How It All Began: The Warren Street Project

By now, most Gossips readers are familiar with the Hudson Vision Plan, the twenty-year-old planning document that informed the development which has happened so far on the waterfront and was heavily referenced by NYS Secretary of State Randy Daniels in his 2005 decision that brought an end to the proposed St. Lawrence Cement plant. The grassroots citizens' effort that produced that document had other results as well, which are not as well known or remembered.

In 1994, the Hudson Opera House, Inc., the newly formed not-for-profit that had just purchased 347 Warren Street, the 1855 building which had started out as Hudson's city hall, was awarded a Hudson River Valley Greenway grant to hire consultants to help envision Hudson's future. Led by a core group of HOH board members, about 150 Hudson residents and business owners--some newcomers to Hudson, some not--organized to advance the visioning process. They formed committees and met every month, devoting half of the meeting time to presentations on various topics by various people and the other half to committee planning sessions.

One of the Vision Plan committees was the Business & Historic Preservation Committee. (It was prescient that those two topics should be combined.) That committee set for itself the task of inventorying every building on Warren Street. The mile-long street was divvied up by blocks, and committee members visited every building to find out who owned the building and how it was being used. To accompany this data, the committee wanted a photograph of each building. As good fortune would have it, photographer Lynn Davis, who had established her reputation in a joint show with Robert Mapplethorpe in 1979, and her husband, screenwriter Rudy Wurlitzer, were members of the Business & Historic Preservation Committee. Davis was between projects, so Wurlitzer suggested that she take up the task, and she did.

Over the next two years--1994 and 1995--Davis photographed every one of the more than 300 buildings on Hudson's main street. Wurlitzer would drive her up and down Warren Street in the early morning and late afternoon, when the light was good, in search of buildings without cars parked in front of them. She preferred to shoot in the winter, when the view of the buildings was not obscured by foliage on the trees. When the daunting task was finally complete, two things had happened. The Business & Historic Preservation Committee spawned an independent Historic Preservation Committee, and the entire Vision Plan initiative crumbled in the fall of 1995, during a bitterly fought mayoral campaign that pitted incumbent Rick Scalera, then seeking his second term, against a challenger who had the support of many involved in the Vision Plan, Lou Boyce.

In the spring of 1996, Davis showed some prints from what she called "The Warren Street Project" to the members of the Historic Preservation Committee, who had come together again months after the Vision Plan initiative had ended. They were awestruck. These were not simple photographs to document buildings in a particular period in time; they were portraits--works of art. In that moment, the defunct Historic Preservation Committee determined to transform itself into what would be the not-for-profit Historic Hudson and to launch its mission of promoting the appreciation and preservation of Hudson's architectural heritage by exhibiting all the images in Davis's Warren Street Project as its inaugural event.

On October 12, 1996, a month-long exhibition of The Warren Street Project opened at the Carrie Haddad Gallery. Carrie Haddad, whose art gallery was the first in Hudson, was a member of the Vision Plan Historic Preservation Committee and one of the founding members of Historic Hudson. Although the gala inaugural event didn't happen until evening, the installation of The Warren Street Project, which requires 200 linear feet of display space, was completed that morning. Throughout the afternoon, people wandered into the gallery to have a look. Gossips (of course, the blog Gossips didn't exist at the time) was there to witness a local woman, who had undoubtedly walked past these buildings every day, study several feet of images, then turn, and say with amazement, "I never realized how beautiful these buildings are!"

In 1996, this amazing collection of photographs was exhibited to inspire appreciation for Hudson's architectural heritage. Twenty years later, in 2016, the collection will be exhibited again, in its entirety, for the first time in two decades, to celebrate not only Historic Hudson's twentieth anniversary but also the power of historic architecture and its preservation to revive a city and all the individuals whose investments and commitment to historic preservation made it happen.

During the entire month of October 2016, Lynn Davis's monumental Warren Street Project will be exhibited at Vincent Mulford Antiques, 419 Warren Street. A gala opening of the exhibition will take place on Saturday, October 1, from 6 to 8 p.m. For more information and to reserve your place at the opening celebration, visit www.historichudson.org. 
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More Trees Down

Once upon a time, there was a pair of glorious chestnut trees in front of 400 State Street--trees that may well have been planted when the building was briefly (1865-1880) the home of the wealthy river boat owner George H. Power or later when it became the Hudson Orphan Asylum.

