erona Beach and Green Lakes state parks in Central New York will use more than $13 million in state funding for improvement projects at each location.

The funding is part of the NY Parks 2020 initiative, the office of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced in a news release Thursday.

“New York has some of the nation’s best locations for outdoor recreation, and through the NY Parks 2020 program we are transforming them to be better than ever,” Cuomo said in the news release. “I am proud to see the progress at Verona Beach and Green Lakes moving forward, and I encourage New Yorkers to check out a state park near them this summer.”

NY Parks 2020 is a multi-year effort leveraging a “broad range of private and public funding” to invest about $900 million in state parks between 2011 and 2020, according to Cuomo’s news release.

The 2015-16 state budget includes $110 million for this initiative, his office added.

Cuomo first announced NY Parks 2020 in early March.

Verona Beach

Verona Beach State Park in Oneida County will use $4.2 million to pay for the completion of a new bathhouse and pavilions “in time for the summer swim season,” Cuomo’s office said.

Located on the eastern shore of Oneida Lake, Verona Beach on Thursday celebrated the grand opening of its “complete beach facility makeover,” Cuomo’s office said.

The project includes a new bathhouse, a concession stand, public restrooms, and a first-aid station with lifeguard office and locker rooms.

The project also expanded the beach area and provided flood protection by locating the building further from the beach and at a higher elevation.

Green Lakes

Green Lakes State Park in the town of Manlius will use its nearly $9 million in funding for ongoing campground upgrades and a renovation of the golf clubhouse.

The golf clubhouse is undergoing $3.1 million in work to replace the multi-tiered patio with an outdoor dining area.

An addition to the pro shop will include new public restrooms, which “were not previously available in close proximity to the shop.”

The second phase, which begins this fall, calls for the design and renovation of the clubhouse’s interior.

Besides the clubhouse, Green Lakes’ Pine Woods Campground is currently undergoing a $2.95 million project to install improved campsites.

They will include electric, water, and sewer connections “for the first time in the Central New York region.”

The second phase of the campground project, which begins this fall, will involve construction of a second restroom building to serve campsites and the park’s newly renovated cabins, and will install electricity for the remaining sites, according to the news release.

The federal Land and Water Conservation Fund contributed $1.1 million in funds toward the campground project, Cuomo’s office said.

Concurrently, a $2.9 million effort to upgrade utilities and park entry is also under way.

The upgraded utilities, including water, sewer, electric, communications and roadways,  will serve the park’s northern area, which includes the park and Pine Woods Campground area.

Contact Reinhardt at ereinhardt@cnybj.com

LOWVILLE — In spite of a few late-season cold snaps that knocked out some grape plants, Tug Hill Vineyards plans to rally back with an expansion project that will help offset the crop loss.

Tug Hill Vineyards owners Susan and Michael Maring, who were recently honored with a Small Business Excellence Award from the New York Small Business Development Center in Watertown, will expand their processing facility to increase its case capacity from 2,500 to 5,000. The project is funded through a $65,000 U.S. Department of Agriculture grant, a $40,000 New York State Economic Development grant, and additional company investments. It will create two new jobs at Tug Hill. The business currently has two full-time employees — a winemaker and an event coordinator — in addition to the Marings, Tug Hill Vineyards employs more than 25 people during the peak summer season.

Susan Maring, president of Tug Hill, says she expects the expansion project to wrap up in late July or early August. Along with increasing the vineyard’s case capacity, the project will also open up a tasting room at the processing facility. Maring expects that tasting room will result in increased summer tasting crowds compared with the current tasting room, located near the vineyard’s banquet facility. During the summer, especially on Saturdays, that area is often full with wedding parties and can lead the public to think the tasting room is not open and accessible, she says. With nearly every Saturday booked with a wedding, something needed to be done, Maring says. The facility also offers a Sunday brunch that is very popular with customers.

The processing facility tasting room, located away from the banquet facility, should eliminate that problem. The location is also convenient to the vineyards, and golf carts will be available for those who wish to tour the grape fields. “They can do a tour of the winery and some tastings out of the tanks,” Maring says of the “taste and tour” offering.

The Marings started the vineyard in 2009 after 30 years of running a nursery and landscaping business. While the standard answer to why is, “We always enjoyed wine,” both Marings also have degrees in horticulture and wanted to pursue something that would allow them to continue to work outdoors and with plants.

