SamPratt.com

My friend John is correct that many businesses are gone today from the area, but for the record his dates are slightly off.

For example, Knickerbocker Cement closed in 1966, which was 44 years ago, not 30 years ago. Likewise, the Atlas closed in 1974-75, which was about 35 years ago. Some of the other businesses he mentions closed even longer ago, others more recently. And not everyone remembers all of these businesses fondly.

For example, many older residents complained about the reek of the Glue Factory back in the day. And even Cappy Pierro once said (to one of my relatives, outside a public hearing) that he remembered the “brown snow” from Atlas and Knickerbocker, and that he wouldn’t support any project if it was going to bring that back.

The big difference with many of these businesses is that their owners didn't live here, which made it a lot easier for them to leave. There are other businesses which did come here during the past quarter-century, such as HAVE, Inc. -- which makes a real effort to employ local workers and whose owners have permanent roots in the County.

The hard reality is that with labor so much cheaper overseas (whether in China, Mexico, or elsewhere), we are not going to re-create the Eisenhower Era economy no matter what. We have to focus realistically on the assets and features of our area that will provide lasting employment, without trashing the health and businesses of people who are already here.

The way to do that is to build patiently an economy based in locally-owned, smaller businesses -- so that if one business goes away, the loss can be sustained, and those jobs realistically replaced.

My father was born in Pittsfield, where the big employers were GE and its affiliates. When “the GE” closed, an entire thriving city died, and the company left behind PCBs in playgrounds, yards and the Housatonic River.

That’s what happens when one puts all of a town’s eggs into one or two big corporate baskets. If you take that basket away, all the eggs cracks. It’s not a safe model for long-term growth.

When I last ran into John, it was in a Greenport building supply store. Hudson used to have such a store, across from the train station, but it left for Greenport. I have to wonder: Where were our local leaders and paid economic development experts then? Could they have figured out a way to keep Dunn’s in Hudson?

At least an independent business, Strongtree, which roasts and ships coffee all around the country, and also serves coffee to locals and Amtrak patrons alike, had the initiative to move here from the West Coast into the empty Dunn’s building. They saw an opportunity and took it.

We ought to celebrate these business which came here, rather than looking back 30, 40, 50 or more years to a past which simply isn’t coming back, no matter how hard we close our eyes and try to live in the past.

One new job and a hot dog cart—that was Gene Hallenbeck’s idea of economic development during the St. Lawrence Cement fight, and apparently it’s still his idea now.

Here are the hard numbers, not from plant opponents, but from New York’s own Secretary of State back in 2005:

• “The new Greenport facility would directly employ 155 individuals after construction. There are currently 144 employees at the Catskill facility and 10 at the Greenport facility. The proposal would result in a shift of labor, with 25 employees remaining in Catskill, and 130 at the Greenport site.”

Like the Republican Secretary of State, plant opponents did the math:

• Existing jobs: 144 + 10 = 154
• Future jobs: 130 + 25 = 155
• Net new job gain: 1
  

It’s unfortunate that Gene is still pushing the same nasty and irrational line he unsuccessfully pushed from 1998-2005 during the SLC controversy.

Gene failed to grasp the facts then, and he still fails to grasp them now. Those black-and-white facts were that St. Lawrence was only going to create one single, new, measly net job for our community. All the jobs they were proposing already existed and were spoken for.

Now, I once asked Gene face-to-face why he was so big on the cement idea, since he was already retired. He stated that he wanted “to run a hot dog cart” at the plant’s entrance. That was his big idea for saving the area.

And all that needed to happen to fulfill Gene’s dream? More kids needed to get asthma. More adults would have to die prematurely of heart attacks. And a 400-foot tower with a six-mile plume surrounded by a 1,200-acre mine had to plopped down in the middle of our county.

That’s all.

Meanwhile, as Gene has continued to bellyache about the one lost job and his long-lost hot dog cart, others have actually taken responsibility themselves to start businesses which take advantage of our 21st Century economic situation.

Gene might admire, for example, the pluck an enterprising couple who opened a taco stand on Warren Street last Spring. It was a huge success. I don’t know whether any of the “tourists” Gene loves to hate patronized this couple’s cart. But many of us full-time residents did—and there was usually a long line, long enough that local bands started playing gigs next to the cart.

They succeeded because their food was affordable, fresh, and (unlike Gene’s fantasy hot dog cart at the gates of a long-gone cement plant) not a figment of their imagination. Apparently these entrepreneurs did well enough to take the Winter off in a warmer climate, and will be back in the Spring.

That’s called a good old American can-do attitude, Mr. Hallenbeck.

Those running their real-live food stand created two jobs for themselves last summer, thanks to their own initiative and hard work. And they did it without any arguments or pollution or headaches... like the one we had here over one new job, proposed a dozen ago by a major Swiss-owned polluter.

One wonders what it is that Gene Hallenbeck likes so much about foreign billionaires who have never set foot in the Hudson Valley, and dislikes so much about people who like our area enough to visit us and leave their money in our pockets.