SamPratt.com

$500,000 paid for Allen Street School

Last week, this site reported that property owner Eleanor Ambos was selling the Allen Street School to Eric Galloway, and was also rumored to be negotiating to sell some or all of her other properties as well. Ambos disputed the report, but did not respond to a request to specify about it she deemed incorrect.

There is, however, no longer any question that Ambos has sold the Allen Street School. The document pictured above turned up during this site’s periodic review of public sales records (RP-5217s) at the Columbia County Real Property Department.

This document clearly demonstates that the Galvan Initiatives Foundation paid $500,000 for the property, with T. Eric Galloway and attorney Mark Greenberg representing Galvan as its agents. The transfer was recorded on May 30th, 2013.

Hudson Bits & Bites

Photo: New York Locations

• In addition to the Allen Street School, controversial developer T. Eric Galloway is said to be closing in on a deal for at least one other Eleanor Ambos property in Hudson: the vast Pocketbook Factory. Ambos also owns the former Elks Club (the large Italianate building at Union and 6th, which used to have a bowling alley in the basement). There is some indication that she is liquidating her local holdings.
• Title insurer Jim Monahan told this site today that contrary to some reports, the title work he has done for the City of Hudson was performed at no charge; and that until very late in the process he was never asked to answer questions about the Standard Oil site. Rather, Monahan says that his brief from the City was relatively narrow, and that he had been unaware of debates taking place at meetings and online over the status of the Standard Oil site until his pro bono work came under fire. He added that in conversation with Crawford & Associates, he was told that they had “not even started” their environmental review of the proposed acreage; and that he does not have an opinion at this point on the ownership of the 4.4 acres identified by The Valley Alliance as likely being owned by the City of Hudson, rather than by Holcim. 
• Work on Food Studio, a new Asian-influenced restaurant in the 600 block, continues steadily, with hopes of a summer opening.
• Four properties owned by artist David Deutsch, who at one point was contemplating an ambitious northside redevelopment plan with architect Teddy Cruz, hit the MLS recently. These include the former Nicole Fiacco gallery (once the VFW), the cinderblock across from the Opera House (formerly Mark McDonald’s 330 gallery, and before that Harold’s Lounge), and the two empty lots between them, which look like one lot. The asking price for all four is $1.6 million.

The Valley Alliance investigates...

... and turns up some startling information, at this link.

Imagine if someone came into your home and said, “Hey—nice TV. I’ll let you have it if I can hang out, watch hockey and raid your fridge for the next 50 years.” Most people would tell that person to take a hike. 

Yet it appears that’s exactly what Holcim may be doing in this latest Hudson Waterfront mess.

Storefronts: The original Twitter feeds

Signage in the window of Neefus Phototography on Warren Street (Hudson, NY).

Live from Fiero Boulevard

Word spread on Thursday that Joe Fiero of American Glory had applied for a permit to shut down the entire 300 block of Warren Street for yet another car-and-cycle show today. This ignited a firestorm of protest, with nearby business owners taking stock of a City code stating that the Mayor will consider whether such events “unreasonably interfere with the rights of the neighbors.”

Strong indications are that virtually no neighbors were approached by Fiero or Mayor Bill Hallenbeck for their opinion, and efforts to convince Hallenbeck to reverse his decision fell on deaf ears.

As of 1:30 pm today, the 300 block was virtually empty, as seen in the photograph above. A small cluster of five vintage cars near American Glory was joined by only two more cars over the next half hour, plus a few ordinary motorcylces. Below are some additional notes from early this afternoon...

• There were as many police and first responders on hand as there were cars. • A source for this site spoke with one of the policemen on hand, reporting that he said they were getting overtime pay. It was not clear whether the City or American Glory would cover such pay.

• A stage was set up in front of Hudson Wine Merchants, one of whose owners had expressed concerns about the event.

• American Glory employees milled about in the vast emptiness, all carrying clipboards. It was not clear whether the purpose of these clipboards was to gather petitions, or other information from the sparse group of attendees.

• Reportedly several other, larger car shows are underway in the area (near Route 82, and in Greene County). One skeptical business owner speculated that exhibitors from those events would descend on Hudson toward the end of the afternoon, raising the question of why the street had to be closed for so many business hours.

