Thursday, November 18, 2021

An Evening with the Planning Board

Tonight's special Planning Board meeting set a record for its brevity compared with recent Planning Board meetings. It lasted just a little more than two hours. In that time, the Planning Board managed to accomplish three things. 

First, after an executive session with David Luntz, the attorney who represented City in the lawsuit brought by Verizon over the conditions imposed by the Planning Board in their approval of the project to site wireless communications antennas on Providence Hall, the members of the Planning Board voted to adopt the resolution accepting the settlement. The vote was 5 to 2 in favor, with the two members who voted against approving the project back in June--Theresa Joyner and Laura Margolis--voting against accepting the settlement agreement.

Next on the agenda was the Colarusso applications for conditional use permits. The Planning Board made a positive declaration in the SEQR process as an outcome of its completion of Parts 2 and 3 of the Full Environmental Assessment Form. The completed Part 2 can be found here. The completed Part 3 can be found here. The resolution making the positive declaration can be found here. The vote to make a positive declaration was unanimous.   


Finally, the Planning Board granted site plan approval to the redevelopment plans for the Pocketbook Factory. The vote to approve came after a rather protracted discussion of how the Planning Board could hold the developers to their commitment to making the courtyard at the Pocketbook Factory open to the public without requiring an easement on the property. In the end, it was decided that the following statement would be appended to the resolution:
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that the Planning Board acknowledges the Applicant's intention to provide public access and encourages it [to] work with the Common Council to enter into a license agreement to allow such access.
The resolution to approve the project passed with only Margolis voting against it.

COPYRIGHT 2021 CAROLE OSTERINK

6 comments:

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  2. It is increasingly clear that the city of Hudson's mayor office and Planning Board (and common council?) have latched on to a policy of DUMB GROWTH, not smart growth. There is no planning other than encouraging development without requiring any associated off street parking. This will come back to bite us in the ass eventually. B Huston

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  3. Bill, you don't seem to understand the extent of the PB's authority. The board can only evaluate a project against the City's Zoning Code. It cannot arbitrarily make up new rules or deny projects that are permitted under the Code. Want to change what can and cannot be done? Go to the Common Council and change the Code. Or the parking requirements. Neither of those things can be done by the PB. They don't make the rules.

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    1. But the PB can deny a project if they find that the developer and its engineering firm provided parking studies full of false data and misrepresentations, can't it, Betsy?

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    2. I would think that the suspect parking studies as reported earlier should indeed have been investigated and not taken at face value.

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  4. At least it's good news that the Planning Board issued a SEQR Positive declaration on the Colarusso issue. Thank you Planning Board.

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