Open Space Plan

The Orange County Planning Department, in partnership with the Orange County Land Trust and with funding provided by the Hudson River Valley Greenway, is currently working to provide an updated Countywide Open Space Plan. During the last two decades, the landscape of the County has significantly changed. Influences such as climate change, development pressure and changing energy infrastructure are expected to have widespread landscape impacts. Orange County continues to be one in five counties out of New York State’s 62 counties to increase in population according to the 2010 Decennial Census prepared by the U.S. Census Bureau. 

Planning for growth requires protecting valuable natural resources, cultural resources and the working landscape (farms and forestry lands) while balancing the need for development, housing, and transportation infrastructure. Updating the Plan will provide necessary guidelines to help balance this growth and establish and preserve buffers between open space and developed areas, as well as identifying critical linkages to promote connectivity between existing and future assets. 

For more information visit the project website at https://openspace-ocnygis.hub.arcgis.com/.  Here you can follow the project to stay up-to-date on our progress, access all of the latest maps, and take our upcoming Public Surveys to provide your input, helping to create a dynamic and adaptive plan that works for municipalities and community members alike.

Get Involved

The public participation page on the project website is to help us ensure that updating the Plan is a collaborative process, ensuring that all stakeholders have ample opportunity to know and understand the study’s purpose and goals, to comment on the study as it progresses, to feel confident that their concerns and ideas have been heard, and to contribute to building a consensus about the outcomes, culminating in a tailored plan that suits the communities and organizations served by the project.

Public Meeting #1:

Thursday, May 4, 2023 at the Rowley Center Building at SUNY Orange in Middletown from 7:00 – 8:00 pm. View meeting presentation slides here. View the meeting summary here

Public Meeting #2:

  • Workshop #1 will be held on Tuesday, August 1st at the Rowley Center Building at SUNY Orange in Middletown (10 E Conkling Avenue) from 7:00 – 8:00 pm. 
  • Workshop #2 will be held on Tuesday, August 8th at Kaplan Hall, SUNY Orange in Newburgh (73 1st Street, Newburgh, NY) from 7:00 – 8:00 pm. 

Register here and indicate which workshop you would like to attend. Please note that this is an in-person only event.

Moodna Viaduct
Open Space Plan Cover