The current issue of the normally-astute Hill Country Observer contains a sadly shallow article about an important topic, entitled “The Second Home Economy.”
As is too often the case when the press wades into such complex issues without really sounding their depths, we’re offered only a surface analysis of just two possible development directions for Columbia and Berkshire counties. Evidently, we have only two choices: either an artsy-fartsy tourism model, or a 1950s smokestack model.
Naturally there are many other choices; and in reality there is a much greater mix of populations and business in both places than the press would have us believe. Such Either/Or-ism leaves out many obvious examples of businesses which don’t fit either oversimplified model (e.g.: Etsy’s move of 50 jobs to Hudson). It also ignores the local history and national trends which led to current conditions in both counties.
The article first offers a sympathetic look at the lifestyle of a second-home couple, as well as thoughts from solid sources like Nat Karns of BRPC and Bert Freed of The Kinderhook Group. But then come the less-nuanced but more-predictable quotes from (a) someone who says their area has gotten too expensive and their kids have to move away, and (b) a habitual doomsayer who predicts his town’s whole economy is on the verge of collapse.
Two specific examples cited are Lee, Massachusetts, and Hudson, New York. But neither example lives up to the article’s reductive billing.
In both cases, the author and several commentators ignore the obvious and crucial fact that both places were essentially moribund 20 years ago. (Yes, I remember the closing of the five-and-dime in Lee, and the toy factory. Both have been gone a very long time now.) Culture and tourism and second home owners didn’t push people out of these places. Rather, small businesses and new taxpayers filled a gaping void left behind by heavy industry, which abandoned them. Without those willing to risk their modest savings on an abandoned town, where would either place be? Probably still dying a lingering demise. Yet the Either/Or-ists like to scapegoat the one, while waxing nostalgic about the other.
A kid with whom I went to gradeschool in the Berkshires returned to the area after a long absence, and created a successful brewpub in downtown Lee, catering to “locals” and weekenders alike. Lee, whose main street businesses mostly bled out in the ’80s and early ’90s, is on the upswing again. Likewise over in Great Barrington, two brothers with whom I rode the schoolbus started and built a small business over the past two decades into a very successful clothing and outdoor furniture business, frequented by a wide demographic of customers, largely thanks to their terrific customer service.
Yet The Observer seems to imply that all three of these kids would have been better off growing up to work somewhere like “The G.E.” in Pittsfield—where our forbears were expected to dip their arms up to the shoulders into vats of PCBs for much of their adult lives. Yes, General Electric once employed thousands in that city, where my father was born. The company also left behind vast quantities of pollution in both the Housatonic River as well as schoolyards and other private properties all over town. But ah, the glory days of good-ol’ American industry!
(It also should be said that the Berkshires are a far more racially diverse place today than when I was growing up in the ’70s. But you wouldn’t know that from the Observer piece.)
Ditto Hudson. While commenter Matt Frederick needlessly inflames the debate with a gross exaggeration that Hudson is dominated by stores only open two days a week, in fact the vast majority are 5, 6 or even 7-day operations. And overwhelmingly, local Hudson businesses are owned by full-time residents, with hardly a national chain store in sight besides the Subway attached to a laundromat. Such high levels of local ownership and downtown activity are all too rare in 21st Century America. Other main streets are mainly dead or dying, with business having moved to the nearest mall, into stores owned by megacorporations; yet we’re supposed to lament the rejuvenation of Lee and Hudson?
(Frederick elsewhere has spread the misinformation that it’s unusually difficult to operate a home-based business in Hudson due to zoning restrictions. I'm not the only one who’s asked him to specify which codes he’s talking about, and provided numerous counterexamples, to no avail. Both formal economic studies and on-the-ground evidence suggest the exact opposite: that Hudson has an unusually high concentration of self-employed people, cottage industries operating out of homes, and former residences converted to storefronts.)