• This site has received secondhand information that another business owner in the 300 block had applied within recent memory for permission to hold a tent sale in one of the parking lots on the block.

Preview of Fish & Game, and bonus pics

My preview of Fish & Game, Zak Pelaccio’s new Hudson restaurant which officially opened this week, went live at The New York Observer (not to be confused with The Hill Country Observer) on Thursday—link here. Below are some bonus pictures by Laetitia Hussain:

Chef Zak Pelaccio, builder Peggy Anderson, Jason Wyckoff, jewelery designer Shana Lee

Architect/designer Michael Davis, headhunter Kevin Delahanty, bassist Melissa Auf der Maur

Bartender Kat Dunn serves producer (and Fish & Game backer) Patrick Milling Smith and filmmaker Tony Stone of Basilica Industria

Peter Heilman, who built Fish & Game’s tables, bar, carts, stools et al., dining with his wife at last Friday’s preview dinner

View of the dining room, second fireplace, and carnage. 

View toward the lounge, showing the old walls maintained as a ruin, Red Light District wallpaper, and staircase to an upstairs private room.

Bye, bye bacon?

An article in the Business Review indicates that Bacon Fest, which left some attendees feeling burned last year in Hudson, is joining the Troy Pig Out. It’s not clear from the piece, however, whether this means they are abandoning Hudson, or just adding a new venue.

Standard Oil debate vindicates citizens, shames experts

Over at The Gossips of Rivertown, Carole Osterink reports that the debate about whether Standard Oil occupied a key parcel in the City of Hudson has been settled—with skeptical citizens fully vindicated.

The City’s title searcher has belatedly conceded to Giff Whitbeck (who strove mightily to prop up his law partner Cheryl Roberts’ untenable claims) what resident researchers such as Tim O’Connor and Cheryl Stuart already knew. Namely, that the oil company most certainly did have a presence on the acreage in question.

The immediate impact of this tardy and grudging acknowledgement should be for the City to stop dodging a full environmental assessment of the land they want to acquire. But don’t hold your breath on that due diligence. Given Roberts’ monomaniacal obsession with securing State approval for her deeply-flawed waterfront plan at any cost, it would hardly be surprising if some new rationale for ignoring potential contamination emerges.

There ought to be another, more lasting impact of this sorry episode: Hudson elected officials finally may be forced to doubt the integrity of their counsel’s advice.

A review the recent reporting on how this matter was handled does not redound to the City’s credit, to put it mildly. There’s no getting around the stark fact that the claims and retorts emanating from the official side of the table in response to sincere, well-researched citizen input have been egregiously (and even offensively) mistaken. Officials took their experts’ vague assurances as gospel, while undercutting every piece of citizen research, at their own peril.

Start with the howlers contained in The Register-Star’s April 21st, 2013 article:

• Common Council President Don Moore in response to a well-researched memorandum about the land transfer from Citizens In Defense of Hudson, lectured Stuart “to be careful with her accusations.” 
• Attorney Roberts was even more condescending in her response, thundering at Stuart: “You are so completely wrong in your legal assessment of that document, I don’t even know where to start.” 
• Roberts also told the Council that “The Standard Oil piece is north of the port.” 

Now head back to Gossips on April 18th:

• “At the informal Common Council meeting on April 8, city attorney Cheryl Roberts reported that the title searcher hired by the City had not discovered Standard Oil ownership of any land south of the port.” 
• “Roberts addressed the issue by saying that there was ‘a serious misunderstanding about what a title search is.’” 
• “Roberts' placement of the Standard Oil property was confirmed by Alderman Cappy Pierro (Fifth Ward), who said that ‘oil barges pulled up where the Spirit of Hudson docks now.’”

Gossips continued its pursuit on April 25th:

• “City attorney Cheryl Roberts questioned whether there were such things as oil tanks in 1888.”
• “Assistant city attorney Carl Whitbeck provid[ed] evidence that nothing ever existed on the Hudson waterfront west of the railroad tracks and south of the port.”