Around 1995, the spreading chestnut trees were cut down on the order of the superintendent of the Hudson City School District, which then owned the building although the Hudson Area Library inhabited most of it. The loss of the trees was mourned by just about everyone in the community. The building looked shockingly stark without the trees that had been there for decades, and money was raised to replace the trees.

Photo: Byrne Fone

Around 1996, two tulip trees were planted in front of the building to replace the lost chestnuts, but they were small trees, and in the first year, the trunk of one of them was snapped by vandals in the night. A few years later, the library board decided to move the surviving tulip tree--still small enough to be moved--and plant a pair of locust trees in front of the building. That plan was not carried out as intended, because the nurseryman who had agreed to plant the locusts did not think there was a suitable place in the yard for the tulip tree. So, he planted only one locust. For years, the building had a locust to the west of the entrance and a tulip tree to the east.

Although there was a regrettable lack of symmetry, both trees flourished and were achieving maturity, until today.

This afternoon, both trees were cut down. A Gossips reader provided these pictures. 
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Important Meeting Reminder

Tomorrow night--Tuesday, September 13--the Waterfront Advisory Steering Committee is holding a public forum to hear ideas for the adaptive reuse of the Dunn building on Hudson's waterfront.

A request for proposals is now being drafted for the redevelopment of the building and also the vacant property north of the building, all owned by the City of Hudson. The public input is being gathered in the hope that it will inform the RFP process. 

The waterfront forum will take place at the Hudson Senior Center, 51 North Fifth Street, second floor, and begins at 6 p.m.
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Fifteen Years Ago . . .

Big Bed Head or Big Head Bed?

Remember the giant papier-mâché heads depicting Wizard of Oz characters that appeared in the Pride Parade back in 2012 and 2013? One or several of them will be making a comeback on September 24 in the Hudson Bed Races.

Photo: Hudson Pride Foundation

Rich Volo, a.k.a. Trixie Starr, announced today the latest entry in the competition: the Big Head Bed. 

The bed races are just two weeks away, so now is the time to enter and get ready for the competition. All you need to do is:

• Recruit four friends.
• Put wheels on a bed.
• Decorate it.
• Race it down Warren Street.

The bed races will take place at 2 p.m. on Saturday, September 24. Go to www.hudsonbedraces.com for more information and to register your bed in the race.
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Pedestrian Crosswalks

At her "State of the City" town meeting back in May, Mayor Tiffany Martin Hamilton talked about crosswalks. 

She spoke of the new stand-alone signs to mark the crosswalks, which over the summer have appeared in various places throughout the city. She also described a pedestrian safety initiative to be undertaken by the Hudson Police Department, which involved stopping every vehicle on Warren Street on one weekend to hand out information about the law as it pertains to pedestrian crosswalks, giving drivers warnings the next week if they failed to yield to pedestrians in crosswalks, and after that issuing tickets to drivers for crosswalk violations. This plan may have been implemented by the HPD sometime over the summer, but I missed it.

Our present-day crosswalk woes came to mind this afternoon when I stumbled upon this item in the Hudson Daily Evening Register for October 29, 1889.

Bear in mind that in 1889 the drivers who were enjoined to "get out of the way of pedestrians" were driving horse-drawn carriages and wagons. 

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Second and Diamond Street in 1889

A research project has me reading issues of the Hudson Register from 1889. This morning, I discovered two items about the same corner in Hudson, which appeared within two days of each other in October 1889. The curious coincidence and the nature of the two stories inspired me to share them both. 

The corner in question was the intersection of Second and Diamond streets--Diamond Street, of course, now being Columbia Street. On October 21, the Daily Evening Register reported the disturbing story of a baby falling into the sewer.

Two days later, on October 23, the Daily Evening Register reported on a resolution before the Common Council to install a street lamp--an arc lamp--at the corner of Diamond and Second streets. The resolution failed because providing a street lamp at Diamond and Second streets required taking it from where it was already installed, on East Court Street, "between the Reformatory and the Court House." The majority of the aldermen believed that a street lamp was a necessity "on the avenue leading to the State House of Refuge."

