First News from the Planning Board Meeting

At last night's Planning Board meeting, it was announced that Gaby Hoffmann is resigning from the board because of work engagements that would cause her to miss the next six months of meetings. (It will be remembered Hoffmann is an actress.)

This is a significant loss for the Planning Board. Hoffmann's determined and well-researched attempts to get the Planning Board to respect and protect the city's long-held aspirations for the waterfront during the Colarusso review were memorable and admirable, especially given the hostile and demeaning reception her efforts met with from former chair Theresa Joyner and other members of the Planning Board. Mayor Joe Ferris has made three good appointments to the Planning Board so far--Ron Bogle, Peter Spear, and Nathan Woodhull. We hope he can find yet another serious, thoughtful, and well-informed person to replace Hoffmann on the Planning Board.  

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Good News for the Public Square

It hasn't even been two weeks since Friends of the Public Square (FOPS) and the Columbia County Chamber of Commerce launched their partnership to encourage local employers to support the restoration of Seventh Street Park, a.k.a. the Public Square. Since then, FOPS has been announcing contributions made by local businesses, and one family, on its Facebook page.  

Earlier this evening, the Register-Star reported that Congressman Josh Riley was successful in securing $250,000 in federal funding for the park restoration: "U.S. Rep Josh Riley secures $250K for Hudson's 7th Street Park renovations."

Preview of the Planning Board Meeting

At the last Planning Board meeting, Ron Bogle, the new Planning Board chair, said the elevations for the buildings proposed for the Hudson Housing Authority redevelopment did not provide enough information about what the buildings would actually look like and asked for renderings. Today, Mountco provided a set of visuals for the project, which can be found here. The visuals include these two renderings, one of which we have seen before.

 

It's hard to tell from these renderings exactly what they represent. It seems the first one shows State Street after it has been "pedestrianized" to create a plaza between HHA buildings, but the parking plan submitted to the Planning Board last October shows that block of State Street being widened to accommodate parallel parking on both side of the street. 

The Planning Board meeting begins in a few minutes, in person at City Hall and on Teams. Click here for the link to join the meeting remotely.

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The Cost of Winter

Rob Perry, superintendent of Public Works, reported at last night's Common Council Infrastructure and Code Committee meeting that dealing with the snow this winter has so far cost the city $73,134. 11.

Photo: Hudson Common Sense

Perry commented, "We're still a little under budget, but anything could happen in March."

Update: The amount quoted above--$73,134.11--does not include overtime, which, given that our snowstorms this year chose to happen on weekends, was substantial. The actual total cost of this winter so far is $117,220.72. 

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The Evolution of Kitty's

There was an article in the Times Union yesterday about the changes coming to Kitty's: "Kitty's in Hudson to reopen as French brasserie, grab-and-go market."

Photo: visithudsonny.com

Kitty's will close for renovations on March 23. The market will reopen on April 30. The restaurant, to be renamed Mr. Cat Brasserie, is scheduled to open on May 12.

The Evolution of a Building

The long awaited completion of its restoration, the imminent transfer of an undetermined number of properties from Galvan to Bard, and the attention in the past few weeks to the house next door have conspired to motivate Gossips to review the history of 22 Warren Street. This is how the house appears today--actually on Sunday when this picture was taken.

The story of this house over the past fourteen years is in many ways emblematic of the impact of the Galvan Foundation on Hudson. 

The house was acquired by Galvan Partners LLC (i.e., Eric Galloway and Henry Van Ameringen) in 2012. It had previously been owned by Shiloh Baptist Church, and, divided up into apartments, it housed at least four families. During the time Galvan Partners, later Galvan Initiatives Foundation, and still later Galvan Civic Housing LLC owned the house, it has been vacant.

The house has an interesting history. Prior to Urban Renewal and the innovative facade easement program, which preserved a tiny but important piece of Hudson while demolishing vast swathes of the city, this is how the building at 22-24 Warren Street appeared: as two houses not one.

