Of the Library and the Armory

According to an article by W. T. Eckert in today's Register-Star, the closing on 400 State Street will take place at 2:30 on Friday, after which the 1818 asylum, one of Hudson's most historic and architecturally significant buildings, will be owned by Galvan Partners. For the time being, the Galvan Foundation will take possession only of the Children's Foundation Room in the west wing to use as an office, while the Hudson Area Library continues to occupy the remainder of the building.

At its meeting on Wednesday night, the Hudson Area Library Board of Trustees passed a resolution to pursue discussions with Eric Galloway and Henry van Ameringen already begun by Theresa Parsons and Mark Orton, HAL board president and vice president respectively, to move the library up the street to the Armory, a building now also owned by Galvan Partners. These are the broad strokes of the agreement Parsons and Orton have discussed with Galvan Partners thus far:

• The library will determine its functional and operational requirements, which Parsons referred to as a "wish list," to determine the scope of what needs to be designed. 
• Galvan Partners will carry out the "technical implementation," which presumably involves both the design and construction, at its own expense.
• The library will then occupy the space created for it as a tenant with a thirty-year lease, paying the utilities for its portion of the building and a dollar a month in rent. 

So far, it has not been determined what part of the Armory or what percentage of the space will be occupied by the library. Parsons reports that Galloway plans to use the remainder of the building for "education and the arts." The previous owners of the Armory have six months to vacate the building, and during that six-month period, the library hopes to have all the planning and design work completed so that, to quote Orton, "at the beginning of the seventh month, the hammers can fly."