In May, the Common Council voted to accept $100,000 from the Galvan Foundation to do a feasibility study on relocating City Hall to 400 State Street, the building that was constructed in 1818 as the Hudson Almshouse and was for more than fifty years the location of the Hudson Area Library. The vote was not unanimous: six Council members voted in favor; four voted against; one recused himself because he was employed by the Galvan Foundation; and one regretted voting in favor of accepting the money and wanted to change her vote.
Last night at the informal Common Council meeting, Peter Bujanow, commissioner of Public Works, told the Council the RFP (request for proposals) for the feasibility study was almost ready to be released. Bujanow assured that Council that the feasibility study would be "taking this from ground zero" and would be independent of the reuse study that Galvan had done. The drawings below show how Galvan proposed the building might be adapted to accommodate the offices and uses of City Hall.
According to Galvan, the estimated cost of rehabbing the building for use as City Hall would be $3.3 million, and the Galvan Foundation has offered, along with giving the building to the City, a construction grant of $1.4 million. To many, $3.3 million seemed unrealistically low. In 2008, when the Hudson Area Library was planning to restore the building and make it more useful for its purpose, the cost of the restoration was set at $8.9 million. The feasibility study the City is about to undertake will make its own estimate of the cost of restoring the building and adapting it for reuse as City Hall.
Bujanow said the RFP is "putting a lot of emphasis on the historic" and indicated that the feasibility study will "tell us how much it's going to cost to restore the building and reuse it was City Hall and identify sources of funds" for the restoration.
The RFP is now on the City of Hudson website and can be reviewed by clicking here. COPYRIGHT 2021 CAROLE OSTERINK
Throwing good money after bad.
ReplyDeleteAt least Tom is wasting Galvan money this time instead of Hudson community money. More equitable?
DeleteGalvan’s entire proposal is entirely self-serving: having acquired the old library and discovering the total wreck it actually was/is, it now seeks to make the City and its tax payers the patsy. Sadly, the City Council entertains the proposal as if it were an idea worth considering.
ReplyDeleteNot exactly a diamond in the rough ... a forced fit... no sizzle.
ReplyDeleteGalvans phony philanthropist boondoggle.
ReplyDeleteExactly. Why does the city even entertain this nonsense? A grant for feasibility from the owner of the property? Does no one see the con in this?
DeleteSeems to me there are many creative solutions that would solve the problem without causing enormous taxpayer expenditures, sales of properties, relocations etc. With city offices in historic buildings, the entire building does not have to be fully handicap compliant, all that is required is that services be accessible to the handicapped. For example, a ramp at the back or side door of City Hall that led to a small office where the handicapped could be served would be sufficient. If a handicap person want's to meet the Mayor or someone in an office upstairs, that person could come down.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, a simple fix with a small expenditure is not appealing to grandiose real estate developers and their cronies motivated by fantasies of reverse social engineering -- even though we do all miss the good old days of late night street fights and police sirens wailing at 2AM.
As a general rule in our society, “separate but equal” is not a constitutional solution when the disparity is based on what’s known as a “suspect class” (terrible choice of language by the S. Ct. but it’s what we got). I think the type of meeting room you suggest might run afoul of this rule.
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