Preservationists in the 1970s determined that the two houses were actually one house which dated back to 1795, just ten years after Hudson was incorporated as a city and the same year Promenade Hill was designated as public space in perpetuity. In the 1970s, the two buildings were rehabilitated as one building, and a historic marker was affixed to the building identifying its design as Federal and its date of construction as circa 1795.

Gossips has no photographic evidence of what the building looked like immediately after its restoration in the 1970s, but this is how it looked in 2014, during the early days of being owned by one or another of the various permutations of Galvan. At this point, it was vacant, and, so far as Gossips knows, it still is.

In 2017 and again in 2018, this house was included in Galvan's commitments to creating affordable housing in Hudson--units for households with incomes between 50 and 80 percent of the area median income (AMI). This pledge was memorialized in the City's 2018 Strategic Housing Action Plan. According to the information published in that plan (see page 29), the building was to have four rental units: one with two bedrooms and three with one bedroom. 

In March 2018, the house was among five proposals made by Galvan for DRI funding, with the promise that it would be developed as affordable housing. In July 2018, the Hudson Preservation Commission (HPC) granted a certificate of appropriateness for the restoration of building, which reimagined it as a house of textbook Federal design.

In 2020, Walter Chatham appeared before the HPC on behalf of Galvan seeking a new certificate of appropriateness, because the previous one had expired. It's likely, although Gossips didn't report it, yet another certificate of appropriateness was required before Galvan finally got around to carrying out the proposed restoration.

In 2026, with the restoration complete, it is not clear if the house was restored to have four rental units, if the house is currently occupied, or if the house is included in Galvan's gift to Bard. It has been rumored that the house was given to a longtime Galvan employee, but there is no evidence that this is true. The assessment rolls still list Galvan Civic Housing LLC as the owner of the property.

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News from C-GCC

Gossips received the following press release regarding a new Prison Education Program to be offered at Columbia-Greene Community College in nearby Greenport.

Columbia-Greene Community College (C-GCC) has established a new Prison Education Program (PEP) site with the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS). C-GCC will now provide a high-quality post-secondary educational program to eligible individuals in Hudson Correction Facility, allowing them to work towards an associate's degree.

The program will provide eligible incarcerated individuals access to higher education opportunities, focusing mainly on in-person instruction, while utilizing hybrid and remote models where appropriate. . . .

Beyond instruction, C-GCC will provide students with all the support they need throughout each step of their academic journeys, including the admissions process and financial aid counseling with FAFSA [Free Application for Federal Student Aid] and TAP [Tuition Assistance Program] completion. Each student will have access to an academic advisor who will assist with academic planning, course selection, career pathways, and overall academic progress. Students will be able to communicate with their advisor electronically as well as in-person, ensuring students feel supported and aren't overwhelmed.

Students will receive career coaching to assist in their pursuit of sustainable employment post-release. Coaches will support students with resume and cover letter development, professional communication, digital etiquette, the job search process, and interviewing skills. Graduates can register for coursework at C-GCC's main campus or work with counseling and transfer services to explore educational opportunities at other institutions of higher learning. SUNY OHEP [Office of Higher Education in Prison] is working with partners across the state to expand re-entry services for the incarcerated.

Meetings and Events in the Week Ahead

The temperature outside is close to 60 degrees, daylight saving time had begun, and the first day of spring is less than two weeks away. As winter retreats, here is what's happening.

• On Monday, March 9, the Common Council Infrastructure and Code Committee meets at 5:30 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 Tuesday, March 10, the Planning Board meets at 6:00 p.m. There are seven projects on the agenda for the meeting, among them the Hudson Housing Authority redevelopment plan and the adaptive reuse of John L. Edwards School as apartments for seniors. The meeting is a hybrid, taking place in person at City Hall and on Teams. Click here for the link to join the meeting remotely.

