And Hudson Shall Have a Hotel

At Wednesday night's Planning Commission meeting, Duncan Calhoun and Russell Gibson waited with anticipation--and their architect and their realtor--to continue the process of attaining site plan approval for the hotel they want to create at 542 Warren Street--a process that was interrupted when the owner of the building had second thoughts about selling it. But, before the Planning Commission could get to that, they had to re-vote approval for the Hudson Arcade Project, the future home of Filli's Fresh Market. 

It seems that Planning Commission member Cleveland Samuels, who participated in the vote to approve the project on July 11, had a "potential conflict of interest." As it happens, Samuels does various kinds of work for Eric Galloway or Galvan Partners or Galvan Initiatives or whatever. 

On the re-vote, the project was approved again, but not before a woman, whose house on Union Street backs up on the alley directly behind the site of the market, expressed concern about trucks making deliveries from the alley before 7 a.m. (Maybe the Planning Commission shouldn't have waived the public hearing after all.) She was assured that any tractor-trailers making deliveries to the store in the wee hours of the morning could not navigate the alley and would be making deliveries from Warren Street. The smaller trucks that would use the alley to access the store would do so only during the hours when the store was open.  

Then it was the hotel's turn. The one sticking point for the hotel has been parking. Calhoun and Gibson want to lease sixteen parking spaces--one for each of the sixteen rooms in the hotel--in the municipal lot behind the building. According to Don Moore, Common Council president, who was at the meeting, current law allows the City to sell an annual parking permit to the owner of a specific car but not to an entity for use by unspecified cars. Moore predicted, however, that the necessary amendment to the law would come before the Council within the next month. 

The newest member of the Planning Commission, Gail Grandinetti pointed out that the county has parking spaces designated for its use in municipal lots, as does Columbia Opportunities, which suggests that the City already has agreements with "entities." Planning Commission member Glenn Martin, the former chief of police who lost to Ellen Thurston in his bid to become county supervisor from the Third Ward, wanted to know why the Council has wasted time amending the law and suggested that a vote on site plan approval be postponed until the law is changed. 

Declaring that "it's new ground we're doing," Cappy Pierro, acting chair of the Planning Commission, called for a vote to grant site plan approval contingent on "sixteen parking spaces being worked out." The Planning Commission voted aye, apparently unanimously.