Learning on Friday morning that Kaz had been sold raised the question of what was happening with the old Kaz warehouses here in Hudson, so Gossips decided to ask. A conversation with Mayor's Aide Carmine Pierro yielded the information that Hudson Development Corporation has been the new owner of the warehouses since last week.
A year ago, when it became known that the City, through HDC, might acquire these buildings, Mayor Richard Scalera said the idea was to demolish them in order to expand the long-term parking lot at the train station--for Amtrak passengers as well as people attending events at riverfront park. The plans are different now. When parking fees were introduced at the long-term lot, 30 percent of the cars that had been parked there disappeared. It seems that many people were using the lot, when it was free, to store vehicles. At its current size, the lot is more than adequate for the 140 to 150 cars that are parked there every day while their owners go someplace on the train, so, according to Pierro, the City is now hoping that some business will want to lease or buy the warehouses for a purpose that would create jobs. Those who live in proximity to the warehouses hope that purpose does not also involve the return of truck traffic to Cross Street and idling trucks at the loading bays.
Whatever the future use, the most likely economically attractive plan from a developer's point of view would result from taking the building down. That could occurr quickly, as soon as funds are found for asbestos remediation. Then how the site is used, configured, and accessed becomes flexible where now it can only be used as you suggest. My understanding of the potential value of the Kaz property is that location and not the current structures would draw much more interest.
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The best thing to do would be to demolish them, remove the asphalt and let the earth reclaim the site as woodland. Seems to me. These old industrial buildings have no place in the city where people live. Imagine if all this type of activity was outside of town on a commercial strip, like on route 9 by Walmart. The city itself would be a much nicer place to live and more people would want to live here.
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