Value Engineering and HHA

The redevelopment of the Hudson Housing Authority (HHA) properties as currently proposed is expected to cost $220 million. After reviewing the proposal, "the state," which probably means NYS Homes and Community Renewal, advised that the cost of the proposed project was too high and changes should be made to bring down the cost.

At last night's meeting of the HHA Board of Commissioners, Eu Ting-Zambuto of Mountco, HHA's development partner, discussed value engineering. She told the board that the current plan had two cost drivers: subsurface parking and steel and concrete construction. The subsurface parking is planned for Site B, the area on the north side of State Street. Ting-Zambuto explained that Site B, because of its topography, lends itself to subsurface parking. Abandoning the plan for subsurface parking would mean not utilizing Site B to its full potential and would also move parking onto Site A, eliminating the green space. For this reason, they were not pursuing the notion of eliminating subsurface parking as a means of reducing costs, because, as she said, people have "overwhelmingly embraced the idea of hiding the parking and overwhelmingly embraced the idea of green space--even people who have objections to the design itself."

The cost driver Mountco decided to focus on is construction materials. Steel framing and concrete is significantly more expensive than wood framing, but if a building is more than five stories, it must be constructed with steel and concrete. The buildings being proposed are of varying heights but two of them are seven stories. Were all of the buildings to be no more than five stories, they could be wood framed, and the cost could be reduced by 10 percent. (The building currently being constructed by Baxter Development and Galvan--Hudson Depot Lofts--is primarily wood framing.)  

In the original plan, Buildings B1 and B2 would be constructed in Phase 1. Building B1 is seven stories, and Building B2 is five stories. The plan was then to move the current HHA tenants into the new buildings and demolish Bliss Towers. Reducing the height of Building B1 would eliminate 28 apartments, so there wouldn't be enough room for all the tenants in the new buildings. As a consequence, Mountco is proposing that another building be included in Phase 1: Building A1. This building would stand along the western edge of Site A. Its construction would require the demolition of the "low-rise" buildings, Columbia Apartments, but it could be constructed while Bliss Towers remains standing. Reducing the size of Building A1 to five stories would result in the loss of 12 apartments.

Making all the buildings no more than five stories so they can be constructed with wood framing instead of the more costly steel and concrete would result in the loss of 40 units in these three buildings and in the overall project. (Apparently, all the other buildings are already five stories or less.) According to the new plan, the entire HHA project would create 260 units instead of 300. 

Among the advantages of the new proposal, in addition to reducing the cost, would be that Phase 1 would create 160 units instead of 138. The 110 households currently living in HHA housing could be moved into all three buildings, along with new tenants with incomes between 50 and 80 percent of the area median income (AMI), thus avoiding a "concentration of poverty" and also ensuring that there would be sufficient revenue from rent. The revised plan would also improve the parking ratio. With the original plan, the parking ratio was 40 percent--in other words, there would be 40 offstreet parking spaces for every 100 units. With the revised plan, the parking ratio would be 74 percent. 

It is not known if the Board of Commissioners will accept the proposed revisions or not. In the past, board members have mandated that the plan create as many units as possible, but they may be willing to reconsider that mandate given the exorbitant costs and the recommendations from the state. The board's decision regarding the value engineering proposals will likely be discussed at the next HHA meeting, which takes place on September 16.

At last night's meeting, the board agreed, at the request of Jeffrey Dodson, HHA executive director, to create a Redevelopment Committee to meet regularly with the representatives of Mountco. The committee is limited to three members, less than a quorum of the board, to avoid having to hold their meetings in public. The members of the new Redevelopment Committee are Claire Cousin (chair), Rebecca Wolff, and Nick Zachos, with Revonda Smith as an alternate.

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