Breaking a Decades' Long Tradition

It is not known (not known by Gossips at least) when or why the practice of suspending all parking fees for the month of December was initiated in Hudson, but it seems likely that it may have started in the 1970s as a means to lure holiday shoppers back to Warren Street from the strip malls of Greenport. 

Whenever it started and for whatever reason, the tradition has been slavishly observed by every mayor in living memory, until now. The following announcement was just issued by Mayor Joseph Ferris:

My office has decided that there will be no parking holiday for the month of December.

With the transition from quarters to ParkMobile, Text2Pay, and T2 kiosks, we would continue to pay both monthly fees to these companies in December as well as paying Parking Enforcement staff who would be working the month in a limited capacity--parking holiday or no holiday.

Between staff and technology fees, this would cost taxpayers $11,601.42.

As the Board of Estimate and Apportionment has begun the process of creating the FY2027 budget for the City, it has become clear we need to make sure we are making policy decisions that do not leave taxpayers paying for services that we are not using.

Parking fees will be suspended on December 25/Christmas per City code.

Of Interest

Readers know that our hospital, Columbia Memorial, is part of the Albany Medical Health System and probably also know that the CEO of Albany Med, Daniel Pickett III, is now on paid leave from that position, after being accused of sexual assault by a former partner.

Yesterday, on WAMC's Northeast Notebook, Sam Dingman explored a new development in the story, brought to his attention by an ER nurse at Columbia Memorial. Albany Med has hired an outside firm to investigate the allegations, and that firm is Kroll, "a global financial and risk advisory firm" headquartered in New York City. What is revealed is that Kroll is the same firm that was hired by Harvey Weinstein to investigate his victims. 

The episode of Northeast Notebook can be heard here: "Albany Med Health System nurse concerned about hospital working with firm tied to Weinstein."

An October Surprise Unique to Hudson

This October surprise has nothing to do with the midterm elections. Instead it relates to tomorrow's Planning Board meeting.

The Hudson Housing Authority (HHA) and Mountco, its development partner, are expecting the Planning Board to vote tomorrow night on granting site plan approval to the proposal to redevelop the HHA property.

Today, a group of Hudson residents, calling themselves Project7Hudson, submitted an alternative plan for redeveloping the HHA properties, which they are calling "Bliss Gardens." The plan, along with explanations of the rationale for creating it and presenting it, can be found here.  

A letter to the Planning Board introducing the plan, signed by Carla Sadoff, who is running unopposed to succeed Linda Mussmann as Fourth Ward Supervisor, explains:

Project7Hudson is a group of Hudson residents working with experts in architecture, construction, financing, landscape design, and project delivery. We are frustrated with the Hudson Housing Authority’s (HHA) current Bliss Redevelopment plan, and we are developing Bliss Gardens as an alternative. Bliss Gardens would provide affordable housing on the existing Bliss site, without extending development to 41 North Second Street. It is designed to reduce the complications, costs, and uncertainty tied to the brownfield cleanup and geotechnical challenges of Bliss Phase I. Our vision combines new homes, shared gardens, and a neighborhood park while keeping the Bliss community rooted in Hudson. The proposal is still taking shape, and we are seeking reputable developers and credible financing. We welcome residents and neighbors to help shape it.

This paragraph should have said "without extending development beyond 41 North Second Street" instead of "to 41 North Second Street," but that seems to be just an unfortunate error. 

In addition to introducing an alternative plan for redevelopment, the letter makes two requests. The first request is that the Planning Board not approve the application. The letter cites the following reasons for making this request:

• Phase II, which includes demolishing Bliss Towers, is not part of the application. HHA states that “Phase II is not part of the Site Plan application presently before the Planning Board.”
• HHA lists Phase II financing only as a “Potential Phase II Construction Loan Closing,” set for December 2029, more than three years away.
• If Phase I is built and Bliss Towers is not demolished, the site will hold about 301 units, while the environmental review assumed the tower would come down.
• Brownfield cleanup on the site still awaits final NYSDEC decisions.

