The first two episodes of the public hearing on the Hudson Housing Authority's proposed redevelopment, which took place on July 21 and August 11, saw a preponderance of support for the project. This past Tuesday, things were a bit different. A group clad in green T-shirts bearing the acronym FoSS (Friends of Second Street) turned out to express their concerns about the project and its impact on the surrounding neighborhood.
The people in the green shirts dominated the public hearing, expressing concerns about the timeline for the project and the impact of construction on the neighborhood; phasing and what happens if no funding is available to demolish the existing buildings; increased population density; changing the landscape of the neighborhood and constructing buildings "not in keeping with Hudson."
Misgivings and opposition to the project were also voiced by people not identifying themselves as Friends of Second Street. Steve Dunn expressed fiscal concerns. Noting that the number of units was increasing from 135 to 276, Dunn commented, "My concern is that if most of these residents are not paying [property] taxes, given the burden on the school system, that it's going to force a tax increase for the city, and once there's a tax increase, then the value of the homes goes down, and then you have to raise taxes even further to close the gap."
Phil Forman, who chairs the Historic Preservation Commission, prefaced his comments by saying, "I would love to advocate for this project . . . but it makes no sense to me." He went on to say:
It feels to me that we are solving problems at a level of detail on behalf of the builder, and I don't see the flexibility there, since they're sticking to their economic model in terms of number of units that they need to meet their numbers. It does not, in my mind, relate to the urgency of the need to take care of the folks at Bliss, and that should happen within a year not three years. I doesn't relate to a fundamental tragedy about Hudson that needs to be addressed, which is multi-generational poverty.
Forman noted that the project does not include a grocery store or simple amenities that would "make life possible to have some joy." He expressed the opinion that the project needs to be reconsidered and the Planning Board "needs to step back and say, 'Who are we working for?'-- to make the builder wealthy on this project or for the people of the City of Hudson?"
The public hearing, which was the first item on the agenda for a meeting that started at 6:00 p.m., didn't begin until 7:20 p.m. Prior to that, a series of engineers, consultants, and attorneys for the project made presentations. Of interest from those eighty minutes is the statement by John Madeo, speaking for Mountco, HHA's development partner, acknowledging that "it is critical that we have a certain number of units to make the project economically feasible." Of the "mixed income" status of the project, which isn't all that mixed--82 percent for incomes up to 50 percent of AMI; 15 percent for incomes up to 60 percent; 3 percent for incomes up to 80 percent (extremely low, very low, and low income)--Madeo said, "We need rents that are higher to offset the really low rents." He also admitted the removal of retail space from the first floor of the building proposed for State Street was an "economic decision."
Also of interest, Madeo said they were reducing the number of four-bedroom units and increasing the number of one-bedroom units. Of this he commented, "That's going to have a lesser impact on the community in terms of number of people on the site, impact on the school district and services."
Planning Board member Peter Spear pointed out a change in the number of street-level entrances to the building proposed for State Street. In May, there were several entrances, each supporting a small number of apartments. Somewhere between May and August that changed, and the building is now to have one principal entrance. Spear characterized the change as moving from "small, neighborhood scale" to "institutional scale." Alex Gorlin, principal of the architectural firm working on the project, explained that the change was based "entirely on security" and also on cost and accessibility--multiple entrances would require multiple elevators.
Two decisions of note were made at Tuesday's meeting. First, the board voted to close the public hearing, which means the board has sixty-two days to make a decision about granting site plan approval. The time can be extended by mutual consent, but if there is no agreement to extend the time and a decision is not made within sixty-two days, the project is approved by default. Second, the board agreed to hold a special meeting, devoted solely to this project, on Wednesday, September 30, at 6:00 p.m. The meeting is expected to take up the issues of design and configuration of the project. Madeo indicated a "logistics plan" would be ready for review a week before the meeting.
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I was at that meeting and Phil Forman's comment stood out to me as well. Unfortunately, it was also entirely misunderstood immediately by Claire Cousin, who took it too literally.
ReplyDeleteWhat Phil was talking about was that there's a surprisingly fine line here that is separating the prospective tenants of the new Bliss from a good plan. What separates them from that is Mountco's desire to maximize profits which will come at the expense of Bliss residents and Hudson as a whole for decades to come.
There are basic things that could be in the plan that aren't being considered for spurious reasons. I sat next to Jeff Dodson and I asked him why the ground-floor retail was axed. He explained to me that it was because they went from five to four stories and thus they had to put in five additional residential units on the first floor. That was after he conceded to me that this part of the city was a bit of a food desert.
This is bogus. Going from 276 to 271 units would not make the whole project financially nonviable. It might, perhaps and probably not even, reduce someone's profits slightly. It would however be a price worth paying.
But no one is innocent here. The obsession with the height of the buildings is what caused this calamity in the first place. Five stories was apparently too much for Hudson to handle and now you get four stories but no mixed use and that will be an outcome worse than what was proposed last year.
My understanding is that the ZBA just now approved the height variance and that effectively locks in the current design. It should have been five stories but mixed use and retail on the ground floor all along. That lack of imagination is what Phil was talking about, I believe.
Also props to Peter Spear, who I ran into yesterday, for bringing up some of the other issues, such as the number of street-level entrances. There was a particularly strange interaction between him and Jeff Dodson when Dodson compared the building to a hotel and used that as a justification for the design and lack of entrances. Peter, rightly, was entirely flabbergasted by that comparison.
I’m ever so slightly lost on a minor issue: who’s the landlord? I thought it was to be HHA as it’s the landlord now.
ReplyDeleteEvery commercial contractor I’ve dealt with and read of made their money through development and construction. So whether there are X or Y units, and whether those units are residential or commercial/retail, rental or condo, the contractor gets paid to build. The finished project profitability equation is the landlord’s worry, not the contractors.
So, why is the developer insisting they need X units instead of Y for their profitability? This makes no sense to me.
When things don’t make sense on a protean basis, they rarely make sense on a larger, broader basis, either. So it’s very difficult for us regular folks, observing this typically divisive Hudson conversation from a slight remove, to see this entire project as anything more than a contractor preparing to milk a community and a housing authority in thrall to a grandiose plan for the sake of their own collective ego.
At no point has anyone — ANYONE — made or tried to make the argument that this project is rational, good for Hudson and its citizens, and fiscally responsible. Not once.