About Local Law No. 5
Tomorrow at 4 p.m., the mayor will hold a public hearing on Local Law No. 5, the amendment to the zoning in R-2 and R-2H districts that will allow Stewart's and Scali's, both nonconforming uses in a residential neighborhood, to expand--expansions that would in both cases involve the demolition of houses. In the run-up to the public hearing, Amanda Purcell has an article on the subject on HudsonValley360: "Scali's, Stewart's a step closer to expansion." In the article, Fourth Ward alderman John Rosenthal, who chairs the Legal Committee and has been the principal champion of the amendment, justifies the zoning change that would benefit only two businesses by saying "the city has previously partnered with businesses to resolve zoning issues, including, most recently, The Wick Hotel, 41 Cross St." Rosenthal previously made reference to The Wick when defending Local Law No. 5 in a comment on this blog, where he refers to The Wick as "an upscale hotel."
I don't know what previous instances of the City "partnering" with businesses to resolve zoning issues Rosenthal has in mind, but the situation with The Wick is hardly comparable to the situation with Stewart's. It can be argued that the amendment made to enable the creation of The Wick was simply correcting a scrivener's error. The zoning, which was part of the LWRP (Local Waterfront Revitalization Program) adopted in 2011, designated the area where The Wick was to be located Residential Special Commercial (R-S-C). The LWRP described the R-S-C district in this way:
Additional commercial zones are proposed to the waterfront area such as Residential Special Commercial District and the Core Riverfront District, both of which allow for a mix of commercial uses intended to support continued mixed use development along Front Street and in the Core Riverfront area to encourage the redevelopment of vacant sites and increase pedestrian activity within areas near the riverfront and the Amtrak station.
The description certainly suggests that a hotel, located in close proximity to the train station, would be exactly the sort of commercial use the LWRP had in mind, but the district use regulations in the code, although including "boarding house" and "rooming house," did not include "hotel." To correct what was arguably an oversight, the Council enacted Local Law No. 1 of 2016 in April 2016, which created the R-S-C 2 district on the south side of the city where "Hotels" would be a permitted conditional use. (A new district had to be created because Second Ward alderman Tiffany Garriga didn't want hotels to be allowed in the R-S-C district on the north side of the city.)
The zoning amendment to accommodate Stewart's, with Scali's thrown in to make it seem less like spot zoning, is quite another thing.
COPYRIGHT 2018 CAROLE OSTERINK
Carole, I believe that Rosenthal also pointed out, in the RS article, that an important part of the reason for Local Law 5 was to recognize that both Stewarts and Scalis have been good taxpaying businesses for more than 20 years. That's important.
ReplyDeleteYes, very important, and will continue to be good taxpaying businesses for years to come.
ReplyDeleteThe fact that Alderman Garriga's concerns could only be addressed by adopting Local Law #1 argues against the idea that a failure to mention "hotels" in the R-S-C Code was a mere oversight.
ReplyDeleteIn that case, it would seem that the city HAS previously partnered with a business to resolve a zoning issue.
The City also partnered with Holcim US, Inc. to establish nonconforming dock operations. In fact, the idea to make them nonconforming originated with Holcim's attorney Don Stever.
I can't think of a more capricious or arbitrary threshold for zoning law than "good taxpaying business for more than 20 years". We've got a lot of exceptional "partnerships" to consider going forward.
ReplyDeleteAnd unheimlich is right, which makes precisely the point of why you have zoning in the first place, sooner or later their 'good' isn't our 'good'.
That's why we have planning commissions and committees and laws, so we're not acting like tinhorn dictators, taking businesses without notice just because the dictator (or the public) happens to change his/its mind.
DeleteThis might all possibly be moot. They need to first find out whether any changes can happen at all. They are within 500 feet of a structure on the National Register of Historic Places. It's very possible that they cannot make any changes at all to the size of the structures. Someone should talk to Green Island to find out the rules on new construction so close to a historic site.
ReplyDeleteThe Wick certainly is an upscale hotel, and I'm also glad it's there. Still, I never forget that it was enticed with a PILOT.
ReplyDelete"Enticed" with a PILOT? That's a pretty loaded, revisionist, and inaccurate choice of verbs. You've obviously forgotten something.
DeletePerhaps "invite" is more to your liking, rather than "entice."
DeleteObviously a PILOT benefits a potential investor, and is a useful tool which hopefully, eventually, benefits both parties. But my subtext is that once Wick got its PILOT you never mentioned that fact again.
It's not insignificant that Stewart's is NOT seeking a PILOT, which is a welcome change from Hudson's norm. You reported it once, in March 2017, but never again.
Furthermore there was an undeniable Code accommodation on behalf of The Wick which I supported, but which you're now attributing to an earlier "scrivener's error." I wasn't going to challenge that but you leave me no choice.
To make the claim of a scrivener's error, you must have some evidence that the listing of "hotels" for the R-S-C District was always the drafters' explicit intention. To be a scrivener's error, an omission like that would have to result from sheer inadvertence.
Given what followed, it's actually more reasonable to assume that there was no error. In the absence of any evidence in the record, a court would acknowledge the subsequent legislation which achieved Alderman Garriga's reasonable modification. In so acknowledging, and without contradictory evidence, the court would have to entertain the possibility that "hotels" were discussed in the negative from the outset and were deliberately left out of the R-S-C text.
(Before anyone gets overheated, I'm only challenging a convenient assumption about "scriveners errors.")
I find the PILOT discussion interesting, especially in the context of talking about Stewarts. And I find Carole's protests about using a PILOT to "entice" the Wick a bit odd since the whole point of PILOTs is to entice businesses to put down roots. The problem is -- and the research supports this -- that Payments in Lieu of Taxes are bad for the real taxpayers -- who must make up the difference in the "lost" revenue from PILOTs -- and rarely result in the economic benefits promise -- as so many PILOT recipients skip town when the period is over. And it is that context that I applaud Stewarts for going the straightforward route: let us expand our business and we'll continue to pay the taxes we owe! Bravo Stewarts.
DeleteIf the Wick was "enticed" to do business in Hudson by the promise of a PILOT, it wasn't a promise made by the City Council (the only City agency with the power to adopt a PILOT within the City's boundaries). The City (i.e. the Council) wasn't interested in granting a PILOT. I know I was ready to vote against it as were the majority of the (then-weighted) votes. When it became clear that the vote was going to go against the PILOT, the chair of the County IDA (or whatever his title is) Michael Tucker told me and several other members that if the Council didn't vote for the PILOT then the County would, and would be more generous than the City was contemplating (but would still be at the City's sole expense). So. Enticed? Maybe. By Hudson? No. Not in terms of the availability of property tax relief that no other lodging business ever requested or received.
ReplyDeleteI was careful not to say "Hudson," but "enticed," definitely.
ReplyDelete