The Hudson Housing Authority is pursuing an ambitious redevelopment. What's being proposed will take up an entire city block, and when completed, there will be twice as many units, managed by HHA, as there are now. HHA wants the Planning Board to complete its review and grant site plan approval by May 2026, so they can meet their deadlines for funding from New York State, yet they seem to be stonewalling the Planning Board when it comes to presenting anything that gives a clear idea of what this massive development is going to look like.
At the February meeting of the Planning Board, HHA presented elevations of the proposed buildings--drawings that show the facades of the buildings in two dimensions.
Ron Bogle, who chairs the Planning Board, put off any discussion of the design of the buildings because the elevations did not provide enough information, and he requested renderings to show what the buildings would actually look like.
On Tuesday, March 10, just hours before their meeting started, the Planning Board received a set of "presentation visuals." The visuals, which can be viewed here, were made up of a Google Earth image of the current site, a site plan we've seen several times before, two renderings also seen before, and two 3D renderings. Bogle again postponed discussion of the design because the materials had not been submitted in a timely fashion. (The deadline for submitted things to the Planning Board is two weeks before the next scheduled meeting.) He could have postponed discussion because the renderings do not provide enough information about what the buildings will actually look like.
- Buildings that create the narrative of Hudson by lining the streets
- Buildings that are scaled to be harmonious with the town houses of Hudson
- Creating a pedestrianizing atmosphere
The renderings presented are confusing, because it's not clear exactly what is being depicted. In talking about the rendering below, Williams talked about the "pedestrianization" of State Street.
Similarly, it's impossible to know the vantage point for this rendering. It seems to show an L-shaped building, but the only L-shaped building in the plan that seems to match this rendering is the one proposed for Phase 2 of the project.
Toward the end of the meeting (1:21:27), Planning Board member Peter Spear asked if they could have renderings that were closer to reality. Following up on Spear's question, Bogle asked of the renderings, "Are they conceptual illustrations, or do they really reflect what is currently planned to be built?" Williams responded to Bogle's question by saying the renderings showed "the intent of what we expect to be built here." Spear pointed out, "Those are two different things, though. Intention and expectation are very different degrees of certainty." To which Williams responded, "Architects deal with intent. . . . My intent is to have this built as it's shown."
These renderings have been around for a long time. Gossips published the first one for the first time in October 2024. The second one (and perhaps also the first) was part of presentation made by Alex Gorlin at the "greenspace workshop" held at Bliss Towers in September 2024. Since then, there's been a lot of value engineering to bring down the cost of the project. It's hard to imagine that effort had no impact on the facade design. In his presentation, Williams talked about "siding." Siding could be anything, but it usually means wood or some imitation wood shingles. The renderings show nothing of the kind.
It is not unreasonable for the public to want to know what this new development will look like. In his comments to the Planning Board on Tuesday, Jeffrey Dodson, HHA executive director, recalled his first walk down Warren Street, thinking this was a beautiful, historic place, "Only to take a right on Second Street and go, 'My god, what is that?'" Given that, it seems reasonable for people in Hudson to want to know what in future they will see when making that same turn off Warren Street, but none of the renderings provide any idea. The one 3D rendering that shows the project with any architectural detail shows it from the west, a vantage point from which it will only be seen by residents parking their cars and folks who live in Schuyler Court.
The discussion of the project at the Planning Board meeting on Tuesday brought up a couple of things that are a bit worrisome. As we all know, Bliss Towers and Columbia Apartments cannot be demolished until the new buildings have been completed and the current residents of Bliss Towers and Columbia Apartments have been relocated. What was revealed on Tuesday is that there is no money for the demolition in Phase 1, and therefore the demolition will have to wait until funding is secured for Phase 2.
The "pedestrianization" of State Street is also not part of Phase 1. Instead it is part of Phase 2. Given that the parking plan submitted to the Planning Board in October 2025 includes parallel parking on State Street in order to meet the parking requirements for all the tenants of the project, it's hard to imagine how closing the street is going to happen.
There's another unanswered question that did not come up at the Planning Board meeting: Are the townhouses proposed for the lot at the end of Warren Street part of Phase 1 or Phase 2? If they are part of Phase 1, their design will have to go before the Historic Preservation Commission because the proposed location is in a locally designated historic district. That hasn't happened yet.
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