If the Planning Board should decide to grant site plan approval, the letter from Project7Hudson requests that approval be given with the following "strong conditions":

1. Demolition security: Before any Phase I building permit is issued, the applicant posts a letter of credit or cash escrow, in a form approved by the City Attorney, sized to an independent estimate of the full cost of demolition and hazardous materials abatement.
2. Date certain: Demolition of Bliss Towers and Columbia Apartments begins within [12] months after the City issues the final certificate of occupancy for Phase I, regardless of whether Phase II financing has closed.
3. Deed restriction: Before the subdivision map (plat) is signed, the applicant records a restrictive covenant on the Phase II parcel, in a form approved by the City Attorney, barring residential occupancy of Bliss Towers once Phase I residents relocate. The covenant runs with the land and binds all successors and assigns.
4. Reporting: Until demolition is complete, the applicant reports Phase II financing and demolition status to the Planning Board every [six] months.

The letter concludes with this statement:

Beyond what the Board can require, we urge HHA and Mountco to make three further commitments voluntarily, as a matter of good conduct toward Bliss residents and the City: first, that the owner (41 North Second Street HDFC), HHA, and Mountco each accept full responsibility for the obligations above, binding on any successors; second, that every current Bliss and Columbia household receives a unit in Phase I at comparable rent, with no interim off-site moves; and third, that HHA and Mountco report to the Hudson Common Council on Phase II financing and demolition progress every quarter until demolition is complete.

If the applicant objects to these conditions, or the Board finds it cannot impose them, the Phase II commitment cannot be relied upon, and the environmental review’s assumption that Bliss Towers comes down has no support in the record.

Given that the Planning Board closed the public hearing on the project on September 8, it will be interesting to see if this communication is accepted into the record and if the requests made therein are discussed and considered at tomorrow night's Planning Board meeting. Whatever action the Planning Board takes, the alternative proposal has now been made public.

The Planning Board meeting, which begins at 6:00 p.m. tomorrow, Tuesday, October 13, is a hybrid, taking place in person at City Hall and on Teams. Click here for the link to join the meeting remotely.

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Need a New Friend?

Now may be the perfect time to bring a companion animal into your life. The Columbia-Greene Humane Society shared this news today:

The Columbia-Greene Humane Society is pleased to announce a Free Adoption Event, starting Monday, October 19, and ending on Saturday, October 31. During this period, all cats, dogs, and small animals will be available for adoption at no cost.

This special event has been made possible through the generous support of Subaru, as part of its nationwide Subaru Loves Pets® initiative, which aims to support animal welfare organizations and help shelter pets find loving homes.

In preparation for the event, potential adopters are strongly encouraged to submit adoption applications in advance, as same-day approvals are not guaranteed. Early submission helps ensure a smoother process and allows more time for application review.

For more information about animals available for adoption, to submit an adoption application, or learn more about upcoming events, visit www.cghs.org or call (518) 828-6044.

CGHS/SPCA Animal Care Technicians Kim Wolfe (left) with adoptable kittens and Connie Corey (right) with adoptable dog Rubble 

Remembrance of Things Past

For those who remember 336 Warren Street as the VFW Hall . . .

The late Wilson "Harpie" Shea in front of 336 Warren Street in a 2001 ad for the New York Lottery, "If I Had a Million Dollars"

The last vestige of that time remaining on the exterior of the building--the front door--is soon to disappear.

At the Historic Preservation Commission meeting on Friday, the HPC granted a certificate of appropriateness for the removal of the front door, which probably dates from the time the building was the VFW Hall, and its replacement with something more in keeping with the building's new use as an art gallery.

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Meetings and Events in the Week Ahead

In the week that starts out with a holiday--once known as Columbus Day, now known as Indigenous Peoples' Day--here is what's happening.