• On Wednesday, March 11, the Housing Trust Fund Board meets at 5:30 p.m. The meeting is a hybrid, taking place in person at City Hall and on Teams. Click here for the link to join the meeting remotely.
• On Thursday, March 12, the Common Council Legal Committee meets at 6:30 p.m. No agenda for the meeting is yet available, but it is expected that representatives of For the Many and Hudson Catskill Housing Coalition will be present at the meeting to demand that a vacancy study be done before the Council makes a simple amendment to the City's short-term rental law. The meeting is a hybrid, taking place in person at City Hall and on Teams. Click here to join the meeting remotely.
• On Friday, March 13, the Historic Preservation Commission meets at 10:00 a.m. The meeting is a hybrid, taking place in person at City Hall and on Teams. Click here for the link to join the meeting remotely.  
• Friends of the Library are having a Book and Bake Sale this weekend at the Hudson Area Library, 51 North Fifth Street. The hours of the sale are:
• Friday, March 13--10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.
• Saturday, March 14--10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.
• Sunday, March 15--1:00 p.m. to 3:30 p.m.

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Tonight's the Night

Before you go to bed tonight, remember to turn your clocks ahead one hour. One hour of lost sleep tonight brings an extra hour of daylight every evening from now until the first of November. 

Foreclosure Update

When Gossips reported last week on the status of the efforts to collect back taxes, the original list of 121 properties had been whittled down to 36. According to the latest word from the treasurer's office, there are now just 30 properties on the foreclosure list. Of those, four owe less than $1,000 and should pay what they owe now before they incur the cost of a title search. Five of the properties owe more than $100,000 in back taxes and penalties, and of those five, three owe more than $300,000. The current list can be found here.

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What Might Have Been

Three years ago, the plan to relocate Lil' Deb's Oasis to 735-737 Columbia Street, the distinctive pitched roof building constructed in 1935 as a Pure Oil gas station, was presented to the Planning Board and the Historic Preservation Commission for review.   

The HPC granted a certificate of appropriateness to the project in April 2023, one month after its initial presentation. The review by the Planning Board continued on through all of 2023 and well into 2024, and site plan approval was never granted.

In April 2024, Carla Perez-Gallardo, the chef/owner of Lil' Deb's Oasis, announced they would not pursue Restore New York funding because they did not want to compete with the Hudson Housing Authority, which was seeking Restore New York funding for its redevelopment project. (Restore New York refunding requires sponsorship from the municipality, and a municipality can sponsor only one project each year.) As it turned out, the HHA project did not qualify for Restore New York funding, and Lil' Deb's sacrifice was in vain.

Last December, Perez-Gallardo announced she was stepping away from the restaurant at the end of 2025 and was seeking a buyer for the restaurant, which would continue to operate at 747 Columbia Street under the management of its current staff. At the time, Gossips wondered what would become of the plans to relocate the restaurant to 735-737 Columbia Street. 

Today, Gossips learned that Lil' Deb's Oasis has withdrawn its application for site plan approval, first presented in January 2023, from the Planning Board, because the project was determined to be no longer feasible.

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Of Dormers and Historic Preservation

At last Friday's Historic Preservation Commission, the HPC effectively approved the demolition of the house at 309-311 Union Street and denied a certificate of appropriateness for the addition of dormers at 26 Warren Street, currently operated as a hotel called The Hudson Mariner. The dormers, along with an addition at the rear of the house, were part of a plan to increase the occupiable space in the building. The hotel currently has five suites.

The house was built in 1810--just twenty-five years after the founding of Hudson in 1785. Back in 1970, in the early days of Urban Renewal, the house was one of the contributing structures in the first Hudson Historic District listed in the National Register of Historic Places. In 2010, when Eric Galloway was stripping 211 Union Street, the birthplace of General William Jenkins Worth of its Italianate details, 26 Warren Street was used as a model for what was imagined 211 Union Street might have looked like in 1794 when General Worth was born. 