Right from the start, the Marings diversified their offerings with five acres of blueberries and three acres of raspberries for “you-pick” berries and a banquet facility that hosts events such as weddings. Of course, they also have 20 acres of grapes to make the wine.

“Our niche is that we only make wines from the grapes we can grow in our area,” Susan Maring says. Tug Hill uses its own grapes, as well as grapes purchased from other local growers, to make its wines. At peak season, the vineyard offers 16 wines ranging from dry to sweet. “We try to cover everybody’s palate,” she says. 

The vineyard also makes five fruit wines made using fruit grown on site.

While she declined to provide revenue information, Maring says the majority of sales are made through the tasting room. Tug Hill also sells wine through its website, www.tughillvineyards.com, and distributes to retailers from Utica to Syracuse to Potsdam.

Tug Hill Vineyards, located at 4051 Yancy Road in Lowville, has won nearly 50 awards for its wines, Maring notes. Going forward, the owners are planting more varieties of berries, such as elderberries, to experiment with new wines. “Our goal is always to make a better wine the next year,” she says.

DENMARK, N.Y. — The company behind the planned Copenhagen Wind Farm in northern New York, Brooklyn–based OwnEnergy, is looking to upgrade the model of turbine to be used at the site to a newer, higher-capacity design. That would lower the number of turbines needed to maintain the farm’s 80-megawatt capacity to 40 turbines, down from 47.

The wind-farm project, which would ideally start with construction in late April or early May 2016, in the town of Denmark in Lewis County, has been under development since 2011, according to James Damon, development manager at OwnEnergy.

The company wants to have the farm fully operational before the end of 2016, he says.

It is normal for development of a wind farm to take several years before construction, according to Damon, who states that this project has actually moved along faster than the average wind farm in New York.

“There are projects that were started 10, 12 years ago that are still in development,” he says.

Damon brought the proposed changes to Denmark’s planning board at a special meeting held June 23. The planning board, as the lead agency for the project, needs to approve the changes for them to be enacted. It will vote on whether to OK the changes at a meeting later this summer.

Damon says OwnEnergy wants to change the turbine model because it would work better for that area, adding that there are many factors that dictate the type of turbine, such as different wind classes. Not all sites are equal, he says. New York doesn’t have the same abundance of wind as areas like the Great Plains.

Damon says the total cost of the project will be more than $100 million, declining to give a specific estimate. He also declines to say how OwnEnergy is funding the project.

The 2.0-megawatt turbine OwnEnergy would like to use is manufactured by General Electric. The tower stands 94 meters (308 feet) tall, with a rotor diameter of 116 meters (380 feet), according to Damon.

One megawatt can power roughly 300 to 350 homes, he says, meaning when the farm operates at peak production, it could theoretically power around 25,000 homes.

It is called the Copenhagen Wind Farm because most of the land on which it would be built — about 9,000 acres — falls inside the village of Copenhagen within the town, according to Damon.

The 9,000-acre plot is comprised entirely of privately owned parcels, says Damon. OwnEnergy has obtained long-term lease agreements and easement agreements from all property owners. Damon declines to say how many different properties the wind farm will encompass.

Energy harvested at the farm will be transported through a feeder line, almost nine miles long, to a switchyard that OwnEnergy plans to build two towns over in Rutland, which is in Jefferson County, says Damon.

OwnEnergy intends to purchase land adjacent to the existing Black River-Lighthouse Hill transmission line in Rutland (which it will tap into) and build the switchyard. It will then sell the property to National Grid, says Damon.

The feeder line will pass through the town of Champion, which is between Rutland and Denmark. Damon says OwnEnergy is currently working on attaining a special-use permit from the town in order to erect the line. The company hopes to have the permit by September, he adds.

OwnEnergy was approved for the federal Renewable Electricity Production Tax Credit, the value of which will be determined by how much energy the farm sells each year. Damon says the tax credit has a duration of 20 years, with no limit on how much energy for which the farm can receive a tax credit.

In order for the Copenhagen Wind Farm to be eligible, OwnEnergy excavated five holes in December 2014 — where turbines will eventually be assembled — before the tax credit expired at the end of that year, says Damon. To hold onto the tax credit, the wind farm needs to be operational before the end of 2016, he adds.

The company is also working on forging a payment in lieu of taxes (PILOT) agreement with the Lewis County Industrial Development Agency (LCIDA) for the land on which the farm and the feeder line would be built.