• On Tuesday, October 13, Hudson Industrial Development Agency (IDA) meets at 2:00 p.m. The agenda for the meeting includes updates on Depot Lofts, Pocketbook Hudson, Crescent Building, Providence Hall/Schuyler Court preservation, and 620 Union Street. The meeting is a hybrid, taking place in person at One City Centre, Suite 301, and on Zoom. Click here to join the meeting remotely.

• At 4:00 p.m. on Tuesday, October 13, Mayor Joseph Ferris holds a public hearing on proposed amendments to the code regarding vacant buildings and the demolition of buildings and on increasing the penalties for parking violations. The hearing takes place in person only at City Hall.
• Also on Tuesday, October 13, the Planning Board meets at 6:00 p.m. The meeting includes a public meeting on the proposal to construct three more three-unit buildings at Mount Ray Estates. Perhaps of greater interest is the discussion and deliberation on the Hudson Housing Authority's proposed redevelopment. The "final, organized application package" requested by Planning Board chair Ron Bogle at the special meeting on September 30 was submitted last Wednesday and can be found here. 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, October 14, the Board of Estimate and Apportionment (BEA) resumes its initial review of budget requests for 2027. The workshops are hybrid, taking place in person at City Hall and on Teams. Click on the department name in the schedule below to join remotely.
• 2:45 p.m.--Treasurer's Office
• 3:00 p.m.--Senior Center
• 3:15 p.m.--Police Department and Parking Bureau
• On Thursday, October 15, the Common Council Code and Infrastructure 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 Friday, October 16, the BEA continues its review of budget requests for 2027. The workshops are hybrid, taking place in person at City Hall and on Teams. Click on the department name in the list below to join remotely.
• 2:30 p.m.--Cemetery, Water and Sewer
• 3:30 p.m.--Sidewalk Improvement District

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Parking: A Reminder

Columbus Day, a.k.a. Indigenous Peoples' Day, is not one of the eight holidays on the eve of which alternate side of the street rules for overnight parking are suspended. Tonight cars should be parked on the even side of the street.

For reference, these are the eight holidays on which the overnight parking rules are suspended:

• Thanksgiving Day
• Christmas Day
• New Year's Day
• Presidents' Day
• Martin Luther King Day
• Memorial Day
• Independence Day
• Labor Day

Sidewalk Replacement This Week

On Friday, the City issued the following announcement:

Sidewalk replacement on the west side of S 5th Street between Warren and Union streets will begin next week. To allow the crew ample room for work and equipment, and to avoid ticketing and towing, please heed the No Parking signs that have been placed. Thank you for your patience and cooperation.

At this point, "will begin next week" probably means work will start on Tuesday.

Public Hearing on Hudson Public Hotel Project

On Friday, the Historic Preservation Commission held a public hearing about the buildings at the corner of Warren and Fourth Streets, being renovated to become a hotel called the Hudson Public. A stop-work order has been in place since August for violations of the project's certificate of appropriateness. The HPC is now considering a new application for the project that reflects the work that has already been done.

Before the public hearing started, Walter Chatham, the project's advising architect, acknowledged they had failed to return to the HPC for approval of specific materials. He also spoke of the three pieces of original marble that, according to the certificate of appropriateness granted in 2023, were supposed to remain in place. He explained that one of the marble columns is still there, now encapsulated in new material. The other two pieces--a column and a lintel--have been preserved, and the intention is to use them somewhere in the building, as ornament, possibly in the bar.

The only person to speak at the public hearing was Matt McGhee, who delivered a lengthy critique of the building in its present state. His statement follows.

Thanks to the historic examples we have at hand to guide the outcome of restoring this importantly placed and widely visible building on Warren Street, 402 Warren St. can be as noble as it once was and a valuable asset for the people of Hudson.

The end wall (facing the alley) of the historic row houses has an installation of electrical feeds on the brickwork, destroying the former beauty of that wall. These feeds could have just as easily been placed on new alley building’s large blank wall. The original historic moldings on the roof end were replaced with plain squared-off lumber.

