Reprieves for the Furgary and Promenade Hill

At Tuesday's Common Council meeting, it was decided that two initiatives would be put on hold for a while. The first was the "Resolution Authorizing the Removal and Cleanup of Structures from City Premises Located Along the Shoreline of North Bay."

The resolution to raze the fishing shacks that were the Furgary Boat Club had been introduced at the informal meeting, and it was expected the Council would vote on it at the regular meeting. Before calling for a vote, Council president Don Moore announced a plan for a "small working group," made up of himself, the mayor, and aldermen Nick Haddad (First Ward) and Bart Delaney (Fifth Ward), to "take the next 60 days to investigate what might be done down there." From the audience, Quintin Cross objected to the makeup of the working group. He pointed out that the site in question was in the Second Ward but no Second Ward aldermen were included in the working group. So Second Ward aldermen Abdus Miah and Tiffany Garriga were added to group.

Alderman David Marston (First Ward) pointed out that the site of the Furgary was part of a state-designated fresh water wetland. He told his colleagues that a representative from the Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation was scheduled to pay a visit to the site on Friday--tomorrow. He moved that the resolution be tabled until a historic resources study could be done.

Although the mayor wanted the resolution to go forward with the possibility of recommendations from the working group and the state noted, the motion to table the resolution passed with only Alderman Robert Donahue (Fifth Ward), clearly eager to do the mayor's bidding, voting no.

Promenade Hill also got a pass on Tuesday. The plan, being pushed for by Garriga and Miah, to install a temporary ramp at Promenade Hill has been postponed while a plan to apply for a grant to do a major restoration of Promenade Hill, including a redesign of the entrance to introduce handicapped access, is pursued. The grant application is due in the spring of 2015, and the grant awards are expected to be announced the following fall. To make sure the ramp happens if the grant application is not successful, $20,000 will be written into the 2015 budget for the ramp.

Promenade Hill, painted by Henry Ary in 1854

The original plan was to seek a grant for Promenade Hill this year, at the same time the City sought a grant for Seventh Street Park. The grant for Seventh Street Park was in the category of Parks; the grant for Promenade Hill was to be in the category of Historic Preservation. The grant application for Seventh Street Park was submitted, and we are still waiting to hear if it was successful. (We are also awaiting the results of a survey done, after the grant application was submitted, to find out what the people actually want to see happen with Seventh Street Park.) The application for Promenade Hill was postponed because it was decided that creating an appropriate proposal for restoring a historic landscape would take more time.

Promenade Hill, c. 1860

As it did for Seventh Street Park, the Hudson Development Corporation (HDC) has accepted the pro bono services of a landscape architect to prepare a design for Promenade Hill. Like Catherine Dwyre, who worked pro bono to create the controversial "re-imagining" of Seventh Street Park, Dragana Zoric, who is working on Promenade Hill, is affiliated with Pratt Institute. Zoric in an adjunct associate professor; Dwyre is a visiting associate professor. Zoric has some experience with riverfront parks. In 2011, she worked on the design for the rebuilding of Riverfront Park in Troy. Bill Roehr, who works for TGW Consultants, retained by the City of Hudson and HDC to pursue and administer grants, is also employed as a grants writer by the Department of Planning & Economic Development for the City of Troy.

Promenade Hill, c. 1910

Zoric visited Promenade Hill in May, and Gossips was invited to join her and members of HDC staff on a tour of the historic park. Since May, there has been no word on her progress except Roehr's report in June that the grant application for Promenade Hill was being postponed for a year. One of the reasons given for the postponement--besides the obvious one that a month is hardly enough time to understand the park as a historic resource and conceptualize an appropriate new design for the entrance--was that there was not adequate time for public participation. That being the case, let's hope there is opportunity for public participation in the development of the plan for Promenade Hill and the community is not presented with a controversial design for the first time on a Friday night just two (weekend) days before the application has to be submitted, as was the case with Seventh Street Park.
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