The House of Refuge, a reformatory for women, had been established just two years earlier, in 1887, at the southern end of East Court Street, where the Hudson Correctional Facility is located today.

Photo source: Prison Public Memory Project

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Draken Watch

According to a report received about forty minutes ago, the crew of the Viking longship Draken is setting up the mast in preparation for the journey down the Hudson River to Kingston. 

It  is being predicted that the ship will pass Hudson sometime between 2 and 6 p.m. If you've got the afternoon free, you may want to spend it at the waterfront waiting for the Draken.
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Mayor Endorses Fair & Equal

Yesterday morning, Peter Frank and Beth Kanaga, representatives of the Fair & Equal Campaign, delivered to City Hall far more than the required number of signatures to ensure that the proposition to eliminate Hudson's weighted vote system and create wards of equal population will be on the ballot in November. In a statement released yesterday afternoon, the Fair & Equal Campaign declared: "The power to correct this egregious voting system no longer lies with the dysfunctional Common Council. Thanks to your enthusiastic support, it belongs to the citizens of Hudson."

This morning, Mayor Tiffany Martin Hamilton released the following statement expressing her support for the Fair & Equal proposition.

In my campaign for mayor, I promised transparency and inclusion, and to try to overcome the dysfunction that existed within city government. With your help, I have worked to rebuild Hudson's infrastructure, both physical and administrative, and in these past nine months we've made real progress. The Ferry Street Bridge--a symbol for many of a broken Hudson--is finally on the road to repair, as is the city’s website, our most basic means of providing essential information to residents, visitors, etc. Our governmental infrastructure is also getting healthier. 

We now have an opportunity to fix something else that's been broken for a very long time: the unequal power of Hudson's citizens based solely on where they live. I fully support the proposal of the Fair & Equal Campaign to redraw our ward boundaries so that their populations will be equal, and so that each alderman will have the same power in the Common Council.

Surely, the hostility that has too often disrupted the Common Council is at least partly rooted in the fact that some aldermen know their votes are worth half--or less--than others' votes. And I'm convinced that one reason we have such low voter turnout and citizen participation in government is because people in some wards just wonder why they should bother, when their votes count for so little. If a system of unequal ward populations and weighted votes was a good idea, wouldn't it be in use in cities everywhere--instead of only here in Hudson and nowhere else in the country?

The Fair & Equal Campaign has proposed a thoughtful and unbiased redrawing of our ward boundaries that respects existing communities as much as possible, and achieves almost perfectly equal ward populations. As cities everywhere do, we will have the chance to revise the map every ten years based on the U.S. Census. Our existing ward map might have made sense in 1886, when it was drawn. But now we have a chance to pull Hudson into the 21st Century and bring every citizen full and equal citizenship, which is our Constitutional right.

I urge you to support the Fair & Equal initiative in November when it comes up for a citywide vote.

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Talk of Trees

As announced, at the Conservation Advisory Council meeting on Tuesday, the discussion was about trees and developing a tree strategy. The CAC decided to put off more ambitious projects--enacting a tree ordinance, establishing a sidewalk tax district, amending City law as it pertains to trees in the public right of way--in favor of pursuing more immediately attainable goals:

• Doing a comprehensive tree inventory that would include such information as tree species, tree condition, utilities within the tree zone, and building setback.
• Developing an Urban Street Tree List, based on existing information from urban forestry experts, that not only specifies tree species that are tolerant of urban conditions but also recommends trees for specific street conditions--for example, under utility wires, along narrow sidewalks.
• Creating planting guidelines, based on current research from arborists and urban forestry specialists, to ensure the trees' long-term survival. 
• Designing a specific tree planting plan for North Front Street, where, according to CAC chair Jonathan Lerner, the ash trees are doomed and Hudson Terrace is an "interested partner." The plan would plant new trees between the ash trees so that, when the ash trees must be cut, the street will not be completely devoid of trees. 

An audience member stressed the importance of finding ways to plant trees to prevent tree roots from pushing up sidewalks, noting that this was the reason a property owner found it necessary recently to cut down a tree in the 600 block of Warren Street that had been there for forty years. It was also pointed out that the Galvan Foundation is currently engaged in a tree planting initiative, but if the trees were not planted in a way that addresses the problem of roots heaving sidewalks, those trees will be at risk of having to be removed when or before they reach maturity. Alderman Henry Haddad (Third Ward), who was present at the meeting, suggested a moratorium on tree planting until appropriate guidelines could be established.

