The Quest Continues

In the latest in a long series of committees, subcommittees, task forces, and studies created and undertaken to find the right place for the Department of Social Services and other county offices, the Columbia County Capital Resource Corporation (CRC), which a few months ago proposed buying the old Walmart building and moving all county departments except those legally required to be located in the county seat out to Greenport, recently issued a Request for Proposals for "Space Needs Assessment, Programming and Design Criteria Services." 

This latest move doesn't mean the Walmart plan is off the table. The introduction to the RFP states: "Columbia County, New York intends to improve the coordinated delivery of services, increase operating efficiencies, and reduce costs to taxpayers by consolidating office space, to the extent feasible, for County programs and services operated from separate offices in the Greenport and Hudson area as well as potentially ancillary facilities in the County." The background information provided in the RFP ends with this paragraph: "The CRC has been investigating one such proposal of purchasing a vacant Wal-Mart store located in the Town of Greenport, NY for a location for consolidated offices. It is expected that this would be an alternative that would be part of this project."

Matthew Frederick has an analysis of the situation on his blog, Hudson Urbanism: "Quantifying the unquantifiable: relocation of county offices."