, was very, very valuable to us.
Doug Hovey:Senator Larkin was always a champion for all people. He really was in a very nonpartisan way and was instantly supportive of this particular project. And always. Always supportive all through the years. And the other thing that didn't hurt is the fact that Tricia and I are both Pisces.
Doug Hovey:Our heads are in the clouds, but we're smart enough to hire talented people to keep our feet muddy. But she's a visionary and I immediately could see that vision. And as I said before, Tricia took me down to New York City and we saw the Prince George Hotel and the transformation there and the Times Square Hotel and several other projects that Common Ground had done prior, which is really the model that we emulated here at Newberg. It was so innovative and progressive for our area and just a very exciting time for
Lisa Silverstone:our I think it still is. I mean, maybe that that's not a great thing, but we still are a very unique model.
Doug Hovey:We were the envy, we really were, of the local area, of all the community based health and human service organizations. They were very envious of this model. Not in a bad way, just that wow, look what they've done. And, you know, subsequent to that, there were several other good organizations who, as a result, got invested in the supportive housing model. Yeah.
Lisa Silverstone:I think that, the supportive housing model has certainly taken off, but the uniqueness of co locating and integrating the arts is is something that is I again, I feel like you were able to do it because you didn't know you couldn't do it. Exactly. Because I have people, you know, other developers reaching out to me all the time saying, how did you get the funds to do a gallery and a theater and a park? Like how did we get the funds to do all those things? We are still kind of a unique, model in the integration of all of the things that we do.
Tricia Hagerty Wenz:You know it's funny that you say that. I was at the closing for the first amount of funding that we got through the state to purchase the building and at the closing there was this, all these people were coming in, they're like wait a minute, we're buying a theater too? I mean it almost stopped at that moment and I did do some like quick tap dancing.
Lisa Silverstone:When you look at the deed it's actually crossed out. The theater is crossed out of all the closing documents. Wow. It was like we did really buy the That
Doug Hovey:was our critical moment.
Lisa Silverstone:They were literally excess through they the were just like
Tricia Hagerty Wenz:Yeah. And if we wanted to provide these lives that go beyond. These were people that were they were living in housing that no one cared about them. No one cared. Know?
Tricia Hagerty Wenz:They lived here and no one cared. Now we're gonna have a gallery, we're gonna have a theater that they're gonna participate in. GED program, support services on-site. So I had to keep like, it was a crazy, it almost all fell apart. Like they must have read that meeting that just kept
Lisa Silverstone:crossing it Right, just kept crossing it out. But I, the Supportive Housing Network of New York, which is New York State's H. Shinne. Shinne. Right.
Lisa Silverstone:They are our, trade association basically. And I just got a call from them last week to see if we would sit on a panel, me and one of our residents, to speak exactly about this. What is how do the arts help our resident population? And we are, again, I hate to keep saying the same word, but we are really unique in this space. So to be asked to speak about the power of the arts to transform lives and communities.
Lisa Silverstone:Right?
Doug Hovey:It really is. Mean, it just it changes the whole cultural dynamic and feel of the living space, you know, to incorporate the arts and and to do all the amazing things that you guys have done. You know, Tricia, and then you, Lisa, continuing in that same vision. You know? The outdoor space is just beautiful.
Lisa Silverstone:And yet economic development. When Tricia first built the space there was always a notion that we would have commercial partners and left a couple of street level spaces to be filled. And the fact that we could attract at a time when there wasn't a lot of foot traffic in Newburgh, there wasn't a lot of purchasing power in Newburgh, that we were able to attract a wonderful coffee shop and a collaborative work share space because we had built this model that people were coming here and spending their money to go to a show, to come to a farmers market on the park. It makes it an attractive space for commercial as well.
Tricia Hagerty Wenz:You really spearheaded getting two Alice's here today. Was, I remember our first weeks working together and you said to me, I want a project and I think I want to get a coffee shop to And come took it and flew with it. Having a vibrant coffee shop in this space has really been I'm sure fantastic for the community.
Lisa Silverstone:And the residents are there all the time and it's again that blurry line between who's who here, it doesn't matter. Were you formally unhoused? Are you living with mental health diagnoses? Or are you the lawyer down the street?
Tricia Hagerty Wenz:No one knows. No
Doug Hovey:one knows. And the integration of our staff, employees that work here, the employees that work for safe Harbors and the employees that work for Independent Living, excuse me, have really just integrated beautifully. It was sort of seamless and not to sound cliche, but nonetheless, I mean, we work together as such a great team you know, in supporting the needs of of the building, supporting the needs, and most importantly, of the people that live here. So and it's it's really just been, you know, so, remarkable. And, know, and I'm we're sitting in this space right now, and I was reminding Tricia that this was Tricia's first office.
