The Latest Acquisition

Gossips just received this announcement from the Galvan Foundation:

Galvan Foundation is pleased to announce plans to acquire 620 Columbia Street, formerly called The Hudson Community Theater. Galvan will develop the building as the gateway to our Depot District Initiative, a mixed-use commercial and residential development in the planning phase. We expect to complete the transaction in January 2021.

Galvan will continue exploring ways to improve the 3rd, 4th, and 5th Ward neighborhoods in the City of Hudson by selling properties with outsized values in Hudson's 1st Ward and reinvesting the proceeds in new community projects.

The building, which was originally constructed as a movie theater, was purchased in 2007 by Marina Abramovic, who intended to create there the Marina Abramovic Institute (MAI). 

In 2012, there was an open house at the building, and Marina Abramovic herself was present is to explain her vision for the building, the institute, and indeed for Hudson. 

The plans were greeted with curiosity, enthusiasm, and some skepticism, but many Hudsonians were ready to embrace the idea. In 2013, there was a Kickstarter campaign that raised $660,000 toward the estimated $20 million the project was expected to cost. In all, Abramovic raised a reported $2 million for the project, but in October 2017, Abramovic announced that she was abandoning plans to create her eponymous institute. The reason given was that the cost of transforming the building was expected to be $31 million--far more than originally anticipated. Two years later, in December 2019, the building was listed for sale. 

The asking price at that time was $1,470,000. Abramovic had purchased it in 2007 for $950,000. The building is currently assessed at $1 million.

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