The three historic buildings should have period-appropriate 6-over-6 windows. The 2-over-2 windows in the new infill buildings should remain, in order to distinguish the new from the historic construction.

The historic houses on North 4th Street had a white coating at the attic level, down to and including the relief brick molding only. The area above the second floor windows was free of any coating and should remain so. Therefore the new, bright white pointing in that area needs to match the existing pointing. This also is the case for areas of the west facade of 402 Warren St. Two windows on the North 4th Street (west) side of 402 are missing their marble sills; it would be nice if they could be replaced.

The west facade at present does not conform with the original west elevation drawing as far as the corner treatment is concerned. It comes across as a heavy-handed interpretation of the west side of 701 Warren Street. The 260 Warren St. building’s east side would be a better prototype for the west side of 402 Warren Street.

There were three original marble pillars on the main facade of 402 Warren; two were removed from the doorway and one was covered over at the far right-hand (east) side, adjacent to the new building on Warren Street. These pillars were all 14 inches wide and made of hard marble. There are similar 14-inchwide pillars on two buildings in Hudson at 260 Warren and 701 Warren Street.

701 also has a doorway with an opening 3 feet 4 inches wide, with one surviving marble pillar. This is very similar to the original doorway (now removed) as shown on the granite arcade elevation drawing as having an opening of 3 feet 3¾ inches. The over-door transom original to the building, also shown in the drawing, has been eliminated; and the replacement doorway opening is 46.5 inches (3 feet 9.5 inches) wide. This interferes with the harmony of the four openings on the left of the doorway; in the granite arcade elevation drawing all of the openings on either side of the doorway are the same, at 5 feet each, and the outer pillars were 20 inches wide; the remaining pillars are 1 foot 2 inches (14 inches) wide. The newly proposed division of the marble lintel is too short and should be much longer, and the original marble molding across the top of the lintel should be replaced to be more like 402 was and as 701 Warren St. currently is. The removal of original historic material is very unfortunate and justly should be restored to match in appearance and size the transom, door, and paneled side walls of the recessed entryway with a stone flooring of white marble, which was in place, and like the doorway at 701 Warren. The marble pillars should be restored in size and type. The end pillar, now covered over, and the pillars from the door opening demonstrate that all the pillars were 14 inches wide (the same as 260 and 702 Warren Streets). This can and should follow the original historic evidence we have.

The old (2023?) south elevation drawing appears the same as the earlier granite elevation drawing and conforms to a greater degree to the historic examples we have to guide us in this endeavor. Yet what we see on Warren and North 4th Streets now has a lack of uniformity in the size and placement of the pillars and openings of the colonnades, historic and new, and thus fails to conform to the previous proposals.

There is none of the refinement of the historical, pre-modernist, understated interpretation of Classical design.  

When McGhee completed his statement, Phil Forman, who chairs the HPC, asked McGhee to submit his statement in writing so the HPC could deliberate on what he said before making a judgment about the project. McGhee agreed. It was also announced that the HPC would accept written comments on the project until its next meeting, which will take place on October 24. Written comments should be submitted to hpcclerk@cityofhudson.org.  

Charles Gottlieb, attorney for the Galvan Foundation, requested that the stop-work order be lifted for interior work, noting the installation of an elevator was in progress when the stop-work order was issued and citing the urgency of continuing the interior work. (It was earlier revealed thar Galvan hoped to open the hotel before the holidays.) Forman responded, "We are here because your team did not follow what was approved in the certificate of appropriateness." Nick Fox, director of code enforcement, agreed to review the case to see if the statute allowed for interior work to resume while the violations that had to do with the exterior remained unresolved.

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Progress at Charles Williams Park

Work on the connecting trails from the north end of Third Street to Charles Williams Park is underway. A reader sent these pictures of the status of the project yesterday.