Doug Hovey:She had her office set up in here. And in fact she had another desk right next to me. She said, that's your desk. That's your desk. So we were really seamless in integrating the whole program concept with the building and its impact on the local community.
Lisa Silverstone:Yeah. Hello and welcome back to Safe Harbor's Radio. We've got Tricia Hagerty Wenz and Doug Hovey here. And guess who just stumbled into the studio is Ramona Monteverde, Safe Harbor's Director of Operations. And Ramona and Tricia go way back.
Lisa Silverstone:So I'm gonna let them tell their story.
Tricia Hagerty Wenz:Ramona was the very first person I hired. So one of the first things that I thought we needed was somebody that actually knew how to manage a building.
Lisa Silverstone:I That is
Tricia Hagerty Wenz:did not know. And so I had, interviewed a bunch of people and then I met Ramona and we walked through the building and she started saying stuff like this needs to be a fire exit, there needs to be a safety bar on here. All these things that she knew that I realized wow Ramona knows what she's talking about. So I offered her the job and she accepted and this is, why I will adore Ramona forever and ever because I said we're buying the building on December 1. So this is, here she is, she's an established person working in down in Westchester at a job.
Tricia Hagerty Wenz:She's got a job, she's got benefits and I'm like come work for me, this new organization with less money.
Doug Hovey:Yeah, and no benefits.
Lisa Silverstone:No office space.
Tricia Hagerty Wenz:No, not
Lisa Silverstone:even a
Tricia Hagerty Wenz:phone. And I said the building, we're purchasing the building on December 1. So then I got a call that the closing The closing was was postponed and now it's December 17. I called Ramona and I was like closing was postponed, we can't start for another two weeks and she paused for a minute and she just said, I need to know if this is real. And I said, Ramona, it's real.
Tricia Hagerty Wenz:And she she believed me and trusted me that it was real. And two weeks later, we were in here.
Lisa Silverstone:And twenty five years later, here we Yeah.
Ramona Monteverde:We're still going. Yep. Safe Harbors is, just doing fantastic. All the programming.
Lisa Silverstone:So Ramona is winding down her time here at Safe Harbors and is retiring at the June. But, again, what an incredible legacy she built with Tricia and Doug in this building. And you will be sorely missed, but I know you have lots of stories. I've heard them over the years.
Tricia Hagerty Wenz:Oh, yeah. Ramona really taught me a lot too. I mean, remember our first Thanksgiving, we're here the Friday after Thanksgiving. Ramona's like, you know, Tricia, most people actually have off the day after Thanksgiving. I was like, oh, okay.
Tricia Hagerty Wenz:Like, most people aren't here on Saturdays just because a group of kids from Saint John's say they wanna help us clean the building. She was like, there needs to be boundaries.
Lisa Silverstone:We still struggle with boundaries. We definitely do.
Doug Hovey:And remember I said, you know, Tricia and I are Pisces, so our head is always in the clouds, but we're smart enough we're smart enough to hire really talented people that keep our feet on the ground.
Lisa Silverstone:Ramona's also was gonna say, but she's also a Pisces. There
Doug Hovey:goes that theory all the way up. But Ramona, you you have always kept us grounded. There's no question about that. Yeah. Oh, I
Ramona Monteverde:don't know about that, but thank you.
Doug Hovey:Behind the scenes, getting it done.
Tricia Hagerty Wenz:Yeah. And you know, wasn't easy. There was we it was there was no rule book. There was you know, she started work the first day. There's no employee handbook.
Tricia Hagerty Wenz:We were like we bought the building and people started putting piles of cash, you know, the thing and checks. And Gary Smith was our first accountant. Oh, yeah. And he quit because he said He was crying.
Lisa Silverstone:Kathy Jones, our our former CFO said, we made our accountant cry. Yeah.
Tricia Hagerty Wenz:He was like, I know that you you did this, but who said you could? He said to me. He's like, who gave you permission? Because he was like, there's money and checks and we're just
Ramona Monteverde:We're pulling it out
Lisa Silverstone:of our pocket. I had it in my pocketbook. Was So pretty
Tricia Hagerty Wenz:we had two funny things happen the day that we purchased the building. The day before, was, do you remember there was a, in one of the commercial spaces, was a place called Fat Beats. Yes. P H A T B E A T C. And they were paying, at that time, was it a lot of money, was $1,500 a month and I'm like this is great, they were part of our whole financial know, P and L, they're gonna give us money every month.
Tricia Hagerty Wenz:They were raided.
Ramona Monteverde:Police shut them down.
Tricia Hagerty Wenz:Police shut them down the day before. They were it was and you wondered, like, how were they spending all that rent and they were just selling beepers, right? Was a big drug bust and they found drugs and
Lisa Silverstone:guns in there. Oh.
