RUPCO will partner with a private developer to build 135 units of affordable housing on the former site of an auto dealership in Uptown Kingston.

Plans submitted by Milestone Development LLC this month call for a 135,707-square-foot, six-story residential building with 1,485 square feet of ground floor retail, off-street parking and an outdoor courtyard at 111 Schwenk Drive. In a statement announcing the project, Milestone said that while final affordability guidelines have not been finalized, plans call for all of the apartments to be affordable to people making between 40 and 80 percent of Area Median Income. The project will be on the agenda when the city’s planning board meets on Oct. 19. The developer did not provide a timeline for construction.

Milestone Development LLC is a New York City-based firm that specializes in affordable housing and green construction. The company's previous efforts include a 250-unit senior affordable housing project in Brooklyn and a 183-unit development in the Hunt’s Point neighborhood in the Bronx.

“We have been working to create more housing opportunities across our city, and bringing 135 affordable, modern, and sustainable homes to Uptown on the site of a vacant auto dealership is exactly the kind of proposal that will address the biggest challenge facing our community right now,” Mayor Steve Noble stated.

The proposed mixed-use project will occupy a site adjacent to a municipal parking lot where another development team plans to build the Kingstonian, a four-story building with 129 market-rate and 14 affordable units, as well as a 420-space parking garage. The Kingstonian project also includes a 32-room boutique hotel, restaurant and retail space and a pedestrian plaza at what is now Fair Street Extension.

Noble began laying the groundwork for the Milestone project last year when he asked the Kingston Common Council to rezone Schwenk Drive as a T-5 “Main Street” transect under the city’s “form-based” code. The designation is designed to create walkable urban streetscapes by allowing for larger building footprints, smaller setbacks and ground floor retail and commercial space. In May 2025, Noble told the council that the zoning change would support his effort to bring zoning along the four-lane arterial into conformity with the neighboring Uptown business district.

“I believe this area can and should be an extension of the Uptown business district, becoming a walkable and vibrant urban main street that provides commercial uses and medium-to-high density building types,” Noble wrote in a May 2025 memo to council President Andrea Shaut.