It sits high above Lake Katrine and even higher in our collective imaginations. Your Editorial Team cannot think of any other piece of real estate between the Statue of Liberty and the state Capitol that’s the focus of so much angst, speculation and nostalgia than the Hudson Valley Mall. A testament to the influence the mall had when it was a going proposition, bringing up the subject of this-close-to-oblivion mall never fails to crank up debate over what should be done with this parcel.

“Turn it into housing!” is probably the number-one answer heard from the community. We’ll get into this later on, but first, we’d like to offer a few of our own suggestions and why we think they might succeed.

Plan A: Lean Into Nostalgia. For Generation X, broadly defined as those born between 1965 and 1980, malls are more iconic than they are for anybody else, and yes, we’re including whatever generation the “silver sneakers” mall-walker senior set was from. Gen X has a deserved reputation for being disillusioned (at least in part by the failure of their hippie Boomer parents to bring forth the beautiful future they promised their organically and commune-raised tots) and aloof (the late ‘70s and the whole 1980s were a character study in me-first narcissism and middle age crisis-driven toxicity; the young people of that time learned quickly that to survive in a world of adults with personalities akin to razor blades, electrified fences and broken bottles, you had to not get too close). But as cats lose their cool when offered a certain brand of treats, Gen X-ers' hard hearts melt into sentimental goo when they think about the malls where they spent their adolescences.

We’d bet they’d come from hundreds of miles around to visit a mall restored to its 1980s glory. There’s a growing number of places which offer vintage video games and pinball machines, so an arcade would be a must. Maybe bring back mall classics like Record World, Teepeedashery, Waldenbooks, the Debi Shop, Valley Casuals and Kay-Bee Toys. Throw in an Orange Julius too. Have the movie theater screen classics of that era like “The Breakfast Club,” “The Terminator” and “Fast Times at Ridgemont High.” The possibilities are endless and the target audience waxes more nostalgic with each passing day. That’s not just teen spirit we’re smelling, it’s money.

Plan B: Lean Into Wellness. Ulster is a world leader in alternative health practices, so why not make a one-stop shopping experience around it? Yoga, Pilates, meditation, health food, supplements, reiki, sweat lodges — you name it, the mall has room for it. Feel that vibration in the collective unconscious? That’s the sensation of opportunity projecting its energy. All we have to do is turn on, drop out, tune in and rake in the dough.

Plan C: Lean Into History: Kingston and Ulster County take its history more seriously than anyone else in the region, so it would be relatively easy for each and every historical society in the county (and maybe like Red Hook and Rhinebeck) to have its own space in the mall to showcase relics and tell stories of the past. Perhaps the center space in the mall can hold a lifesize recreation of a bluestone quarry and visitors can pay a small fee to hack away at the geology which put Ulster on the map and in sidewalks all over the country. We don’t see this as much of a moneymaker as our previous two ideas, but what’s money compared to the thrilling tales of the D&H Canal or the heady days of the brickyards?

Thank you for bearing with us while we kid around. We and everybody else can and do suggest whatever they want for the mall, but its fate is in the hands of its owners, the Georgia-based Hull Property Group. According to a recent piece about the mall posted on Ulster Strong’s website, the group feels it’s rescued the mall from the brink of death and stabilized its condition. (They could stand to do some work on the parking lot, though — it’s gotten pretty rough, like Godzilla and King Kong played golf there and left a ton of divots.) Now, they’re just waiting for the right opportunity to redevelop the site and, with their property tax assessments knocked way down and their overhead costs low, are prepared to wait for a long time.

Redeveloped into what we can’t say — retail continues to suffer at the hands of online, a trend we don’t see stopping anytime soon. The whole 9W commercial corridor has faced a reckoning with the fact that people just don’t shop in person like they used to, and if they do, they prefer the kind of experience the City of Kingston offers. The irony is tasty — suburban malls were designed to kill traditional urban shopping districts but now those districts’ walkability and charm are contributing to the death of malls.

What about housing? The need for more of it is glaringly obvious, so why not put some there? If it happened we’d welcome it, but we don’t see it happening, either subsidized or at market rate. The latter would take a lot of money and hassle to make happen, including a complete teardown of the building and tearing up the parking lot. To make it an attractive place to live would take, we think, importing a small forest to grow around it so those who buy there think they’re getting something a little more upscale than just a permanent room at the Residence Inn. People are moving to Ulster County to live in far more natural settings than the Ulster Avenue business corridor.

Subsidized housing – that’s the best way to describe “affordable” or “workforce” housing as both those terms mean different things to different people — also comes with complications. First would be actually obtaining the parcel. It’s not a coincidence that the two projects with the most potential impact on the housing problem, the county’s Golden Hill and the Kingston Housing Authority’s Colonial Gardens project — sit on land already owned by the government. As do smaller projects, like the one at the old Kings Inn site and the one at the North Front Street parking lot. Subsidized housing is already paid for by government at hotel minibar prices — the first phase of a public housing project announced in July for Buffalo aims to build 254 apartments at an estimated cost of $250 million, which works out to virtually $1 million a unit. It too is on government-owned land; the cost would easily push past a million per unit if the land had to be bought first.

In an era where we’re considering setting up a county income tax to cover shortfalls from federal spending cuts to food assistance and the state telling counties they’re on their own with this, we don’t see that kind of money coming from either Albany or Washington soon, if ever. (If you think that if/when the Democrats get back into power at the federal level they’re going to restore everything or even most of what the Republicans cut, well, we have a bridge on Wurts Street that we’d like to sell you.)

In the meantime, the mall still sits where it’s sat for close to 50 years now. It may be another 50 years before we figure out what to do with it. If nothing else, it’s a great place to watch the sun set behind the Catskills and dream of days past and days which might never come.