News from the Planning Board

The Planning Board meeting on Tuesday night went on for just shy of four hours. There were several projects considered, and Gossips will report on them one at a time, beginning with Mill Street Lofts, the project being proposed for the playing field on the south side of Mill Street. 

The discussion of the project opened with a presentation by Kearney Realty & Development Group of the amenities they have added to the plan for the site in response to concerns expressed at the August 20 meeting about traffic and transportation. These amenities are described in the letter submitted to the Planning Board on August 26:

1. Bus Shelter. As discussed during the meeting, the Applicant will work with the City and County to provide a bus route to the project. This shelter will be located at the end of the proposed pedestrian connection between the project and Mill Street to maximize the convenience to future residents.
2. Fire Apparatus Turnaround. A hammerhead turnaround has been added that complies with Appendix D of the NYS Fire Code. This turnaround will utilize the existing paper street adjacent to the project which will require construction of a third box culvert to convey flow around the site to the proposed stilling basin and the City drainage infrastructure. The turnaround will be adequate to allow buses associated with the proposed bus route to turnaround.
3. Bicycle Repair Station. A bicycle repair station is proposed along Mill Street to benefit future residents and riders on the Empire State Trail. 
4. Scenic Overlook Station. A sidewalk has been extended to a bench at the western end of the site at the top of the proposed retaining wall where residents can enjoy the undeveloped open space on the subject property and adjacent to it.

It wasn't pointed out that a bicycle repair station is something of a redundancy given that there is already a bicycle repair station about 500 feet away at the Empire State Trail trailhead at the corner of Dock Street and North Second Street.

During the public comment period, Mill Street resident Faith Gilbert expressed concern about the "improper and possibly illegal use of park land," alluding to the deed restrictions that required the land to be used as a park or for recreation. She suggested that the Planning Board was "expediting the project for the sake of the developer" and recalled that at the August 20 special meeting there seemed to be an effort to persuade the members who had voted against making a negative declaration to change their minds. She asserted that the project would result in a 600 percent increase in neighborhood density and told the Planning Board, "Every household on Mill Street agrees this is a bad fit for the site." She concluded, "The Planning Board should honestly assess the project's impact."

Three Hudson elected officials--Linda Mussmann, Fourth Ward Supervisor; Rich Volo, Fourth Ward Councilmember; Margaret Morris, First Ward Councilmember--were present at the meeting and expressed concerns about the project and its negative impacts on the neighborhood. In his comments, Volo pointed out that this project would negatively impact five houses built by Habitat for Humanity, which he described as "housing that works in this city," enabling homeownership and building generational wealth. In her comments, Morris reiterated the suspicion that the project was being expedited, observing, "This project is moving forward more quickly than other projects." Theresa Joyner, who chairs the Planning Board, told Morris, "It's a perception and not a fact." Despite Joyner's denial, Planning Board member Susan Vernovage Foster later asserted, "This project does seem to be fast-tracked."

Six members of the Planning Board were present for the meeting on Tuesday, as compared with five who were present for the special meeting on August 20, when they failed to have enough votes for a negative declaration. On Tuesday, attorneys Victoria Polidoro and Cassondra Britton and engineering consultant Chris Bertram, from Barton & Loguidice, took turns leading the board through the eighteen questions of Part 2 of the Full Environmental Assessment Form, reviewing the answers they had agreed to on August 20. Of interest was the discussion about Question 11: Impact on Open Space and Recreation. Residents of the neighborhood had given ample testimony that the space was regularly used, for close to two decades, as a playing field, but the Planning Board decided that since the City of Hudson had never officially designated it as such during the forty years it owned the field, its informal recreational use and its value as an open space didn't matter. 

Even more interesting was the discussion relating to Question 18: Consistency with Community Character. Although the residents of Mill Street and almost everyone else think this 70-unit apartment project is completely inappropriate for the site and completely out of character with the neighborhood, the Planning Board decided to define things a bit differently. According to Joyner, with the apparent agreement and support of Planning Board member Randall Martin, the "community" with which this project should be compatible is "not just one block but the whole area"--"the high-rise and everything around that lower part of Hudson." 

When the question of making a negative declaration on the project--meaning that the project will not create significant environmental harm or that environmental impact has been mitigated to a less than significant level--came to a vote, five of the members present (Martin, Gini Casasco, Bettina Young, Gene Shetsky, and Joyner) voted in favor, and only one (Vernovage Foster) voted against. Young had voted against making a negative declaration on August 20 but changed her mind. The other dissenter on August 20, Ben Forman, was absent from Tuesday's meeting.

The entire discussion and vote can be viewed here, beginning at 1:22:15 and ending at 3:17:38.

Interestingly, this evening, Gini Casasco, who voted in support of the negative declaration, posted this on the Facebook group "Unfiltered Hudson."

That grassy field where the kids in the picture are playing, informally and unofficially, is certainly reminiscent of the grassy field on Mill Street, the site of this proposed development.

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