CAC member Carol Smillie urged that the CAC not overlook the need to educate the community about the value of street trees and the need for a sensible tree ordinance to protect and maintain street trees. She made the point that when presented with a number of corporate logos and leaves from trees, most people could identify the logos and not the species of tree each leaf came from. She suggested they find ways to engage the community, especially children--scavenger hunts, tree walking tours--in learning about trees and their benefits.

CAC member Dale Schafer, who was named "Chief of Trees" by Lerner, agreed to research and make recommendations for tree planting guidelines between now the CAC's next meeting, which will take place on October 4.   
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Update on Tomorrow's Planning Board Meeting

Yesterday, Gossips speculated that Colarusso's proposal to create a haul road from its facility on Newman Road to the river would be a topic of discussion at the Planning Board meeting tomorrow night. I have since learned that there will be no discussion of the Colarusso application at the Planning Board meeting, although the meeting will be held and other issues addressed. It seems that lead agency has not yet been determined. The following is an excerpt from the draft minutes of the Greenport Planning Board's August 23 meeting.

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News from the Board of Elections

At the beginning of April, many were shocked when James Dolan, a controversial figure from Hudson's recent past, was hired to be the election specialist for the Democrats at the Board of Elections. Then, a couple of weeks ago, Hilary Hillman surprised Democrats when she announced she was stepping down as the Democratic deputy commissioner, a position she had held since 2008. That position has since been filled by Diane Boice-Yorck, who lives in Claverack. 

Even more noteworthy, at least to those who have been around for a while, is a change of personnel on the Republican side. Geeta Cheddie, who served as Democratic deputy commissioner for several years during the first decade of the 21st century, before Virginia Martin became the commissioner, served one term (2010-2011) as First Ward alderman, at the end of which she publicly and angrily renounced her affiliation with the Democrats, and then ran unsuccessfully for reelection as a Republican, is now working as the election specialist for the Republicans.
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More Lasts

This past weekend was the unofficial last weekend of summer. The upcoming weekend will see a couple of more "lasts": the last concert in Historic Hudson's summer chamber music series, and the last opportunity this year to visit the legendary Dr. Oliver Bronson House on the grounds of the Hudson Correctional Facility.

Photo: lizcnyc|Flickr

On  Saturday, September 10, at 2 p.m., the 21-member ensemble Contemporaneous will perform at the Bronson House, Hudson's only National Historic Landmark. The program, which is being called "In Old Virginny," will include new and recent works by four young composers: Katherine Balch (b. 1991), David Bloom (b. 1990), Ian Gottlieb (b. 1990), and Shawn Jaeger (b. 1985).

Visit contemporaneous.org to learn more about this exciting young ensemble. Visit historichudson.org to secure your place at the performance.
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Meetings of Interest This Week

Today, Tuesday, September 6, the Conservation Advisory Council meets at 6 p.m. in Council Chambers at City Hall. The principal item on the agenda for the meeting is developing a comprehensive strategy for planting and maintaining street trees. 

On Thursday, September 8, the Planning Board meets at 6:30 p.m. in Council Chambers at City Hall. Although the agendas for Planning Board meetings haven't been published in advance since May 2015, when Don Tillson stepped down as chair, there is a very good chance that Colarusso's proposed haul road, from Newman Road to the Hudson waterfront, will be a topic of discussion. At the August meeting, it was revealed that, although Planning Board chair Tom DePietro initially suggested that the Greenport Planning Board should be the lead agency for the SEQR (State Environmental Quality Review) process, the two planning boards were now vying for the status of lead agency, since Greenport was unwilling to accept the status of "co-lead agency" with Hudson. It was also clarified by Pat Prendergast, the engineer employed by Colarusso for this project, that, contrary to an assertion made by Carmine Pierro, member and former chair of the Planning Board, the proposed haul road had never received previous approval from the Hudson Planning Board.
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Fair & Equal Moves Ahead

Over the weekend, the Fair & Equal Campaign announced that it would be canvassing this fall, going door to door explaining the inequity of Hudson's weighted vote system, why it matters, and how it can be changed at the polls this November. 