Paul Saliterman, development director with OwnEnergy, says the company has a memorandum of understanding with LCIDA regarding the terms of the PILOT, which would have a 20-year duration. Saliterman declined to give a more detailed account of the PILOT terms.

OwnEnergy chose the area in the town of Denmark because it has a good wind resource, which Damon says means it’s windy enough to make the farm economical.

Also, he says, it’s no accident that the Maple Ridge Wind Farm, New York’s largest wind farm, is only a few miles away. “New York is not always the most accepting of these projects,” says Damon, so the fact that Maple Ridge is nearby means the community has already lived with a wind farm and knows it isn’t a big deal, he adds.

The town and the community have been great throughout the process, according to Damon. “They get that this project would be meaningful for them,” he says.

OwnEnergy was founded in 2007 by Jacob Susman, who has been in the renewable-energy field since 1999, according to the company website.

Damon says the business has 20 employees, all of whom work full time. He declined to disclose the company’s revenue for last year.            

OGDENSBURG — Global Resource Options Inc., which does business as groSolar, is preparing to build a 1 megawatt solar project on a site that the Ogdensburg Bridge and Port Authority (OBPA) owns in St. Lawrence County.

The site is located on Tibbitts Drive in Ogdensburg, a city located along the St. Lawrence River.

The firm, which has main offices in Columbia, Maryland and White River Junction, Vermont, has also designed the project and will operate it.

“This project is under development,” says John Miller, project developer with groSolar. “Construction has not yet commenced.”

Miller spoke to CNYBJ on June 22 from West Milford, New Jersey.

The solar project covers about 6 acres and includes about 4,000 photovoltaic modules. The project will produce about 1.55 million kilowatt hours of clean, renewable electricity. The clean energy produced would power 175 homes for one year or is the equivalent of taking 125 cars off the road for a year.

The project has been in development for about nine of 10 months, says Miller. 

“The nature of ground-mount solar projects in New York is that the planning and approvals stage, which includes all of the engineering, can take longer than the physical construction in the field,” says Tim Heinle, director of business development at groSolar.

He spoke to CNYBJ on June 22 from the firm’s office in Columbia, Maryland.

The firm anticipates construction will start late in the third quarter or early in the fourth quarter of 2015, Miller adds.

The firm hopes to have the project operational near the end of 2015 or early in the first quarter of 2016, weather permitting, he adds.

Once operational, the solar project will produce clean electricity to meet 100 percent of the OBPA’s requirements, according to a news release groSolar distributed in October 2014.

“The [OBPA] owns a lot of real estate, a lot of buildings … they manage a lot of buildings in that area … including the airport, the port … several office buildings in the area,” says Miller.

The Authority collaborated with Rochester–based Larsen Engineers to solicit bids from solar developers before selecting groSolar to develop, construct, own, and operate the project for the Authority.

Due to its agreements with NYSERDA and the OBPA, groSolar can’t reveal the project cost, says Miller. 

“The customer … [is] investing absolutely zero capital, zero operational risk. [It’s] only paying for power that the system is producing and is doing so at a discounted rate,” he adds.

The firm groSolar is using a grant from the NY-Sun program to finance the project. The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) administers the program.

NY-Sun is Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s $1 billion initiative to advance the scale-up of solar and move the state closer to having a sustainable, self-sufficient solar industry.

Cuomo in a Sept. 26 news release announced a total of $94 million in grants to develop 142 solar projects across the state.

The firm also is prohibited from divulging the specific amount of its grant award. “It’s approximately 20 percent funded through support from NYSERDA,” Miller adds.

In addition to federal-tax benefits, groSolar is … raising private funds to cover the remaining project cost, says Miller.

The firm groSolar is a commercial and utility scale solar developer and engineering, procurement, and construction (or EPC) firm specializing in projects over 1 megawatt, according to the October news release.

The more than 15-year-old firm has installed more than 2,000 projects nationwide, it said. 

They include the development and installation of solar projects at brownfields and landfills; manufacturing plants; and commercial, educational, and municipal facilities.

The company’s “institutional investors” include NGP Energy Technology Partners, Durham, North Carolina–based SJF Ventures, and Bethesda, Maryland–based Calvert Social Investment Fund, the groSolar website says.  

NGP Energy Technology Partners, with offices in Washington D.C. and Texas, has $500 million under management and is closely affiliated with NGP Energy Capital Management, a $13 billion firm which has been active in the natural-resources sector since 1988.