The Time Has Come . . . or Rather Returned

In July, Gossips reported on a plan to make the clock in the pediment of the historic Montgomery C. Smith School, originally known as Chancellor Livingston High School, tell the time again--something it has not done in decades.

It seems that, without any fanfare, the goal of making the clock work again was accomplished.

Tonight, while driving on Harry Howard Avenue, heading for Greenport, I glanced at the clock. The little hand was on VI; the big hand was on II. Then I looked at the clock in my car to see 6:10. I don't know how long it's been the case, but the clock is working again!

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Portraits at a Gathering

In the first week of August, Chronogram brought its pop-up photo studio to Waterfront Wednesdays. This week, the photos taken that day by David McIntyre were published. You can view them all here. 

Oakdale Update

It's been confirmed. There is a harmful algal bloom in Oakdale Lake, and the lake is closed for swimming and all water-contact recreation. People are also advised to keep dogs away from the water. 

The Superintendent Responds

Last month, Gossips shared the news that Todd Hilgendorff, the new Superintendent of Schools at the Hudson City School District, had launched an "Ask the Superintendent" program. Students, parents/guardians, staff members, and community members were invited to submit questions, and Hilgendorff would provide answers. Bad news for those who fear we may now be in a post-literate era, Hilgendorff has chosen to respond to the questions in videos, two of which have already been published.

The first, which deals with the issues of "Academics and Vision," can be viewed here.

The second episode, dealing with "Facilities Improvements," can be viewed here.

Eye on the Street

This sign, appended to the stop sign at Park Place, came to Gossips' attention recently. How long it's been there is not known, nor it is known how it came to be there. But it is a sentiment Gossips can endorse.

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Happening in the Vicinity of Mill Street

In the past few days, residents of Mill Street and the north end of Third Street received letters from the Columbia Land Conservancy (CLC) informing them that work was soon to begin on trails to connect Third Street with Mill Street and Charles Williams Park. The following is quoted from those letters:

In a few short weeks, CLC will be in your neighborhood, working with Tahawus Trails LP, a professional trail design and construction company, to create a new trail system in Hudson. These trails will connect North Third Street to Mill Street and beyond to the Empire State Trail.

Building this trail is the beginning of a three-phase project that also includes revitalizing Charles Williams Park and creating a trail connecting downtown Hudson to CLC's Greenport property and the thousands of acres nearby. 

One of the recipients of the letter shared it with her councilmember, Rich Volo, who, in addition to representing the Fourth Ward on the Common Council, chairs the Conservation Advisory Council. Volo contacted Patrick Knapp, Director of Public Lands at CLC, seeking to learn more about the location of the trail and about possible loss of trees. Volo shared the information provided by Knapp with Gossips.

The plan is for two trails from North Third Street to Mill Street: a direct one that involves stairs and a longer one that involves switchbacks. The paths of both trails are shown on this map: the direct route in purple; the switchback route in orange. 

  

Knapp indicated it was likely the only trees that might need to be removed are Norway Maple and Tree of Heaven, both of which are Tier 4 invasive species. He acknowledged this could change but offered the assurance, "CLC will aim to balance the site's recreational and ecological opportunities through this project."

In 2024, CLC acquired a large parcel of land in North Bay from the Hudson Industrial Development Agency, the area outlined in black on this map.

CLC plans to build trails on the land to connect Charles Williams Park with the Greenport Conservation Area and the network of trails that go all the way north to Harrier Hill. 

CLC has also taken over the renovation of Charles Williams Park, and, in December 2025, CLC was awarded $675,000 for that purpose in New York State's Regional Economic Development Council initiative.

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Chatham on the Missing Marble

The Register-Star about the stop-work order at 402-404 Warren Street: "Historic preservation violations stop Galvan hotel construction."

In it, Walter Chatham, who describes his role with the project as "advising architect," has this to say about the original marble that was removed from the building:

"[T]hat marble was removed because steel beams installed during a 20th-century renovation cracked it," Chatham said. Construction workers still have the original, removed marble and can incorporate it into another part of the hotel while covering the part of the building where the marble was supposed to be with a real marble veneer, Chatham said.

"We left the steel beams that were put in front of the brick, so we have to bring new marble forward in order to cover that steel," Chatham said.

"It is not like the cracked marble removed by construction workers was "carved by Michelangelo."

"It was three fairly crude pieces of marble over around the doorway and then a fourth up at the corner, and all of them had deteriorated over time. Acid rain is not kind to marble," Chatham added. "I think the best we can offer is a real marble colonnade that, I don't want to use the word imitates, but I guess that's the right word, imitates what we think was on the building originally."

