On Tuesday, September 14, the Planning Board made a negative declaration under SEQRA (State Environmental Quality Review Act) on the two apartment buildings on North Seventh Street proposed by the Galvan Foundation. The next day, the Industrial Development Agency (IDA) voted 4 to 2 to approve the PILOTs and other financial benefits sought for the two buildings. What remains is for the Planning Board to grant site plan approval.
The Planning Board is scheduled to meet at 6:00 p.m. on Thursday, October 14. It is expected the board will complete its site plan review and make a decision about approving the project at that meeting.
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How insulting. Presenting a fake parking study for the project. It should be thrown out. Thank you Bill Huston for your reporting. I can well believe it although I'll hardly be going out and counting it myself. Given the parking restriction rules it is obviously wrong.
ReplyDeleteThere is nothing new about Galvan's bogus parking studies. It happened for the library, senior center, & Perfect Ten back when the Armory was being renovated. The parking study was supposedly adequate as long as people including the seniors would park anywhere on State, Prospect, Short, N. Fifth from Warren to Clinton, Washington, and possibly park in the municipal parking lot on Columbia St. People park from the front door of their destination outward. Galvan doesn't care about the neighboring residents. Even making it worse for parking when Northern Rivers Family Services moved into the Galvan building on the corner of State & N.Fifth St. (they have since moved out). And now with the opening of COARC's The Starting Place preschool & daycare, parking is a challenge at times, not to mention the closing of Short St for a half hour in the morning and again in the afternoon for dropping off & picking up children from the buses & vans. There was originally a parking lot on the State St. & Short St. sides of the Armory before Galvan filled it in and fenced it in for a beautiful but unused garden. Poor planning on the part of Galvan on parking & traffic control.
ReplyDeleteI'm not saying that the library, Sr.Ctr., Perfect Ten, and The Starting Place aren't wonderful services to the community, I'm just saying that more consideration should be given to the neighborhoods.
I discovered something truly ridiculous about Galvan's parking study after doing my critique, in the form of a note at the bottom of their study in even tinier print than the data in the table they created. It says the following: "Parking demand observed in the summer on an "even day" were assumed to be similar to an "odd day." (their poor grammar) Therefore, unbelievably, half of the data in their summer portion of parking "observations" weren't observations at all, just mere assumptions. Can you imagine? No wonder they used such small type for this disclosure. The study was done by Galvan's engineering firm, Creighton Manning, supposedly a reputable one. B Huston
ReplyDeleteMembers of the Planning Board certainly have an obligation to the Hudson community to look into the accuracy and veracity of the applicant's supporting materials. If indeed Mr. Huston is correct, and it seems he may well be given the applicant's very loose historical association with truth, I'm curious as to next steps.
ReplyDeleteDoes this mean the Planning Board needs to revisit the impacts of the site in terms of potential SEQRA review? Can the Board reject the plan altogether?
Tune in Thursday night when the PB is scheduled to vote on the project.
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