Placemaking and Preservation with Catherine Mikic

Jen sits down with guest Catherine Mikic to explore the profound relationships between communities, histories, and local landscapes. Catherine is a trained architect with decades of experience in New York City who shifted her focus to rural placemaking after relocating to the area in 2018. She discusses her hands-on work restoring the landmark Sweet Sherman Homestead, uncovering thousands of years of Indigenous Mohican history, and helping transform a local traffic circle into a vibrant, pedestrian-friendly civic space. Catherine also shares the urgent efforts behind her nonprofit advocacy work to protect Copake’s growing agritourism economy and historical assets from a massive, large-scale industrial development proposal overriding local zoning laws. Highlights Include: *The Sweet Sherman Homestead Restoration: Catherine recounts purchasing a historic family farm on Center Hill Road outside of Copake town center during the pandemic. Her research into the site's ethnographic history ultimately led to an 18-acre National Register Historic District designation. *Reimagining the Heart of the Community: Catherine details her collaboration with town officials to leverage a roadway infrastructure project to build a new 21st-century civic park. The project will re-establish a historical town square centered around Copake's historic town clock. *Defending a Rural Landscape Against Shepherd's Run: Catherine outlines her advocacy work against an out-of-state developer's proposal to place 220 acres of industrial solar panels in a historic farming hamlet. Alongside local leaders, she founded the nonprofit advocacy group Arcadian Alliance to protect the area's protected watershed, historic properties, and heritage tourism economy. About the Guest: Catherine Mikic is an architect, placemaker, and cultural landscape advocate based in the Hudson Valley. After studying and building a career in architecture and historic preservation in New York City, she moved to Hudson in 2018. She currently serves as the Chair of the Copake Historic Preservation Committee.