Removed marble pillar and lintel--Photo: Matt McGhee

The issue of the hotel and its violations is expected to be taken up by the Historic Preservation Commission at its next meeting, on September 11. Regarding that meeting, Chatham is further quoted in the article as saying:

"We hope to present an acceptable program that will allow (the commission) to remove the stop-work order even as we negotiate with them and finalize details," Chatham said. "They (the contractors) were right in the middle of installing an elevator, so we were hoping to get the stop-work order removed fairly quickly."

According to Chatham, "Galvan hopes to open the hotel by the holiday season and get permission from the commission to work on the hotel's interior by its next meeting."

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Charter Revision Elsewhere

Some folks critical of the manner in which Council President Margaret Morris is approaching the task of assembling a charter revision commission have pointed to the City of Kingston as a model for how charter revision should be approached. For those curious to know how Kingston is doing it, the following is quoted from the City of Kingston website.  

Local Law 6 of 2025 established the Kingston Charter Review Commission and a timeline for its work. The Commission will be composed of 18 members. Of these, 3 will be appointed by the mayor, 3 will be appointed by the common council, and 12 will be drawn from the public at random. The task of the Commission is to review the city's charter and propose changes to it. Any changes to the charter would be submitted to Kingston voters during the general election in November 2027.

The city of Kingston has partnered with the National Civic League to facilitate the work of the Charter Review Commission, including the selection of its 12 public members and 2 alternate members, who will meet monthly over the next year to discuss possible changes. The National Civic League will use a specialized civic lottery to select these members. This process will ensure that Kingston's population is well reflected in the Commission.

The following information is provided about applying for the commission:

Residents of all backgrounds and perspectives are encouraged to apply, including youth over the age of 18. No prior experience or specialized knowledge is required.

The deadline for submitting an application to be on the commission was August 17. There is no indication of how long the "specialized civic lottery" process of selecting the "public members" will take.

The charter review process in Kingston also includes a survey and a public forum, which is to take place this fall. There is no indication if the monthly meetings of the commission will be open to the public.

Meetings and Events in the Week Ahead

As summer winds down and September begins, there is not much happening on the meeting front.

• On Monday, August 31, the Hawthorne Valley Farmscape Ecology Program presents an illustrated talk by Joan Maloof, professor emeritus at Salisbury College and former executive director of the Old Growth Forest Network, titled "What Makes Old-Growth Forests Special, and How to Save Them." The event takes place at the Hawthorne Valley Farm Learning Center, 327 County Route 21C in Ghent. For more information, click here.

• On Tuesday, September 1, the Conservation Advisory Council meets at 6:00 p.m. The meeting is a hybrid, taking place in person at City Hall and on Teams. Click here to join the meeting remotely.
• On Thursday, September 3, the Common Council Services Committee (Youth Department and Senior Center) meets at 5:30 p.m. The meeting may include a first report from Brittany Gillis, the recently appointed Commissioner of Senior Services. The meeting is a hybrid, taking place in person at City Hall and on Teams. Click here to join the meeting remotely.
• On Saturday, September 5, the third Hudson Family Reunion takes place from 1:00 to 9:00 p.m. at Henry Hudson Riverfront Park. The mass gathering permit for this year's event describes its purpose in this way: "To bring family and community together of all ages, open to all, vendors, entertainment, yard games."

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11 Warren Street Update

It's been almost three months since Ray Jurkowski, Commissioner of Public Works for Columbia County, and the team from LaBella Associates presented these three options for exterior improvements to 11 Warren Street.

The plan, as explained by Jurkowski at the time, was to cobble together the input from the workshop and from a survey to create one final design, which would be presented in a second "public charette workshop." That was on June 9. Now, on the penultimate day of August, there is no information about when that workshop might take place.

In the meantime, at its July 10 meeting, the Historic Preservation Commission weighed in, suggesting the best thing that could be done would be to use landscaping to screen the building and make it as unnoticeable as possible. 

The building, a failed strip mall from the 1970s, is located on a premier block in a National Register and locally designated historic district. People must pass it to get from the city's central commercial district to Promenade Hill and the waterfront. It is, obviously, a noncontributing structure, but noncontributing structures are subject to review by the Historic Preservation Commission. Jurkowski has maintained that the county is exempt from Hudson's preservation ordinance. Gossips has never accepted that, and now, it seems, the City is not accepting it either.

At Friday's meeting of the Historic Preservation Commission, Phil Forman, who chairs the commission, reported that he had written to the county suggesting that plans for exterior alterations to 11 Warren Street come before the HPC. He described his communication as "polite and whiny." He said that Nick Fox, our code enforcement officer, had also contacted the county requesting that the project come before the HPC. Forman described Fox's communication as "less polite and not whiny." Presumably both communications were sent to Jurkowski. 