This morning, the campaign confirmed that it has met the requirements to have the initiative to create wards of equal population appear on the ballot in November. The press release announcing that follows:

Tomorrow, September 7, at 10 a.m., the Fair & Equal Campaign will present to City Clerk Tracy Delaney far more than the required number of signatures to finally give Hudson voters the choice of replacing the weighted vote system on Election Day. 

Repeatedly in the last year, the Common Council chose not to create a public process to address the weighted vote. A group of Hudson residents took the only reasonable and expedient alternative and put the issue directly in the hands of the people. They established Fair & Equal to draw a new ward map and place it on the ballot this November. Instead of the current unfair ward boundaries, which give some aldermen nearly four times the voting power of others, the proposed map establishes wards of equal population and equal voting power in the Council.

There is no doubt that a significant number of Hudson residents enthusiastically support this referendum initiative. While required initially to present the signatures of 152 voters, Fair & Equal presented 318. The Common Council’s response was to block the initiative, and defend the weighted vote. Then, to override this Council failure, Fair & Equal was required to collect another 76 signatures. In fact, the signatures of an additional 120 voters will be presented to the City tomorrow. This widespread support from all five wards ensures that Fair & Equal’s proposed ward map will be on the ballot. The power to correct the City’s unfair and very likely unconstitutional ward system no longer lies with the dysfunctional Common Council. It belongs to Hudson’s citizens.

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Public Forum Next Week

As Gossips has reported, the Common Council Economic Development Committee, assisted by Bill Roehr of TGW Consultants and HDC executive director Sheena Salvino, is moving ahead with a request for proposals (RFP) for the Dunn building on the waterfront and the adjacent vacant land along Water Street.

To  assist in gathering input from the community about the kind of development people want to see on the waterfront, the Waterfront Advisory Steering Committee is holding a public forum on Tuesday, September 13, at 6 p.m., at the Hudson Senior Center, 51 North Fifth Street, second floor.  

A study completed last year by Saratoga Associates called Dunn Warehouse Adaptive Reuse: Redevelopment Analysis and Master Plan is central to the discussion about developing the waterfront. That study can be found on the City of Hudson website. 
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Sailing Down the Hudson

A replica Viking longship, Draken Harald Hårfagre, which set sail from Norway in April, arrived in Canada in early June, and has been sailing around the Great Lakes for most of the summer, will soon be journeying down the Hudson River.

Right now, the Draken is in Central New York, making its way through the canal system, but on September 9 it will begin a four-day stay at the Hudson River Maritime Museum in Kingston. Between now and then, it will have to sail right by us. You can monitor Draken's progress here to try to predict when that will happen.
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Mark Your Calendars

Wyndcliffe (or Wyndclyffe), the magnificent ruin that was once the home of Elizabeth Schermerhorn Jones, Edith Wharton's aunt, and inspired the expression "keeping up with the Jones," is to be sold in a bankruptcy auction on September 21, at 11 a.m., at the LaGuardia Airport Marriott Hotel. 

Rob Yasinac|Hudson Valley Ruins

The following details about the property are provided in the auction notice:

Much has been written about Wyndcliffe. Here are the links to some of what's been written:

"Lying in Ruins with the Joneses," Mission: History

"Wyndclyffe," Hudson Valley Ruins by Rob Yasinsac

"Keeping Up with the Joneses: The 'Haunting' of Wyndclyffe Mansion, AbandonedNYC

"Wyndcliffe Mansion," Atlas Obscura

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Thanks to Peter Jung for bringing this to our attention

Same Block, Different Eras

The filming for the TV drama Z: The Beginning of Everything that took place on the 300 block of Allen Street last week put me in mind of another movie that included scenes shot in the same part of the city, as well as many others: Ironweed. 

Last week, Hudson was Montgomery, Alabama, in the 1920s. In 1987, when Ironweed was filmed here, it was Albany in 1937, one of the worst years of the Great Depression. 

