Empty buildings. Open minds.

A sketchbook for places that used to work and now sit quiet. One question for each of them: what could it be next? First on the drafting table, the former Camp Monterey in the Town of Orange, Schuyler County.

The former Camp Monterey campus from above, April 8, 2026. Drone photograph by Charles K Lyles.

The site as it stands

Built in the hills, closed in 2014.

The state ran a correctional camp here for more than five decades. The buildings are still standing. The grass is taking the yard back a little more each season.

1958Opened May 1 as a state camp where young offenders did forest conservation work.
1987Converted to a minimum-security facility for up to 300 men.
2014Closed July 27. It last ran as a minimum-security shock incarceration facility.
2015Empire State Development offered it for sale and redevelopment: about 25 acres, 40 structures, three wells and its own sewage plant, inside Sugar Hill State Forest.
2026Drone flight on April 8. Buildings standing, roads open, grounds going back to field.

Sources: Monterey Shock Incarceration Correctional Facility, Wikipedia; Empire State Development, request for proposals (2015).

Drone photograph of the former Camp Monterey buildings in a wooded valley under a blue sky — The campus in its valley, Town of Orange. Charles K Lyles.

The imagination

Six sketches on the drafting table.

Pencil, not ink. These are ideas to talk over, the kind that get better when more people put a hand on them.

Sketch 01

A family hub

Classes, learning and plain fun on one campus. A small Finger Lakes world people drive in for and stay the whole day.

Sketch 02

Operation Location land

About five acres with helicopter pads and a hangar that holds a heritage lounge and an interactive classroom. Tours leave from here.

Sketch 03

1948 tour cars

Electric tour cars styled after the 1948 Grand Prix racers, running the 6.6-mile 1948 course through the village.

Sketch 04

The one-mile loop

A loop on the grounds about Seneca heritage and taking care of the land, walked slow enough to notice things.

Sketch 05

The motorcoach stop

A drop-off for tour buses passing through the Finger Lakes, with a small dining lodge so people get off the bus and stay a while.

Sketch 06

iGlen on the kiosks

Screens around the grounds where iGlen answers questions and points visitors outward, to the gorge, the lake and the towns.

From the drone

What is there to work with.

Rows of single-story buildings with blue and gray roofs along the camp roads — Rows of buildings, blue roofs and all.

An open blacktop yard framed by long low buildings — The old blacktop yard.

Drone photographs by Charles K Lyles, April 8, 2026.

Your turn

What would you build?

This is a sketch, not a plan. When the concept is finished it goes to local leaders as a community idea, and the people who live here should get the loudest say in what happens next.

A short survey is on the way. Until then, send an idea and it goes in the sketchbook.

Send an idea