Five months into its six-month due diligence period, Hudson Development Corporation (HDC) has decided it will not purchase the abandoned John L. Edwards School for the purpose of redeveloping it as a community space to be called "Hudson Hub."
The Hudson Development Corporation and the Hudson City School District met in executive session on Tuesday, December 10, in the December HCSD board meeting, to discuss the HDC’s offer to purchase the John L. Edwards building at 360 State Street in Hudson, NY. As part of the contract, the Hudson Development Corporation had a six-month due diligence period to review conditions which they completed in five months' time.
The outcome of their investigations of the various systems, structure, and building conditions revealed serious and extensive environmental issues. As a result of these findings, the HDC board of directors has determined that is is not financially feasible for the organization to proceed with the purchase of the property in its challenged condition. The major concerns requiring attention are mold, asbestos, and 10,000 gallons of fuel oil in a buried tank.
In spite of the discovered defects, the HDC still sees a great potential in this building. “The vision of the John L. Edwards school building to house childcare services, as a home for the Youth Department, and for educational programs, as well as providing offices for city government, is an exciting one,” says Christine Jones, HDC President, “and we still feel strongly that the building could serve the citizens well. So we’re willing to stick with it.” The HDC put forth a recommendation that the school board to form a working collaboration between HDC and the Hudson City School District to pursue state and federal grants to completely remediate the building. “We see this as a best path forward to correct these conditions and establish the building as a viable asset to both the Hudson City School District and to the city of Hudson.”
At the HDC meeting that took place yesterday afternoon, Christine Jones told the board:
We finished our due diligence in five months.
We know this building.
We know it has no value in its current condition . . . to the HCSD or to HDC.
Now that there are reports on the conditions of the building, it will be necessary to reveal the status of the building to other buyers should there be any. . . .
The bigger question is what will the Hudson school board decide to do with this structure as it now exists?
My hope is that the work that we did will keep the building more in the public consciousness. HDC has awakened ideas for this building which I hope will stay in conversation to take it from forever unusable to a community hub.
A letter submitted to the HCSD Board of Education documents the problems discovered with the building, many of which are the result of poor stewardship.
The plumbing system is very compromised as the system was shut down but not winterized to keep residual water from freezing in pipes, causing many breaks in the lines. As it result, plumbing infrastructure will have to be evaluated throughout the whole building for viability.
Over time, the hearing system was compromised as parts were taken for use in other buildings, rendering the JLE system inoperable. With critical parts missing, the existing HVAC system cannot be "turned on" for testing. Engineers have evaluated it in its current state as unusable and recommend its removal.
As the building was not heated for five years, there is significant black mold on walls on the lower floors and in the stairwells and on handrails.
Additionally, HDC's inspections revealed a 10,000-gallon underground oil tank (used as a backup to the main system) on the property which is full of oil. HDC has not entertained any quotes for removal of the oil and the proper removal of the tank itself, but this would have to be done. There are also two transformers inside the building which are owned by Niagara Mohawk and should be moved to a safer exterior location.
Built in 1962, the standard materials of the day, used throughout the building, contained a lot of asbestos in walls, ceilings, and floors. Any changes to building configuration will necessitate removal of all of those materials before it can be rebuilt for future uses.
In July, we engaged the expertise of Ambient Environmental, Inc., who did the original assessment for the feasibility study to assess the conditions and environmental status of the building five years later. They tested the building for two weeks and sent hundreds of tests out to testing labs for results.
Ambient completed their report in September, and HDC put out an RFP to three licensed firms for asbestos and black mold abatement.
The three remediation contractors toured the building together, with copies of the Ambient report, then submitted individual proposals. Their estimates range from $3.7 million to $4.975 million. There would be an addition $125,000 for Ambient to monitor the work day to day as required by NYS law and then to do the final report indicating that the building is clean.
In the past five months, we have invested more than $150,000 investigating the building and its future uses. In light of the serious remediation estimates to get the building back to functioning, the Hudson Development Corporation board of directors has determined that it is not financially feasible for HDC to proceed with the purchase of the property in its challenged condition. So at this time the HDC board has voted to terminate the existing contract to purchase the building.
So, what will become of John L. Edwards, probably the biggest building in the City of Hudson, now that it has been determined that it is unusable in its current state and hence of no value?
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| Photo: Jonathan Simons |
The longer you do nothing, the quicker remediation costs add up, Hudson's heaviest paper weight. Maybe in another decade we can triple those remediation numbers.
ReplyDeleteWhat a shame. I wonder if demolition is the way to go. Land is scarce in Hudson. Imagine if the property under this building, the parking lot, and the land behind the building were subdivided with a new street grid added. It could be a new neighborhood. The school could raise funds selling the parcels, individual developers would have to fund new sewer and water, and we could provide new quality homes paying full property taxes.
ReplyDeleteJust don’t sell it for pennies to Galvan. They’ll just sit on it for a decade under a nonprofit exemption then sell it back to the city or county for 10x. Many such cases.
Disclosure: I'm a member of the HDC board.
DeleteBefore you can demolish it, it has to be remediated: you can't release that kind of stuff into the environment. The fact is, if the building had been heated and broken windows promptly replaced, had the plumbing and heating systems not been both cannibalized and neglected, then the remediation costs by themselves would not be a barrier at all to repurposing the building (and the mold problems wouldn't likely exist at all). The question is, why did the district basically turn the building off and then start stripping it for parts? It would also be good to know if funds budgeted for its maintenance were "reallocated."
At the end of the day, what was a prize asset has become a huge liability. I doubt anyone steps up to purchase it: every party in the chain of title becomes jointly and severally liable for the remediation costs . . . and if there's any contamination to the neighboring properties then there's more hell to pay.
The only way to save this property is for the district and the City to join with HDC to pull it off. Without that 3-legged approach, there won't be any way to get it done as far as I can tell. But the City has refused to support any attempts at saving the building.
So what will happen? Only one thing's for sure: the taxpayers in the district are about to pay a huge amount to remediate and demolish what was once an asset. Another thing that might happen is that the State Dept. of Education might take over this district that poorly performs in almost every metric.