LWRP Redux

On July 28, the Common Council passed a resolution authorizing the mayor to submit an application to the New York State Department of State Environmental Protection Fund for a Local Waterfront Revitalization Program (LWRP) grant. The resolution explains the purpose of the grant in this way:

[T]he goal is to revise the City’s existing LWRP, incorporating new developments in parks and public access points in the past decade, while also addressing climate concerns and resilience features, pollution, and waterfront development pressures. The City is in need of a new plan to guide thoughtful and sustainable development along the waterfront that is cohesive and allows public uses and access while also increasing economic development activity and resiliency methods. What will come out of this process is a locally appropriate, climate resilient zoning and land use plan that will connect residents and tourists to the waterfront while increasing jobs, business activity, and unify varying plans across the waterfront boundary. The City of Hudson's Hudson River waterfront boundary extends approximately 1.5 miles from the Greenport Conservation Area wetlands south to Greenport, NY. . . . 

If the City is successful in getting the grant and embarks on revising the existing LWRP, it will be Hudson's third try at getting a properly adopted LWRP. This post, published in June 2013, provides some background about the fate of Hudson's first two attempts: "Our Foundering and Bewildering LWRP." That post and all its comments are recommended for anyone who wants to understand the history of Hudson's LWRP.

In 2013, when the post was written, there was uncertainty about two things: (1) if the LWRP had actually been submitted to the Department of State (DOS); (2) if the transfer of ownership of a parcel of land south of the dock from Holcim to the City of Hudson was in fact a condition for the DOS to review the document. In 2016, when Mayor Tiffany Martin re-created the Waterfront Advisory Steering Committee in an effort to revise the LWRP and get the DOS to review it, it was confirmed by the DOS that the document had never been submitted for review.

In 2016, something was also revealed about the land transfer. Probably beginning in early 2012, Cheryl Roberts, then the city attorney, was negotiating the transfer of land with Holcim's attorneys in Switzerland. Periodically, she would report at Common Council meetings on the progress of those negotiations. At some point, she reported that the negotiations had broken down, and the lawyers were no longer responding. In 2016, it was revealed that Colarusso, at the same time negotiating to buy Holcim's holdings in Greenport and Hudson, wanted that land to use as a staging area. The breakdown of Roberts' negotiations was concurrent with Colarusso's negotiations to buy the Holcim property. It is not unreasonable to believe that Colarusso's interests were in large part the reason the 2011 LWRP has never submitted and never approved by the DOS, although no one realized it at the time.

There is no doubt that something needs to be done about the LWRP. The LWRP adopted by the Common Council in 2011 makes it very clear that the use of the dock is a nonconforming conditional use, and there should be no expansion or intensification of the dock operations beyond what existed in November 2011, three years before Colarusso acquired the property. Yet last year, when the Planning Board was considering the conditional use permit for Colarusso's dock operations, they were advised by their attorney, Victoria Polidoro, that the LWRP was not legally binding because a map of the city's Local Waterfront Revitalization Area was not on file with the Department of State. 

The current and ongoing effort to amend the code to define the level of activity that existed in 2011 when the code was adopted--the level that, to quote the code, "shall not be enlarged, extended, or placed in a different portion of the lot or parcel of land occupied by such use on the effective date of this chapter, nor shall any external evidence of such use be increased by any means whatsoever"--is meeting with reluctance and downright resistance both from members of the Planning Board and from members of the Common Council. Interestingly, every meeting of the Planning Board and the Common Council at which there is a chance the amendment might be discussed is attended by one of Colarusso's team of lawyers.

If the City does get the grant and work begins on a revising and updating the LWRP, it is not clear what we can expect. The zeal to protect the waterfront and the environment from industrial uses, the zeal that sustained a seven-year-long battle against St. Lawrence Cement and informed the language of the LWRP, seems, inexplicably, to have waned. One thing is for certain, though. An attorney representing Colarusso will be present at every LWRP meeting and work session to ensure the interests of Colarusso take priority over the interests of the residents of Hudson and of other businesses and enterprises at the waterfront.

COPYRIGHT 2026 CAROLE OSTERINK