A questiion about POUGHKEEPSIE

[ebnozn]

A question about this city, recently I was in New Paltz and decided to check out Poughkeepsie, I crossed the bridge into what seemed a depressed area, I was in the area of the Mid Hudson Civic Ctr, I drove around but seemed to be in a bad area all the time. My question is did I miss something or was that the town??

 

[bw]

You did not drive through all of Poughkeepsie.

 

[SmashTim]

> A question about this city, recently I was in New Paltz and
> decided to check out Poughkeepsie, I crossed the bridge into
> what seemed a depressed area, I was in the area of the Mid
> Hudson Civic Ctr, I drove around but seemed to be in a bad
> area all the time. My question is did I miss something or
> was that the town??
>

Generally the western sections of Poughkeepsie is a economically depressed, the rest of Poughkeepsie is a bit better of & is middle class for the most part.

 

[BobRoss]

> A question about this city, recently I was in New Paltz and
> decided to check out Poughkeepsie, I crossed the bridge into
> what seemed a depressed area, I was in the area of the Mid
> Hudson Civic Ctr, I drove around but seemed to be in a bad
> area all the time. My question is did I miss something or
> was that the town??

As the others said, that's not the entire town. You should have gone south on Route 9 for a few miles. There's a stretch with not much to see, but before long you'll see tons of commercial areas... shopping centers and the like... then you go by the "IBM Complex" ... which is followed by more retail areas, a little bit of a lull, and then the Poughkeepsie Galleria and the South Hills Mall. You'll see that these areas aren't so depressed. After that though, there isn't much further to go until you're technically not in Poughkeepsie anymore.

Go east at any of the intersections between Route 113 (Spackenkill Rd) and the South Hills Mall and you'll find plenty of middle and some upper class neighborhoods. Anyone know if there's still that one house where they have a bazillion life-size Christmas characters that light up and make sounds? I remember as a kid, my parents driving us by this guy's house back in the late 80's... long line of cars to see it. We moved away in '89 though.

Poughkeepsie is one of those places where the city itself doesn't have a strong population base, but it's all the surrounding areas (and higher incomes from NYC commuters) which make this "bedroom community" strong enough to support malls and stores you wouldn't find in most other cities this size.