There has been no response to either of the requests--Forman's or Fox's. Forman indicated that the next step is for the city attorney to contact the county attorney. It wasn't clear if by "city attorney" Forman meant Victoria Polidoro, who is legal counsel to the HPC, or Andy Howard, who is corporation counsel. Summing up the situation, Forman said, "We shouldn't be in the position of begging. They are in violation."

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An Unveiling on Warren Street

The shroud concealing the work going on at 352 and 354 Warren Street was in place for more than a year. Its appearance was hailed by Mark Allen on Instagram on April 21, 2025.

The construction shroud came down yesterday, to reveal what appears to be a partially completed renovation.

It's been more than two years since the plans for the renovation of these two buildings, which formerly housed Johnny's Ideal Printing and were acquired by the Galvan Initiatives Foundation in 2019, were presented to the Historic Preservation Commission. The plan, as it was presented to the HPC in May 2024, was to combine the two buildings into a single apartment building and to re-create a storefront on the ground floor of 352 Warren, which evidence suggests it once was. Below is the drawing of what the buildings would look like with the changes proposed.

The drawing shows large windows, appropriate for a storefront, on the ground floor of 352 Warren. Those do not appear in the building as it is today. In fact, it appears that the only thing done on the facade of 352 was removing the paint from the brick on the second floor and painting the cornice, the oriel, and wood that sealed up the ground floor facade when the building was Johnny's Ideal Printing.

We await Nick Fox's inspection of the buildings and the explanation of why the renovation was not carried out as proposed and approved by the HPC.

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Historic Preservation and Code Enforcement

As a preamble to his reports on the violations at 123 Union Street and 402-404 Warren Street at the Historic Preservation Commission meeting yesterday, Nick Fox, who has been Hudson's code enforcement officer since February 2026, explained the respective roles of the HPC and code enforcement. This is the statement he made:

I have heard some recent discussion regarding the Hudson Public Hotel at Fourth and Warren and questions about the role of the Historic Preservation Commission when work does not conform to an approved Certificate of Appropriateness. I think it is important to clarify the respective roles of the Commission and the Code Enforcement Office.

The Historic Preservation Commission's responsibility is to review proposed work within the City's historic districts, determine whether that work is appropriate under the City's historic preservation standards, and issue a Certificate of Appropriateness when appropriate.

Once that approval has been granted, enforcement is not the responsibility of the HPC. It is the responsibility of the the City's Code Enforcement Office to inspect the work and ensure that construction is being performed in accordance with the Certificate of Appropriateness, the plans, renderings, materials, conditions, and other representations upon which that approval was granted.

When it is believed work may deviate from those approvals, it is the Code Enforcement Officer's responsibility to take appropriate investigative action. It takes time to conduct these investigations. We must thoroughly inspect the job site and materials, review plans, renderings, materials lists, review HPC meeting minutes, and conduct interviews. If enough evidence has been gathered to confirm the terms have been violated, that's when enforcement action is taken.

Last week, there were two Stop-Work Orders issued on two separate projects because the terms of the Certificate of Appropriateness from the Historic Preservation Commission were violated. One at the Hotel at 402 Warren, and one at 123 Union.

When an applicant is found in violation of Chapter 169, the next course of action is for the applicant to return to the Historic Preservation Commission and account for the work that differs from what was approved and explain why.

The Commission can then determine whether any of the unapproved changes are historically appropriate and may remain, or whether items must conform to what was originally approved and must be removed and replaced or repaired. But until that process is finished, no work will continue inside or outside those projects until it is decided if the noted discrepancies are acceptable, or must be rectified. Following the completion of that process, the Code Enforcement Office will determine what further action is warranted, including whether violations should be referred for prosecution and issued the applicable fines and/or penalties, including imprisonment.

To start this process, in today's meeting, I will present my findings on each of the projects and provide the applicant and Commission with a detailed list of the violations.

The applicant must then reapply to the HPC with these changes and any others that may not have been noticed . . . YET. Essentially starting from the beginning. If the new materials that were installed without consent are not approved by the Commission, they must be removed and replaced with what is.

Because that process may take weeks or months, in the meantime, the only activity
anyone should see at these sites is the removal of any fencing and construction barriers. With construction halted, there is no justification for continuing to inconvenience the public with barriers associated with work that is not permitted to continue until further notice.

Thanks to Fox, Hudson has entered a new era of code enforcement. Trust that Gossips will be following this story closely in the next weeks and months.