Last week, it was revealed that, unbeknownst to the Common Council and to the public in general, Mayor Joseph Ferris amended the terms of the agreement to sell two City-owned parcels to Kearney Realty & Development Group. According to the original agreement, the closing needed to take place on or before May 3, 2026. The amendment to the agreement, signed on May 20, 2026, changes the date of closing from a fixed date to an open-ended one: "thirty (30) days after the Seller has discontinued all pending actions/proceedings relating to the ability of the Seller to convey title to the Property."
As soon as the information about the amendment went public at the Common Council meeting last Tuesday, Ferris issued a statement explaining why this action was taken. Gossips has published that statement twice, here and here.
Today, the residents of Mill Street issued their own statement, responding to Ferris. The statement, which was published on the Mill Street Neighborhood website, is reproduced below. Late last week, Mayor Ferris gave a statement explaining his decision to extend the City’s
contract with the Kearney Group. Our neighborhood would like to respond to falsehoods in his
statement and set a few facts straight about our litigation.
As a reminder, the Mill Street Lofts is a proposed apartment complex six times the size of our
entire neighborhood. It would be built on public parkland, in violation of state law, on a parcel
that regularly and severely floods. Those are only the headlines in a long list of design failures
that our neighbors pointed out to the Planning Board and the Common Council for over a year.
Both boards chose to ignore the red flags in order to push the project through at then-Mayor
Kamal’s urging. The process was so clearly stacked that three of our own city representatives
encouraged us to file a lawsuit. Mr. Ferris gave a written statement of support as we prepared
to file the suit, joined us for a neighborhood organizing meeting, and publicly stated his
opposition to the project on his campaign trail.
But in his public statement last week, Mr. Ferris shows that not only has he reversed his
opposition to the project, he is willing to collaborate with the developer behind closed doors and
lie about it.
Mr. Ferris’s statement includes the following falsehoods:
“[I am] doing everything in my power to avoid unnecessary and expensive legal actions
whose cost will be borne by the taxpayers.”
“The contract closing date was not extended.”
“The City of Hudson cannot unilaterally cancel the contract.”
“Much of this was discussed at a March 6 meeting attended by myself, Council President
Morris, Mill Street petitioners, and the respective legal representatives.”
Let’s start with the Mayor’s statement about March 6th. On that date, our neighborhood
enthusiastically offered to cooperate with the newly elected administration on settling the case,
explicitly to stop wasting city funds. We asked that the new mayor recognize the 40 pages of
municipal documents acknowledging the parcel as parkland, so as not to waste taxpayer dollars
waiting for a judge to recognize what the city record already plainly shows. In that same
meeting, we had our attorney explain that the City can choose to exit their contract with the
Kearney group at any time, without penalty, and that city governments are very rarely held liable
for doing so.
The Mayor said all of two sentences in that meeting, namely, “I’m Joe Ferris the Mayor and I’m
just here to listen,” and “Thank you everyone for your time.” It is a complete fabrication that
anyone--our neighborhood, or Council President Morris--were clued in on the Mayor’s actual
intention to singlehandedly extend the developer’s contract once it expired. No other strategies
to resolve the case were offered. No one from City government responded to our settlement
offer in any way.
That alone should clarify that the Mayor is not “avoiding unnecessary and expensive legal
actions.” In fact, the City’s next move after our meeting was to pursue an unnecessary
additional legal step, a Motion to Dismiss, that delayed the judge’s ruling by months. This
wasteful attempt to throw out our case was rejected by the judge on every point. (You can read
the judge’s opinion here).
When Mayor Ferris says, “the contract closing date was not extended,” is Mayor Ferris playing
word games, or does he not understand the impact of the document he signed? The contract
had a clear closing date (May 3rd, 2026), after which the City administration could exit or
declare a default. Instead, he collaborated with the developer on an amendment that has no
predictable end date at all.
But the amendment does more damage than keeping the Mill Street Lofts project on lifeline.
Mayor Ferris bargained away the City’s leverage over its real estate in exchange for nothing.
The extension ignores that the Kearney Group completely abandoned work on the State Street
apartments and Rossman Avenue townhouses that are bound up in the same contract and
promised in their original proposal. He signed the amendment without any public process and
kept it out of the public record until Council President Morris formally requested it 6 weeks later.
When Carla Sadoff, candidate for 4th Ward supervisor, asked if he had amended the contract at
his town hall on May 18th, he dodged the question and feigned ignorance. All this from the
Mayor that ran on government transparency and accountability!
There is one sentence in the Mayor’s statement that does ring true, and that is, “it was
necessary to execute the amendment to maintain the status quo.” For over a year, the City has
been indefinitely bound to an underperforming developer with a terrible plan for our
neighborhood, with the City and the neighborhood footing legal bills while we wait for a judge to
explain the obvious. Mayor Ferris is 100% correct that he took the action that would be most
likely to maintain that status quo.
Mayor Ferris: This is not what you were elected for. Your obligations are to your constituents
and to legal process, not to protect the interests of an outside developer. We demand that you
honor your campaign promises to our neighborhood to extract the City from this deeply flawed
project, and terminate or relocate the Mill Street Lofts deal.
