11 Warren Street Update

It's been almost three months since Ray Jurkowski, Commissioner of Public Works for Columbia County, and the team from LaBella Associates presented these three options for exterior improvements to 11 Warren Street.

The plan, as explained by Jurkowski at the time, was to cobble together the input from the workshop and from a survey to create one final design, which would be presented in a second "public charette workshop." That was on June 9. Now, on the penultimate day of August, there is no information about when that workshop might take place.

In the meantime, at its July 10 meeting, the Historic Preservation Commission weighed in, suggesting the best thing that could be done would be to use landscaping to screen the building and make it as unnoticeable as possible. 

The building, a failed strip mall from the 1970s, is located on a premier block in a National Register and locally designated historic district. People must pass it to get from the city's central commercial district to Promenade Hill and the waterfront. It is, obviously, a noncontributing structure, but noncontributing structures are subject to review by the Historic Preservation Commission. Jurkowski has maintained that the county is exempt from Hudson's preservation ordinance. Gossips has never accepted that, and now, it seems, the City is not accepting it either.

At Friday's meeting of the Historic Preservation Commission, Phil Forman, who chairs the commission, reported that he had written to the county suggesting that plans for exterior alterations to 11 Warren Street come before the HPC. He described his communication as "polite and whiny." He said that Nick Fox, our code enforcement officer, had also contacted the county requesting that the project come before the HPC. Forman described Fox's communication as "less polite and not whiny." Presumably both communications were sent to Jurkowski. 

There has been no response to either of the requests--Forman's or Fox's. Forman indicated that the next step is for the city attorney to contact the county attorney. It wasn't clear if by "city attorney" Forman meant Victoria Polidoro, who is legal counsel to the HPC, or Andy Howard, who is corporation counsel. Summing up the situation, Forman said, "We shouldn't be in the position of begging. They are in violation."

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