The Plague of Precedent and Related Rants

Yesterday, when landscape architect Richard Herbert displayed his photographs of the existing fences and walls on Warren Street, Gossips was reminded of a public hearing almost exactly four years ago, when DeWayne Powell, then employed by Eric Galloway, trotted out pictures of some unfortunate facade alterations made to accommodate garage doors and noncontributing garage buildings in historic districts to argue the compatibility of a proposed "carriage house" to be built at South Front Street and Cherry Alley with a street facing garage door. Although it was ultimately granted a certificate of appropriateness and an old building was demolished to make way for it, four years later, the carriage house has not yet been built.

One of the unfortunate things that appeared in Herbert's exhibit yesterday of what he considered the "vocabulary of options" was the mural at 406 Warren Street, erected to hide the vacant lot behind it—a vacant lot created when the historic building that stood there was demolished, without a certificate of appropriateness from the Historic Preservation Commission, in December 2006.

The preservation law in Hudson is very clear about the expectation when a building is demolished in a historic district. Section 169-8 B of the city code states the following (the boldface was added by Gossips):

Demolition shall be permitted only after the owner of the site has submitted and obtained design approval of his/her plans for new development under the provisions of this chapter, including an acceptable timetable and guarantees, which may include performance bonds for demolition and completion of the project. In no case shall the time between demolition and commencement of new construction or lot improvement exceed six months.

The offenses at 406 Warren Street are multiple: no certificate of appropriateness to demolish the building; no approval of the design for what was proposed to be built there; no new construction or lot improvement has commenced nine years after the demolition. Instead we have a "mural," which is little more than a decorated construction wall, being taken for an architectural element that sets precedent on our main street. How long will this go on?
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