Looking for scenes from the movie that showed the 300 block of Allen Street and the area around the courthouse, I stumbled upon this article in the UPI Archives about Hudson and the filming of Ironweed, which was published on November 7, 1986: "City becomes 'tinsel town outpost.'" If you read the article (and I recommend you do), here is some background information for those of us who weren't here in 1986. The Mariner restaurant was located at 523 Warren Street, where Earth Foods was for many years and where the new pizzeria Oak just opened. Marsh's department store was located at 551 Warren Street, the building purchased last year and renovated by Colin Stair.

The scenes included above are screen captures from Ironweed. The entire movie can now be viewed on YouTube.
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Before the Era of the Automobile

I found this little item in the Hudson Daily Register for October 21, 1889, and I couldn't resist sharing it.

This picture, found among the photographs Byrne Fone assembled for this book Historic Hudson: An Architectural Portrait, shows West Court Street as it would have appeared in 1889.

The house that now stands at 39 West Court Street is missing; it was not built until 1894-1895. The last house on Allen Street, which appears dead ahead in this picture, was in 1889 the home of Casper P. Collier, Esq. The house was demolished sometime in the late 1970s or very early 1980s, and the parking lot for the courthouse has taken its place, but in the 1930s the house was photographed by Walker Evans.

Walker Evans Archive|Metropolitan Museum of Art

Addendum: Since I published this post yesterday, several readers have provided, in comments and in emails, information about the house that once stood at 363 Allen Street. It turns out that the possible dates I gave for its demise were off by a decade. Up until at least 1974, the Columbia County Department of Health was located in the house, before that department moved to the Charles Williams School (now the Second Ward Foundation). A reader who lives in sight of this house told me it was still standing when he moved here in 1978. He shared these recollections about the house and its demolition: "[It] had become decrepit, but was taken down surreptitiously (presumably by the county) on a Saturday so that no one could file an official objection. It was rumored that someone had access and removed some of the architectural details before the demolition, but I don't know if that's true. I remember discussing the demolition with our neighbor Raymond Kennedy (then owner of the Register-Star newspaper), who told me that he had flown to Washington, D.C., that Saturday for a dinner and, returning from the county airport late that night, he rounded the corner from Union Street onto West Court and thought he had died because there was nothing but a void in front of him where that house had stood all his life; he was very shaken."

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Comment Period Extended

Carolyn Marks Blackwood announced on Facebook yesterday and Scenic Hudson announced in an eblast today that the U.S. Coast Guard has extended the public comment period for the proposed commercial anchorages in the Hudson River from Wednesday, September 7, to Tuesday, December 6.

According to Scenic Hudson, the extension comes after a request from U.S. Senators Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand and U.S. Representives Eliot Engel, Chris Gibson, Nita Lowey, and Sean Patrick Maloney.

To submit a comment to the Coast Guard, click here.
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In Space and in Hudson: 1969

In 1969, Apollo 11 landed on the Moon, and Neil Armstrong became the first human to set foot on the lunar surface. Back on Earth, 1969 saw some pretty memorable things happen right here in Hudson. 

As we've already noted, the struggle to save the landmark General Worth Hotel was underway. On September 15, there was a public hearing that brought Columbia architecture professor James Marston Fitch and other notables from the world of historic preservation to Hudson to argue for the building's preservation. 

The Common Council minutes for 1969 make interesting reading. So engaged, I recently discovered that on October 21, 1969, two resolutions, which from the vantage point of 2016 seem curiously related, were adopted. The first (Resolution 5 for that month) opened Willard Place, which had been a private street since it was established in 1872, as a "public highway." 

The second resolution (Resolution 6) committed the City to obliterating Chapel Street and along with it Rope Alley west of Second Street. 

Final action on both resolutions was taken at a special meeting held on November 10, 1969. At both meetings--the one in October and the one in November--the members of the Council present voted unanimously in support of the two actions. Alderman J. Neill Sullivan (Fifth Ward) was absent for the vote on October 21; aldermen David W. Bartholomew (Fifth Ward) and Edward J. Pell, Sr. (Second Ward) were absent on November 10.
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Don't Miss Out

The Hudson Bed Races are happening on Saturday, September 24--just three weeks away! It's time to enter and be a part of it.

Photo: Paul Abitabile

Here's what you need to do:

• Find four friends.
• Put wheels on a bed.
• Decorate it.
• Race it down Warren Street.

