TAKING ANOTHER SHOT
Gun range that was blocked in Kingston looks to open in neighboring town of Ulster
An indoor shooting range originally proposed for a building in Midtown Kingston appears headed for the town of Ulster.
The Ulster building is at 10 Kieffer Lane, off East Chester Street Bypass, and town Supervisor James Quigley said the project should prove to be much less controversial than when it was proposed for Prince Street in Kingston.
“If you wanted to do a compare and contrast with the site of the original project, you don’t have anyone walking past this, the building is not located near a school, it is not located near a hospital, and there are no residences around this,” he said.
The Kingston site was in walking distance from the YMCA, Kingston High School and the Broadway Campus of HealthAlliance Hospital.
The Ulster business would be called Mercantile Facility and Shooting Sports Complex and would occupy 22,000 square feet in a building the formerly housed the Eastern States electrical supply company. The building currently has an exterior sign that says Classic Tile, but the site has been vacant for about a year and has a real estate company’s “Available” sign attached to a fence.
The Kingston business, proposed by the same person, Dr. Adam Soyer, but intended to be called Safeshoot, would have been in Soyer’s former med-
ical office building at 90 Prince St. that measures just 2,400 square feet.
The Mercantile Facility and Shooting Sports Complex would have 20 shooting lanes, a members’ lounge, a special events room, a café and 5,000 square feet of retail space, including a gunsmith workshop. The Kingston plan called for only five shooting lanes, as well as classrooms and a retail area.
The Kingston proposal was dropped, and Soyer put the Prince Street building up for sale, after the city revised zoning regulations, effectively blocking the proposal.
Quigley said the Ulster
proposal will not have zoning-related problems.
The proposal “is entirely under the jurisdiction of the town Planning Board because they (the shooting range) are going to stay within the existing footprint of the building and only do interior renovations to improve it for their intended use,” the supervisor said. “They are going to upgrade the landscaping, parking, lighting and signage on the exterior to make it conform to current standards.”
The Kieffer Lane building in owned Sandy and Dale Whitman, but it was not immediately clear whether Soyer planned to buy it or rent the space.
The building is on the same property as Kingston Block and Masonry and the inactive Millens Metal Recycling facility.