Say What?

At last night's informal Common Council meeting, Councilmember Jennifer Belton (Fourth Ward) requested a special meeting to inform the Council (and the public) on the status of the City's DRI (Downtown Revitalization Initiative) projects. Councilmember Rich Volo (Fourth Ward) suggested that there might be monthly updates on the status of the projects. (Gossips did a post about the City's DRI projects, only one of which has been completed, last month: "How Are We Doing?")  

In responding to these requests, Council president Tom DePietro said, among other things, "The Dunn building is in the process of being sold." Say what? 

In October 2023, the Common Council accepted the plan for the redevelopment of the Dunn Warehouse submitted by CGS Group in response to an RFP issued in April and authorized the mayor to enter into an agreement with CGS Group, a partnership of Caitlin Baiada, Gabriel Katz, and Sean Roland. One of the features of the plan proposed by CGS Group, which made it appealing to some of the members of the review committee, was that the City of Hudson would retain ownership of the building. 

The agreement involved a 90-day due diligence period, which would have ended sometime last month. Since then, the public has heard nothing of the outcome of the group's due diligence. Did CGS Group decide they needed to own the building? Did they decide to abandon the plan, and is there a different buyer in picture? Or did DePietro misspeak?

A request to City Hall for clarification has so far gone unanswered.

COPYRIGHT 2024 CAROLE OSTERINK

Update: Minutes after publishing this post, I received the following email from mayor's aide Michael Hofmann:

President DePietro did misspeak. Dunn Warehouse is not in the process of being sold; the City will be engaging in a 30-year lease of the property to CGS and will retain ownership of the building throughout. We and our lawyers have been working on the detail of the lease terms with the CGS Group over this winter and expect to have a finalized agreement this month. The clock on the 90-day due diligence period begins once that agreement is executed, so at this point we're looking at May at the earliest for the conclusion of their study period. This is later than we anticipated, but we're still very excited to work with the CGS Group in redeveloping the warehouse and look forward to reviewing their final plans.