Photo: Win Jackson

Photo: Win Jackson

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Happening This Weekend

A rare opportunity presents itself this weekend. Historic Hudson is celebrating its 30th anniversary with an open house at the Dr. Oliver Bronson House, Hudson's only National Historic Landmark. On Saturday, October 10, from 11:00 a.m. until 2:00 p.m., you can visit this remarkable house, hidden on the grounds of the Hudson Correctional Facility, and see for yourself this amazing elliptical staircase.

To RSVP for the event, contact information@historichudson.org. Enter the site at 53 Worth Avenue.

Also this weekend, on Saturday, October 10, and Sunday, October 11, from 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., it is Hudson Open Studios. This year's self-guided tour features fifty-one local artists opening their studios to the public, offering an intimate look at the vibrant and diverse creative community that thrives in Hudson.

Over the course of the weekend, you will have the opportunity to step inside working studios, meet artists in person, and experience a wide range of work, including painting, sculpture, photography, ceramics, textiles, mixed media, and more. In addition to open studios, local artists' work will be on display at the Dr. Oliver Bronson House, during Historic Hudson's open house at the architectural landmark. A map of the locations and participating artists is available here.

Inside the Northern Empire

Back in the day when it was easy to find a cheap apartment in Hudson, many of those apartments were located in buildings owned and managed by Phil Gellert, who called his real estate holdings in Columbia County "Northern Empire." Over the years, Gossips has done a few posts about Gellert's properties in Hudson. "Gellert Gallery" inventoried the twenty buildings he owned in Hudson in 2010. In 2016, in 2018, and again in 2023, Gossips revisited some of the Gellert properties that then had new owners.  

In 2023, it was announced that The Spark of Hudson had purchased what was described in the press as "the last of the properties" that made up Gellert's Northern Empire in Hudson. One of those properties was this one: 7-9 South Seventh Street.

Not long after its acquisition by The Spark of Hudson was announced, the building was back on the market. It was recently purchased by Billy Shannon, who was once a reporter for the Register-Star, for a time wrote a blog called Hudson River Zeitgeist, and now publishes what he calls Middle Sphere on Substack. Because the building used to be owned by Gellert, Shannon sought Gellert out to speak with him. Yesterday, Shannon published their conversation, which can be found here. It makes fascinating reading.

At one point in the conversation, Gellert makes reference to a building he owned on Allen Street, where there was a fire in May 2020.

Photo: Julie Metz

In his conversation with Shannon, Gellert says of the building:

We had a fire about maybe six years ago on Allen Street, and the building was completely renovated. It was a nice building. As I said, I had over 30 buildings in Hudson. This one was probably as nice as any building around.

Gellert's statement makes it sound like he was responsible for the renovation of the building. That is not true. He sold the fire-damaged building, and it was the new owners who salvaged it and restored it. The following pictures show the building when Gellert owned it, the building today, and the building in 2022 when its restoration was getting underway.

Back in 2011, Gellert ran afoul of the Historic Preservation Commission when he removed (and discarded) doors and sidelights from the entrances. Although the doors were probably not original to the house, which dates to 1835, they were at least a hundred years old, and sidelights may well have been original detail. The doors were replaced with mismatched metal doors, and the area around the doors filled in to make the smaller doors fit. This, of course, was done without a certificate of appropriateness from the HPC.

The HPC required him to replicate the doors and the sidelights as they had been.

Again, Shannon's "A conservation with Phil Gellert" makes interesting reading.

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Work Has Begun

Here is news for anyone who hasn't been down to Mill Street in the past few weeks. Work has begun on the trails connecting the north end of Third Street with Charles Williams Park.

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

Constructing the trails is being carried out by the Columbia Land Conservancy in partnership with Tahawus Trails LP, a professional trail design and construction company, and is part of a larger project to restore Charles Williams Park and connect it with the Greenport Conservation Area and its network of trails. For more information about the project, click here.

Work on the trail is expected to be completed by mid-November.