In addition to the cheers and adulation of the assembled crowds, you could win fabulous prizes! 

Go to www.hudsonbedraces.com to register your team.
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The State of the Ashes

Gossips has on a few occasions bemoaned the fate of Hudson's ash trees--all located on North Front Street. This morning, Jonathan Lerner, chair of the Conservation Advisory Council, sent Gossips the following report on the assessment of the ash trees and gave permission to share it with readers.

Summary Assessment of Front Street Ash Trees

The 18 ash trees on Front Street have been review by several professional arborists, and representatives of the Department of Environmental Conservation, all of whom have determined that the trees are infested with Emerald Ash Borer (EAB). Because the trees were previously stressed for a number of reasons, the trees were easy targets for the EAB infestation. EAB can be treated by inoculating the trunks with a systemic insecticide, but to be effective, this treatment must reoccur every two to three years.

Several of the infected Ash trees have large dead branches, which if they fall are a safety hazard to pedestrians and motorists. A severe storm, especially a winter ice storm will likely bring those branches down.

Even if the trees are treated for EAB, the likelihood of them living beyond another 5 years, in their current stressed condition, is minimal. The reason for this is the conditions of the base of the trees, which include girdled roots; poor root pruning due to adjacent sidewalk work; undersized tree wells; and granite cobbles, placed evidently when the trees were young and now embedded in their roots. The last two issues are particularly bad, since the trunks and roots are growing into them causing poor moisture and nutrient uptake by the trees. Additionally, the trees have declined from improper pruning in the past.

A holistic approach to saving the trees would be costly, since it includes treating for the EAB infestation, pruning and shaping the tree canopies, enlarging tree well sizes in the sidewalk, removing the granite cobbles, and deep watering and fertilizing. Even with this holistic approach it is unlikely that the trees will live more than 10 more years. When asked for another solution, the last arborist to review the Ash trees provided the following recommendation:

1. “Safety prune” the trees to rid them of dead and dying branches, and lightly prune any branches that appear too heavy and may fall in a storm. Since any branches may be infested, when removed, they must be destroyed by chipping or burning so as not to spread the infestation. They must not be transported for use as firewood.

2. Deep root fertilization to give the trees a boost of healthy growth in the spring. (optional)

3. Plant one or two new trees, depending on available space, of another species between each of the existing ash trees. By planting new trees now, as the ash trees die, the new trees will become established. Waiting to plant new trees until after the Ash trees die and are taken down, will leave the street stark and barren. New trees should be planted in a condition that will ensure healthy growth and longevity, in properly prepared soil and in sidewalk cuts large enough to accommodate their growth to maturity. The CAC can provide a list of appropriate tree species for Front Street and description of proper tree planting practices.

Lerner stressed that the Conservation Advisory Council (CAC) intends to devise a planting plan for Front Street that would insert new trees to be there when the existing ones die, but warned: "Given the multiple challenges of making that happen--which include getting the DPW to agree to proper cuts in the sidewalk; finding funding; getting buy-in from the adjacent property owners; the irrationality of the current city tree code that makes [property owners] responsible for the maintenance of trees planted in the public right of way--even this relatively modest project is going to be complicated and might take a year or two to accomplish."

Developing a tree strategy is expected to be discussed at the CAC's September meeting, which is scheduled for Tuesday, September 6, at 6 p.m., in City Hall.
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"All Risk, No Reward"

That's how Democratic congressional candidate Zephyr Teachout summarized the impact of the proposal to establish commercial ship anchorages at ten locations on the Hudson River in a press conference yesterday at Rondout Creek in Kingston. She characterized the proposal, as many others have, as an explicit request for the Hudson River "to become a parking lot."

Teachout appeared with Ulster County Executive Michael Hein. Coverage of the event appears in the Kingston Daily Freeman: "Don't turn Hudson River into 'parking lot,' congressional candidate Teachout urges." The article is followed by links to several other articles on the issue that have appeared in the Daily Freeman.

The anchorage ground--forty-three berths in ten locations from Yonkers to Kingston--is being proposed by U.S. Coast Guard. Public comments and concerns are now being solicited. The deadline for submitting comments is September 7. Comments can be submitted by clicking here.
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