Most of all, Hudson’s business mix has significantly diversified over the past decade. We can thank the pioneers in the culture and antiques trades for making that possible, since it was their businesses which patiently developed enough foot traffic and buzz to attract other investment, and create other centers of economic gravity. Much of the dining, hospitality, music, nightlife, housewares, coffeehouses, food markets and other types of business found here today were not present in the late ’90s. Arts and culture jumpstarted the process, and no one seems happier to see other types of stores and industries opening locally than those much-maligned antiquers themselves.
Meanwhile, quality of life in the Hudson area has helped retain and attract the very types of businesses those who favor the Either/Or, Us vs. Them script claim to support. A new light manufacturing business was found to fill the empty Kaz factory, nextdoor to Local Ocean, a fish farm; further down the road on Route 9, European giant L’Eurial is filling the former Entenmann's warehouse with a goat cheese operation, which over the long haul will aim to source its dairy locally. (Good time to go into the goat-raising business, as apparently there’s a real shortage.) Organic agriculture is thriving and rapidly-expanding, thanks both to local interest and the proximity to lucrative NYC markets.
And of course there are the countless other boats which have been raised by this tide, which has crept up from a low ebb in the late ’80s/early ’90s. Hardly anyone around here except lawyers earn more per hour than competent local plumbers, electricians, HVAC, and other contractors. The stabilization, renovation and expansion of the area’s amazing housing and building stock has been a prime driver of the local economy. Yet articles like that in the Observer leave the impression that few jobs have been created here except minimum-wage part-time dishwashing gigs.
And as for rising real estate prices: I’ve never heard of anyone, local or new, who was eager to sell their house for less than they paid for it. Are empty-nesters and retirees who’ve lived here all their lives, who now want to move into a more manageable house, and maybe spend the winter in Florida, supposed to take $100,000 less at closing in order just to satisfy some pundit’s pseudo-nativist ideology?
In any case, both rents and asking prices have moderated nicely after the national real estate bubble of the last decade burst. Where, precisely, can you rent a decent apartment cheaper than in Hudson, unless you’re willing (as I was in my youth) to live in an unsafe neighborhood, in an apartment lacking steady heat and hot water, and little of interest to do within walking distance? One might save $50 a month by relocating to the worst blocks of Rensselaer, pronounced "Rent-ler" by some denizens, but it’s unlikely anyone’s economic or personal prospects would be improved by such a move.
The false choices of Either/Or-ism not only present a distorted, defeatist picture, they also serve to pit residents against each other. Those residents pigeonholded as “weekenders” and “lifelong residents” have a lot more in common than those making snap judgements based on a windshield view of Main Street. Is the economy perfect in either the Berkshires, or Columbia County? Hardly. But I’d like to know where economic Nirvana has been achieved and sustained in any part of America today. Overall, the prospects in both counties seem a whole lot better than average.
For those who wish to turn back the clock and live in a dead, dangerous town dominated by polluting industry, there will always be Gary. For those who prefer a main street full of Ye Olde Saltwater Taffy emporia and doily-draped inns, there’s no shortage of tourist traps all along the New England coast. The rest of us will continue to live somewhere in between—or preferably along some long detour off that straight-line highway, which exists mainly in the mindscape of the media.
PHOTO: Daniel Hubbard, who has a terrific Hudson photoset on Flickr
The former Diamond Street Diner (forcibly closed in 2009 under less-than-honorable circumstances) was acquired at auction today by a pair of accomplished Columbia County organic farmers.
The new Ghent owners—who supplied the only meat served at Chelsea Clinton’s wedding—plan to add a local “farm-to-chef” angle to the usual diner fare. No timetable for reopening has been set yet; but the diner has always been an important part of the community’s life, making this excellent news for Hudson business and stomachs.
As promised, at the end of this post is a chart comparing the results of the 2000 and 2010 Census results by municipality in Columbia, Greene, and Dutchess Counties. Or, you can download the data as a PDF by clicking here. This table includes the raw numbers, the raw change in population, and the percentage change for each town (or city). This doesn’t include separate breakdowns for villages and other subdivisions within each town.
