Last week, residents and friends of Mill Street filed a legal action against the City of Hudson, the Common Council, Mayor Kamal Johnson, the Planning Board, and Kearney Realty over the plan to construct Mill Street Lofts, a 70-unit apartment complex, on a former recreational open space at the end of Mill Street, a site that regularly floods during significant rain events. The group has created a website devoted to the issue which provides a statement from Mill Street resident Lakia Walker, the text of the legal claim, the Times Union article by Roger Hannigan Gilson about the lawsuit, as well as links to other articles and posts about the project: www.millstreetneighbors.org.
Last night, Sean Kearney and another representative of Kearney Realty were back before the Planning Board, responding to one of the seven conditions specified in their site plan approval. Although the agenda for the meeting indicated they would be addressing Conditions 5 and 6, it was actually Condition 7: "Approval by the Planning Board of safety features around the drainage ditch, including but not limited to guard rail, fencing or a combination of both."
The original plan, as shown in the rendering below (click on the image to enlarge), was to have an aluminum fence at the front of the drainage ditch, on the street side, and a wooden split rail fence at the back, on the parking lot side.
Last night, Kearney agreed to dispense with the split rail fence and put an aluminum fence all the way around the drainage ditch.
One condition down; six to go.
COPYIGHT 2025 CAROLE OSTERINK
Did anyone mention a barbed wire option?
ReplyDeleteA boat dock might be more appropriate.
ReplyDeleteI'm thinking community spa.
ReplyDeleteThe Mill Street Article 78 will take several years and Kearney doesn't have the land to build.
ReplyDeleteEven Tom DePietro (outgoing CC President) who was a big proponent of the project abruptly changed his tune post Article 78 and said to the press: "These were all the issues that were raised in hearings on the property", he said. "I thought it would end up in litigation, given the determination of the opposition."
I met some smart folks in a coffee shop this week and we started stalking about this project and the Article 78:
Consider for a minute...
1. even if the Columbia County Supreme Court somehow has a rocket docket and reviews this case faster than 75% of similarly complex cases, it will still take 6-9 months. There are a 174 days left for the current Common Council, and the PB lawyer told me yesterday that they have not yet been served, but the lawsuit was filed within the SOL.
2. Even if the Article 78 petition fails on all counts, which is statistically unlikely given the Planning Board’s own records and statements, that outcome would contradict both the strength of the plaintiff’s evidence and the views of experienced local and state attorneys familiar with the case and the assigned judge.
3. Then various Hudson Valley environmental groups and Hudson residents from all wards will support the plaintiffs to appeal to the Appellate Division, which takes anywhere from 9 to 18 months. I heard that several residents from other wards were badly treated by the PB and the mayor and believe in Mill Street as a State park.
4. If bizarrely the appeal also fails, then the plaintiffs and supporters will request a review by the Court of Appeals, which takes another year to a year and half. This gets interesting because then big environmental public interest groups will step in to support the plaintiffs in order to set powerful legal precedents that will sharpen SEQR and protect other parts of Hudson Valley. I hear several members of these environmental and global warming groups recently moved to Hudson and are taking an active interest in the waterfront and use of public spaces in Hudson.
5. This will take the case to 2027-2028.... but it won't get there because the new incoming Common Council President has already stated that she is not in favor of approving the land sale from the City of Hudson to Kearney, given all the issues outlined in the Article 78.
ReplyDeleteSo.... if Kamal (current mayor who lost the primary), Theresa Joyner (embattled chair of PB, appointed by Kamal, who has been called to resign by leading mayoral candidates), and Sean Kearney (young developer trying to build a trajectory of success) were smart... they would not burn through the next 6 months pretending this Article 78 didn't happen.
They should settle with the plaintiffs, and move fast to secure another site in Hudson or Greenport without all these issues, run a lawful and unbiased Planning Board review process, and move to secure the $10m Albany state funding earmarked for a project of this type in the area before it finds another home.
This would be responsible, sensible, and in the interest of more affordable housing in Hudson Valley. If Hudson's Housing Justice Director Michelle Tullo cared about providing housing... and if Hudson's lawyer Andy Howard was judicious about the City's legal budgets... they'd do a careful cost benefit analysis here.
The above timeline and the stakes here is why lawyers like to joke that “Litigation is the sport of kings”
Except here you have an unpopular prince about to be defenestrated, and a developer who needs to decide if he wants to gamble the entire project's profit on a series of lawsuits so that even if 5 decisions improbably break his way…. he might break even and walk away without a financial loss. Kearney is a small private family firm, not exactly Greystar or Mill Creek, which does 100X more building and litigating.
Sean - you’ve seen the plaintiff’s hand. Your lawyers will show you your own hand this week. The stakes are rising. And you’ve seen the quality of Joyner’s work.
Time to choose: commit and risk several million dollars, or fold, cut your losses, and find another table with your remaining chips and time before this project imperils your other projects in town.
~
The City of Hudson is not in the litigation business and has no King, and therefore should not waste more tax payer money on lawyers because Theresa Joyner ran a bad Planning Board review process.
But I am not a lawyer... just sharing the scuttlebutt from the streets and cafes.
P.s. Sean, Kamal, and Michelle, consider watching the The Castle (1997) this weekend, it is an odd Australian cult classic legal comedy (like Napoleon Dynamite or King of the Hill in the US) where a working-class Australian family defends their modest home all the way to the High Court, invoking the principle that a man's home is his castle, and proving that dignity can triumph over faceless bureaucracy, intimidation, and profit-seeking corporations.