Despite the attention paid to making the city walkable, Hudson residents remain wedded to their cars, and the city--residents, elected officials, regulatory boards--remains obsessed with parking. Fifty or more years ago, the desire to create parking lots justified the demolition of buildings. The sites of many significant buildings in Hudson are now parking lots. Fortunately, that doesn't happen as much anymore, but a recent development on Green Street may be a harbinger of things to come. The lawn in front of 72-74 Green Street was paved over--with asphalt--to create offstreet parking for the building, which was recently rehabbed as apartments.
The pictures below--Google captures--show how the building and its front yard used to look.
The creation of this parking lot raises concerns about the fate of the wrought iron fence that used to surround the yard. Some of it remains, but most of it is missing. Back in 2012, Gossips revealed that this fence had been salvaged from the entrance to Promenade Hill back when Urban Renewal reconfigured the west side of Front Street.
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Sadly, there is nothing in the city's zoning code to prevent this from happening. One wonders how long it will be before the folks on Washington Street decide that paving their front lawns will be the solution to their parking problems. The picture below, which accompanied an article in the Register-Star, shows that residents, whose street parking spaces are being taken up by patrons of Pocketbook Hudson, have already started parking their cars on their front lawns.
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| Photo: Spenser Walsh | Register-Star |
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