20. grow the downtown uptown
Re-zone Route 299 between the Teen Seen and the Thruway to require mixed use, walkable, high-density development. This should include retrofitting the Ames Plaza, Cherry Hill Plaza and Eckerd’s Plaza into mixed-use buildings by adding two-three stories of apartments on top of the strip malls.
100 Ideas for New Paltz 
Building apartments over the strip malls is brilliant
it increases the amount of housing without additional bulldozing
if people lived there it would have to be made more friendly to pedestrians and children.
I love this idea.