During the public hearing on the proposed alterations to 26 Warren Street, Matt McGhee had this to say about the building and its significance:

Let us start with the Roman arch surrounding the fanlight over the front door of this Federal five-bay brick house. Its unadorned roofline is highly visible along Warren Street. The very plainness of this house is a major, significant feature of its historical character and nature. Basically, the state of this building as seen from Warren Street is unchanged, excepting the coating of paint. The need for calling out its brickwork for protection cannot be overstated. It should not be treated with any abrasives (sanding, etc.) to remove paint, or coated with damaging finishes.

A lack of dormers is a feature of five-bay Federal houses below Third Street on Union and Warren Streets. This absence of dormers is a feature of the neighborhood; in fact, few houses of any period in this neighborhood have dormers.

Now to end with a statement on the nature of Federal architecture. Its plainness refers to the Roman Republic as a basis for our new Republic—and the famously understated design and ornament of republican Rome’s buildings.

One might say they were as billboards advertising support for our new form of government.

When the HPC began deliberating on the proposal, Walter Chatham, representing the owner of the building, made an effort to sway them. He read a passage from the city's new comprehensive plan, explaining that this paragraph from the Executive Summary (page 8) was the only mention of historic preservation in the entire 277-page document.

This plan is also not a "refresh" or an "update" of an existing effort. The foremost goal of the previous 2002 Plan was to "Protect the Traditional Character of Hudson's Downtown and Neighborhoods," with objectives focused on historic preservation, design, and waterfront access. Over the course of this new plan's development, residents consistently expressed concern with housing affordability and the overall cost of living. This observation bore out for residents new and old and across a range of socioeconomic backgrounds. Whereas the prior plan chose to center historic preservation and design, the imperative of Hudson 2035 is to ensure that the benefits of a resurgent and thriving Hudson are shared among all community members.

What the new comprehensive plan does not acknowledge, although, to his credit, Chatham did, is that the "resurgent and thriving Hudson" is based on the successful efforts of preservation advocates over the past thirty or more years, and historic preservation and the historic character of the city is essential to the economic survival of the city. Chatham referred to himself as "a bridge between this commission and the business community" when arguing for this change to a historic building to accommodate a business interest.

It was not immediately clear how the HPC would vote on the question of the dormers. John Schobel stated at the outset that he was opposed to the dormers. Paul Barrett, the historian member of the HPC, also expressed the opinion that the addition of dormers was inappropriate. Phil Forman, who chairs the HPC, said, remarkably, "We're here to help people get their projects done," and also said, "I don't think we are doing our job if we can't tolerate a few windows that are totally appropriate." Cara Cragan, the architect member of the HPC, who is not actually a preservation architect, said, "The dormers make sense and benefit the business." Jeremy Stynes admitted he was "pulled in both directions" but was "leaning toward saying no." 

In the end, Stynes did say no, and the proposal was denied by the smallest of margins--four to three, with Schobel, Barrett, Stynes, and Miranda Barry voting against, and Forman, Cragan, and Hugh Biber voting in favor.

A little background: The owner of 26 Warren Street (The Hudson Mariner) is also the owner of The Hudson Whaler (542 Warren Street), where the too narrow shutters which were installed "in error" five years ago have yet to be corrected; The Hudson Navigator (251 Allen Street), where it was proposed to put an illuminated sign on the side of a house on a residential block in a historic district; and the hotel proposed 10-12 Warren Street.  

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PSA: It Was Satire

It has come to Gossips' attention that some people may have been misled by an item published by Hudson Common Sense in its satirical feature "The Shallot"--"The Shallot" being "the small-town cousin" of The Onion. The article, which appeared soon after the Columbia County Democratic Committee's endorsement meeting last Thursday, announced:

Despite failing to get the endorsement from either the Dutchess County Democratic Committee or the Columbia County Democratic Committee, Sam Hodge has not ended his campaign for the New York State Assembly. His campaign continues. His website can be found here.

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