A. Colarusso and Hudson

Today at 6:00 p.m., the Planning Board holds a public hearing on the application from A. Colarusso & Son for a conditional use permit to build a paved, two-lane road through South Bay. The public hearing takes place at the Central Fire Station, 77 North Seventh Street, and a full house is expected, both of opponents of increased industrial activity on the waterfront and supporters of Colarusso, described on Facebook this morning as "us ACTUAL LOCALS."

Photo: Our Hudson Waterfront

The City of Hudson has a bizarre and complicated relationship with A. Colarusso & Sons. Last year, the City accepted a $100,000 donation from the Colarusso family for the completion of the redesigned entrance to the Promenade Hill after it had been determined that the $1.1 million in DRI funds was more than a half million short of realizing the project as planned, while at the same time Colarusso was one of the contractors working on the project and Colarusso was suing the Planning Board (the second of two lawsuits Colarusso brought against the Planning Board) for making a positive declaration in its review of Colarusso's applications for condition use permits for its gravel operations at the waterfront. 

Now the City is in another weird situation with Colarusso. Last week, the Common Council authorized entering into a contract with Colarusso to construct the replacement Ferry Street Bridge. Tonight, the Planning Board holds a public hearing on Colarusso's application for a conditional use permit to build a paved, two-lane road through South Bay.

One thing Colarusso supporters like to remind people is that the company is more than a hundred years old, having been established in 1912 by its patriarch, Antonio Colarusso. That being the case, I decided to take a look the early days of the company and its relationship with the City of Hudson. In the first decade of the company, the Hudson Register and the Columbia Republican contained frequent reports of Antonio Colarusso being awarded contracts for various projects, in Hudson and around the county, including the "street to Oakdale Park" in 1917 and widening Mt. Merino Road in 1921. In several cases, Colarusso was the only bidder.

In June 1922, the Columbia Republican reported that Antonio Colarusso had purchased a large tract of land from the Hudson Orphan and Relief Association, land located behind the Hudson Orphan Asylum, then located at 400 State Street, to expand his brickyard. In September 1922, the Columbia Republican reported that Antonio Colarusso donated five loads of gravel to the Orphan Asylum to improve its driveway.

Antonio Colarusso served at least twice as Commissioner of Public Works in Hudson. He was appointed by Mayor Henry Galster at the beginning of 1921 but resigned later that same year, as the Chatham Courier reported, "in order to submit bids for street paving work which he was later awarded." He was appointed Commissioner of Public Works again in the 1940s by Mayor Earl Colwell but resigned again in July 1941 after a reported disagreement with Colwell over improvements to Harry Howard Avenue, which some complained at the time was a "cow path" leading to the "new half million dollar Hudson High school" (now Montgomery C. Smith), which had been completed in 1937. During his tenure as Public Works Commissioner in the 1940s, Antonio Colarusso also had a dispute with the city treasurer over the DPW budget.

Antonio Colarusso at a picnic sponsored by Atlas Cement, c. 1937

There are more recent examples of the intertwining of Colarusso and Hudson government. Charlie Butterworth, who was for years superintendent of the Department of Public Works in Hudson, found his way here in the late 1960s by way of a job at Colarusso. In 2002, Mayor Rick Scalera solved the problem of repaying the $11 million the City had borrowed to build a new water treatment plant with a "rent-to-own" scheme with Colarusso involving the 339 acres of land, in the quarry and over an aquifer, the City had purchased to provide a secondary water supply for Hudson after the drought that struck the Northeast in 1965.  

Tonight, the Planning Board holds a public hearing on a Colarusso project that has been before them since 2017--the review periodically interrupted by lawsuits brought against the Planning Board by Colarusso. Only two members of the current Planning Board, which at present is one member short, were on the board when the review was suspended as a consequence of Colarusso's second lawsuit. They have much to learn in order to get up to speed on this issue. One thing they should study carefully is Hudson's LWRP (Local Waterfront Revitalization Plan). For reasons that are complicated and hard to explain, the LWRP was never reviewed by the NYS Department of State, but it was adopted by the City of Hudson, and its content has force and validity. The LWRP makes it clear that the goal is to "sunset" heavy industrial activity at the waterfront not enable its continuation and intensification.

Looking back over the past six years, one sees how Colarusso has been bullying Hudson in order to get its way. In 2017, when the Greenport Planning Board gave approval for its portion of the proposed haul road, creating a direct route from the quarry to the dock, Colarusso could have built the portion of the road that passes through Greenport and gotten their trucks off Hudson streets. Instead they maintained that they--a company that builds roads--had to build the entire road, from the quarry to the dock, at one time, and continued to run their trucks through the streets of Hudson. Now, they are cynically arguing, through their attorney John Privatera, that approval of the paved, two-lane road they want to build through South Bay is a matter of "environmental justice."

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