At last night's Common Council Housing and Transportation Committee meeting, it was agreed to move two resolutions forward. The first resolution authorizes the mayor to move forward with a study to determine if Hudson meets the criteria for adopting rent stabilization legislation. The criteria is a vacancy rate of 5 percent or less in buildings constructed before 1974 that have six units or more. When the question arose of how much the study would cost, Rebecca Garrard of Citizen Action, who was present at the meeting, said that such a study recently done in Kingston cost $33,000. She offered the opinion that for Hudson the cost should be "significantly less." In July, Garrard suggested the study would cost $15,000. It will be interesting to find out exactly how many privately owned buildings there are in Hudson with six or more units. Garrard indicated last night that a preliminary study had estimated there were a total of 300 units in qualifying buildings. The second resolution the committee voted to move forward was one calling for the sale of the vacant lot at the corner of State and North Fourth streets for the purpose of developing affordable housing. What is meant by "affordable housing" remains undefined, but when audience member John Kane asked about the contribution to the tax rolls of the proposed development, Council president Tom DePietro responded, "There would be a PILOT [payment in lieu of taxes]."
The lot in question has a long history. It was originally the site of Hudson's first high school, a building constructed in 1894. The building later became one of the four elementary schools in Hudson and was known as the Fourth Street School.
At the beginning of 1994, in the early days of Rick Scalera's first term as mayor, the building, which was then privately owned, was declared unsafe and demolished by the City. The cost of the demolition was charged to the owner in property taxes, the owner failed to pay the taxes, and the City took possession of the then vacant lot.
Around 2006, Columbia County proposed an agreement with the City whereby the County would pave the lot and develop it for parking. The Common Council at the time rejected the idea, but the County uses it for parking anyway, giving many people the impression the lot belongs to the County and not the City.
Selling the lot is not a new idea. In November 2012, the Council agreed to sell this lot and the Dunn warehouse to balance the 2013 budget. The anticipated revenue from the sale of the two properties, estimated to be $300,000, was written into the budget. The Council didn't have to follow through with the sale of this lot or the Dunn warehouse because the sale of foreclosed properties that year brought in more than $300,000 and balanced the budget, but it's interesting to revisit the response from members of the public when the sale of this lot was being contemplated. What follows was reported by Gossips on July 9, 2013:
The Council seems generally more willing to part with the vacant lot at Fourth and State streets than they are with the Dunn warehouse building, which is seen as a critical element in the development of the waterfront, but Claudia Bruce, co-founder of Time & Space Limited and Fourth Ward resident, didn't want them giving short shrift to the lot at Fourth and State. Asserting that the lot was "a vital piece of property for the Fourth Ward" and alluding to a proposal to pave the lot for yet another parking lot, Bruce ascended the platform to walk among the aldermen and distribute aerial photographs of the Fourth Ward to demonstrate how much of the Fourth Ward has already been paved over for parking lots.
When [Council president Don] Moore asked Bruce to return to her seat, her partner, Linda Mussmann, took up the harangue. She told Moore, "You run a tight ship, but I'm not going to shut up." Mussmann's comments awakened old animosities when she made reference to "the old school" that once stood there--which was demolished in 1994, just days into Rick Scalera's first term as mayor of Hudson--and accused Scalera, seated across the aisle, of wanting to "get it as a parking lot for your boss, Eric Galloway." Scalera responded aggressively, "You wanna debate me? You go right ahead."
Civility restored, Maija Reed, also a Fourth Ward resident, appealed to the Council to consider "the aesthetics of the north side." Describing her neighborhood as "a community very devoid of trees," she expressed the hope that the lot could become "something lovely, with consideration for the people who live there."If memory serves, the "something lovely" Reed had in mind seven years ago was a park not an apartment building, but in the intervening years, the parcel has been nothing but a parking lot. In fact, I seem to recall Mark Thaler, whose firm did the feasibility study on the John L. Edwards school building, making reference to the lot as possible "spill over" parking should the City pursue the scheme of adapting the former school building as a "civic center."
Pertinent to the idea of developing the lot at North Fourth and State streets is the fact that that entire west side of Fourth Street, from Columbia to State, is vacant. The lot to the south, where once upon a time the building shown below stood, is now owned by Galvan Initiatives Foundation.
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