It’s now painfully clear that each of these official, lawyerly, patronizing assertions were at best laughably mistaken, at worst nastily misleading:

• Despite Moore’s finger-wagging, Stuart’s group proved to be not only “careful,” but also correct;
• Roberts, not CIDH, was “completely wrong” in her legal assessment;
• Standard Oil was south, not “north of the port” as Roberts claimed;
• A sustained barrage of evidence from O’Connor, Gossips and CIDH was required to convince a professional title searcher to admit what a host of amateur sleuths found out on their own;
• The only “serious misunderstandings” seem to be those harbored by Roberts, Whitbeck and the City’s title searcher;
• Aldermen who claim direct knowledge of activities which ceased at about the same time as the First World War are not reliable narrators.

Hudson has many unique features, among these being a rare species of elected official who, unlike the rest of the human race, lacks a natural distrust of lawyers. Renewing a skepticism which traces its lineage at least as far back as Shakespeare, once again local citizens have witnessed firsthand how possession of a law degree does not in itself guarantee the deliverance of honest, well-informed counsel.

When it comes to professionals in the pay of City Hall, the operating principle seems to be: Don’t trust us. We’re experts.

Crosstown traffic

Way back in the 1990s, a Hudson politician who also worked at the State DMV whispered to me: “You would not believe the number of prominent Hudsonians who are driving around town without licenses.”

The last item in today’s Register-Star police blotter appears to confirm that whispered theory.

Full circle

A recent post (and one of the more eyeroll-worthy comments) at The Gossips of Rivertown brought to mind a drive down to Saugerties about 10 years ago, when I was on the board of Clearwater. Andy Mele was President, we went down to check on how repairs to the Sloop were going. When the boat-builder heard I was from Hudson he got a rueful look on his face.

“Hudson,” he said, with some bitterness. “Strange place. I wanted to move this business there some years ago, but it fell through.”

So what happened?

“I thought I had a deal to buy some land from the City on the south end of the riverfront. But the City’s lawyer kept delaying the sale, and at the last minute they turned around and sold it to someone else.”

Did he remember to whom Hudson sold the land instead?

“Yes, it was St. Lawrence Cement.”

In short, it would appear the City of Hudson is now going through all this mishigas just to get back acreage it already owned years ago... either the same land it sold to Holcim (then called SLC), or else adjacent to/overlapping with it.

Instead of a several huge controversies, Hudson could have had a traditional, high-end boat-building business on its waterfront—creating jobs, and apprenticeships, and educational opportunities.

The only people who make out in all this endless cycle of blunders are the lawyers. No wonder some of them have a “real love” for Hudson.

An unexpected apology from the Register-Star

In response to a recent post calling out The Register-Star for swiping a breaking news story and plagiarizing a sentence from this site, an apology has been received from Executive Editor Theresa Hyland for the “copying of your blog entry contents into our story.”

Writing that she was “upset” by the reporter’s actions, which Hyland said “do not meet our journalistic standards and we cannot tolerate such behavior,” she also noted that “we have let the offending reporter go.”

The intent of the post was to put a stop to the predatory use of local blogs as news-gathering sources without crediting them as sources, not to get anyone fired. Though plagiarism is indeed a cardinal sin of journalism—and this example was flagrant—it’s debatable whether it rose to a firing offense.

The apology was appreciated and appears to be sincere. Not knowing what other factors and history played into the paper’s decision, this site is not in a position to judge the full cause and appropriateness of their employment decision. 

(Interestingly enough, the reporter “let go” was himself a replacement for some of the staff lost in the paper’s controversial firing last winter of another Hudson beat reporter, which led to multiple resignations of other news staff.)

Interesting

SamPratt.com, Friday morning around 9:30 am, breaking the news that Lieutenant Richard Paolino is stepping down from the HPD:

“This comes on the heels of the recent retirement of Hudson Police chief Ellis Richardson, and appointment of Ed Moore as the new Chief.”

The Register-Star on Friday evening at 11:55 pm:

“Paolino’s retirement comes on the heels of the recent retirement of former Police Chief Ellis Richardson, the appointment of new Police Chief Edward Moore and ...”

Now, the Register routinely cribs breaking news tips from blogs such as my site and Carole Osterink’s without acknowledging the source. For example, when this site broke the story that Mid-Hudson Cable had returned a much-ballyhooed multimillion-dollar rural broadband grant to the Feds, the Register then reported the story without noting how it had come to light. 

Rarely, however, does the Hudson paper so flagrantly copy the specific phrasing of our items... At least try to paraphrase, y’all, when you’re mining other people’s sites to do the legwork of digging up breaking news.