On Friday, a front-page article in the Register-Star bore the headline: "Murell shares plans for 11 Warren St."
Anyone who read the article found that very little of it was actually about 11 Warren Street, and it provided very little new information about the county's plans for the site. Regarding 11 Warren Street, the article quotes Matt Murell, chair of the Columbia County Board of Supervisors, as saying:
"We want to complete the 11 Warren St. project, which will occur throughout the remainder of 2024. . . . [The renovation] solves many issues. Firstly, we have to find a new space for the Board of Elections and the storage of the voting machines, which is a big investment on the county's part. We bought all new voting machines. Potentially, this will enable us to move the departments that are in the 610 State St. buildings, which will enable us to liquidate that building. It might serve a purpose if someone else wants to purchase it, but in terms of the county, it's just not functional anymore."
The county paid Galvan $3.35 million for 11 Warren Street, and the estimated cost of renovating the building is between $6 and $8 million.
It was promised that input from the community would be sought before decisions were made about which county departments, in addition to the the Board of Elections, would be relocated at 11 Warren Street. For this purpose, apparently, a public hearing is scheduled to take place on Wednesday, January 24, at 4:00 p.m. in the Board of Supervisors chamber at 401 State Street. Currently, the Probation Department and the Public Defender's Office are located at 610 State Street, the building the county is planning to "liquidate." Hence these departments are likely candidates for relocation to 11 Warren Street.
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For as much as everyone complains about Colarusso on the waterfront and how it benefits the city or not, the fact that this transfer slipped through the cracks is a real shame. We threw away any opportunity to rethink an entire block of a blighted, underutilized strip mall that was way out of character of the neighborhood. The first block our our city's most commercial and historic street. It could have been an attractive mix of much needed housing and tax generating businesses. Instead we are using the prime geography as a storage depot a possible place to meet your probation officer. A job well done for the five Hudson supervisors who either skipped that meeting or were asleep during the vote. I realize the rest of the county's supervisors don't care - they'll go back to their picture perfect streets in Kinderhook and Chatham, content in using Hudson as their municipal dumping ground, as they have for the past 70 or so years. But it sad that our delegation to the county didn't bat an eye. Sometimes I think our many of our elected officials want to see Hudson go back into decline.
ReplyDeleteWell said, Union Jack. Not only did our supervisors fail to defend our city from this bad idea, I expect one of them, who works for Galvan, actually brokered the deal.
DeleteHit the nail on the head, Union Jack. What a darned shame. as Unheimlich says all the time, Hudson's officials, a real 'ship of fools'. What a shame. A good opportunity gone by and Hudson back to the being the County's dumping ground.
DeleteLand use decisions in Hudson are indescribably bad. I was on the Planning Board when the good old boys voted to permit Vinyl Village on top of Academy Hill. They didn't even want to impose the minimal review on the developers. This town was blessed with amazing fabric, but it's being pissed away by civic leaders who don't have a clue.
ReplyDeleteI am expecting a nuclear waste dump to be proposed for the site of the Furgary Shacks. No doubt our planning board will welcome the idea with open arms.
ReplyDeleteYes, it will just become a mess of a different kind, without the shacks.
DeleteThe City has allowed the County to neglect their sidewalk surrounding 610 State for forever. They will leave/"liquidate" that building and leave the sidewalks to continue to deteriorate. It's obscene.
DeleteAlso, I'd really like to know what a liquidated building looks like?
Yes really, inspite of the Rossman Ave associaion's efforts to prevent it, it being named a historic district, etc., and trees only being allowed to be 'topped' initially Vinyl Village succeeded in cutting down 40 trees behind a neighbor's yard up there a couple of years ago.
DeleteThe Days of 'Concerned Citizens', 'Friends of Hudson', 'Vision Plan' group where turnout at their meetings would generate a crowd of questioners and protestors, are sadly long gone, even after having members on the town Council, the Planning Board, the Waterfront Committee etcs. Terms and memories are too short and apathy remains.
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ReplyDeleteWhy do we act surprised when we haven’t hired anyone to do this?
DeleteThe problem is the Planning Gap.
It’s no one’s job to do this.
And, until it is, we will continue to be disappointed.
The solution is a Professional Urban Planner.
I agree that we need people with urban planning and public administration experience and education in local government... one of the reasons why we need a city manager, rather than a "strong mayor" system. But in this particular situation (like many others in Hudson), I really think the issue is self-dealing combined with indifference. You really think this happened because they thought this was a good example of land use? Really? Organizations like Galvan and Colarusso have a handful of well positioned allies in our city and county, and they are met with indifference from the rest of our governance. You don't need a professional urban planner to tell you that using an A+ prime location to store voting machines is bad land utilization, nor is allowing waterfront in a booming town to be a gravel dump, but here we are. They know that, they don't live in these two square miles, and they don't care. Fix the corruption, then we can fix the incompetence
DeleteWhat you call corruption, I call mediocrity.
DeleteI don’t see malevolence. I see bad management.
Bad management allows for unimpeded mediocrity.
I consider an action to be mediocre when it is made without explicit reference to the shared vision of the City, as encoded in our planning documents.
I advocate for a professional urban planner because I believe it would make mediocrity to be more difficult.
One day, maybe after they're done going after Trump, the NY Attorney General's Office can pay our little corner of the state a closer look. Hmmmm, where to start...? The city is due for another Dewey style raid.
ReplyDeleteThe County must have been smoking something to pay that much for that piece of property. It is worth half of that -- on a good day. Unfortunately, another bad deal for the people of Hudson and of the County.
ReplyDeleteOf course this will not go on the tax rolls -- and Galvan pockets another 3 million plus at our expense, oozing a totally inside deal.
Why isn't every tax payer outraged by this land grab by the county. With all the vacant land in this county why can't a storage facility be built for a specific use. Why can't this be stopped with a law suit until its been thoroughly been investigated. Why does everything get dumped in Hudson. Why do we have a mayor and who are these elected officials asleep at the wheels of power, if not to prevent scams like this. What's next a new version of the cement plant? Nothing ever seems to work in favor to the tax payers ... a lot of obsessing about a building finish or a tree cut down but the serious issues intentionally go unnoticed.
ReplyDelete