Ulster County acquired the two parcels in November 2019 out of tax foreclosure. Its previous owner, developer Alan Ginsberg, purchased the larger 252-acre campus in 1998 from IBM after the tech giant closed it.
Ginsberg renamed the campus TechCity and sought to transform it into a center of commerce, but struggled to fill the 1.7 million square feet of rentable space. In 2016 he fell behind on tax payments and by 2019 owed $3.3 million in taxes on the two sites. The other parcels — some of which are also in foreclosure proceedings — have more than $8 million in arrears, the Daily Freeman reported.
Photos of the property, provided as part of the county’s outreach, show the buildings are in various levels of decay. Cavernous carpeted floors with fluorescent-lit drop ceilings recall the ubiquitous cubicles of the 1980s and 1990s. Rusted pipes, peeling wallpaper and dust-covered filing cabinets reveal the buildings’ more recent history.