Tricia Hagerty Wenz:But so maybe the police, like, kinda did us a favor because they knew we were coming in. We gotta get rid of these guys. But the good news on that was that is where we got all of our office treatment. We went in there, we're like, alright, they left and now we have desks and look, there's paper and pencils and everything.
Doug Hovey:I remember going through that building, we'll take that, we'll take that.
Tricia Hagerty Wenz:We used all of that for our office and then it was kind of funny, do you remember we had those kids come in for security cameras? One of the problems with this building, was a lot of illegal activity and even renting by the hour was happening here, so we knew we had to change things right away. We had these young guys coming in and they wanted to show us this whole, this is what, you know, like watch a video of their Yeah. And we're like, don't have time. We just bought this building.
Tricia Hagerty Wenz:We're like, there's leaks.
Ramona Monteverde:We're running all around.
Tricia Hagerty Wenz:We're running all around. One of our tenants died the night before we bought the building. He was killed riding his bike on Broadway. Oh. So his brothers came.
Tricia Hagerty Wenz:We just brought the building and they came to clean out his apartment. And meanwhile, these guys are showing this security system. And the brothers opened the door and he was a hoarder and it was top to bottom. And they said, I don't know if we can do this. And the security guys said, we can put the cameras in, but we need a deposit of $2,500 So we went back to those guys and said we'd be happy to clean out that apartment for you if you want to make a donation of $2,500 I mean that was the kind of stuff.
Tricia Hagerty Wenz:So they wrote the check, we wrote the check for the security guys. It was amazing, but we never missed a payroll.
Doug Hovey:Whatever it took to get it done, right?
Tricia Hagerty Wenz:But we never did. We were able to kind of
Lisa Silverstone:Intrepid. People it Intrepid. That's the word, intrepid. Unbelievable. I remember, you know,
Ramona Monteverde:we were doing all the work in the building. It was just crazy. Just trying to get it to a point where we wanted it to be clean for the tenants and, you know, we were cleaning out the old coffee shop in the counter so that we could have Thanksgiving in there, right? Outside in the hallway when you walk into the vestibule, right past that, the ceiling was caving in. So here I am standing on scaffolding, patching it and plastering it.
Ramona Monteverde:Know, the music's blasting. Everybody's running back and forth just trying to get ready for the Thanksgiving. That was just, those were the days.
Tricia Hagerty Wenz:Those were
Ramona Monteverde:crazy. Those were the days. It's midnight, oh, it's time to go home.
Tricia Hagerty Wenz:Yeah, right. Yeah, your willingness to do anything, Ramona, like just to keep things going was it's so admirable. Like, you know, you didn't have to like go along with this crazy scheme, but you did. And
Lisa Silverstone:I feel like that is the kind of the magic of the founder and working for the founder is that things over time have structures and there's policies and there's procedures and those are all really important. But there's something magical about that time when it all begins and you're here at midnight and you you know, you don't have an accountant and you've got piles of cash, but you're making it happen. Like you said, you never miss a payroll and everybody's everybody's kind of caught up in that spirit of what we can do here. And that's a that is I just feel like to be part of that, you three are really lucky to have been part of something just a spark, like a magic spark and a magic moment where you could just make things happen. I think it's I just I envy it.
Doug Hovey:The vision prevails even if by the sea of our paths. Right? Absolutely. Was just you did what you had to do to make it come together. Know?
Doug Hovey:That's what pioneers do. Absolutely. And Tricia had just that pioneering vision. We jumped on board and said, yeah, we'll do this. Are you kidding me?
Doug Hovey:We're gonna make it happen because so believed in it.
Lisa Silverstone:And how lucky is Newburgh that this is Newburgh. That you all joined forces and created this incredible anchor that has continued to spark better and better things for our city. And and we have to wrap. But what an incredible inaugural show. How great to have you, Tricia.
Lisa Silverstone:Thank you for coming all the way from Hartford and joining us back in the building today. And Doug, of course. And Ramona, what a nice surprise to have you join us today. Great. Way to go.
Lisa Silverstone:This was I'm I'm just thrilled and and there's so much more to talk about and we will probably have you back and I know we'll have you back Ramona.
Tricia Hagerty Wenz:Love to. And and Lisa, thank you. I mean, would there was no better person to to take the ball and run with it. Appreciate it. A 100%.
Tricia Hagerty Wenz:I'm just so pleased. I feel so much proud of what you've done and what you've imagined here. So thank you so much.
Lisa Silverstone:Well, it's tough when you're taking over from Mother Teresa. So I appreciate it.
Doug Hovey:Well, Well, it's better than Mother Superior.
Lisa Silverstone:Touche. Well, thank you everybody, and we'll see you next time on Safe Harbor's Radio.