In presenting these simple comparisons, it should be noted that population figures are some of the most commonly-misinterpreted statistics cited by politicians and planners. To really understand shifts in population, one needs to look at larger universe of data and trends.
For example, population declines are almost always interpreted as bad news by civic leaders. But say a town’s population goes down while its residents’ average income or local sales tax revenues go up—isn’t that an improvement overall? What if the percentage of children under 18 goes down, while property values go up, improving the teacher/student ratios in the local schools—wouldn’t that also be an improvement?
One also has to look beyond the bottom-line stats to see if some key statistical method has changed, such as no longer counting prisoners in the local population, as has occurred in Hudson. (Without the 500-odd prisoners from 2000, Hudson’s decline in population is actually quite modest, more like 4%.) Taking a look at the results below, one suspects that there was some major redefinition of the Census’ definitions or borders for the Town of Milan, which surely did not lose half its population in 10 years.
In any case, here’s the three-county chart:
Denis Ferentinos of Diehl & Denis has posted photos at the new site for the Hudson Antiques Dealers Association of two handsome conference tables he designed for the new Etsy workspace in Hudson.
Constructed of wood salvaged from a bowling alley, mounted on cast iron and steel pieces salvaged from factories in New England. Their vintage-meets-industrial aesthetic ought to perfectly complement the Cannonball Factory space; and it’s great to see that Etsy is sourcing fixtures for the job site locally. That’s precisely the type of spin-off business that one can expect when forward-thinking businesses choose a place like Hudson for its character, rather than on temporary tax incentives.
Note also that the HADA site (redesigned by yours truly last Fall) includes the regularly-updated Wideboard where member shops post new merchandise, events, celebrity sightings, and other news on and off Warren Street.
[ Click for Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 5 ]
NOTE: This piece originally appeared in last year’s environment issue of Our Town (the Columbia County quarterly), under the title The Bullet We Dodged: How the Cement War was Won.* I’m offering it here in several installments over the next week, in a somewhat expanded form, and with added visuals and links, both for those who lived through the tumultuous years of 1998-2005, and for others who moved to the area more recently—who may wonder what all the fuss was about...
THE CONVERTS • While much of the media and SLC tried to portray opponents as kneejerk reactionaries, for most, the process of opposing the plant involved a slow, steady loss of faith in the company—paired with increased trust in opponents’ credibility.
Claverack’s Mary Sanchez, who ran a lively and sometimes profane online chat site known as “Red’s Board”, described her change of stance in terms of the patience and decency of opponents’ responses:
People took the time to answer my questions in a civil and thoughtout manner. Their answers made sense—and—they could be verified with facts. I started to look back at my involvement with SLC. After reading all the information I had found (not been given—but found), both good and bad, I asked myself that question that Jesse continuously asks: “Why is SLC good for us?” I could not think of an answer... I got to thinking that big promises don’t always add up to big “keeps.”
It is my hope that some of the “pro-cement” folks will take some time to really really honestly think about this SLC project. Really think about this Santa Claus of a company promising you all you ever wished for. I do not believe that there can be a Santa Claus if there is no heart.
Santa Claus would never use people.
Santa Claus would never hurt people.
St. Lawrence Cement has no heart, and they use people. They prey on their feelings and they are good at bringing out the ugly in everybody.
It was also on Red’s Board that then-State Assemblyman Patrick Manning (R-Hopewell Junction) had his own epiphany about SLC.
Manning had bashed opponents at a Chamber of Commerce breakfast at Meadowgreens, then got an earful back from disappointed constituents.
He agreed to an hour online chat at Red’s, finally admitting that he would not want a project like SLC in his own town. Gathering his own facts, he consulted closely with doctors such as noted Cornell cancer researcher and Hillsdale resident Mitchell Gaynor, to understand the health implications of living near a major coal-burning facility, and then weighed in regularly and forcefully with State agencies against the plant. Another key public official, Hudson Planning Board chair and later President of the Common Council Michael Vertetis, began as a middle-of-the road plant proponent.
But Vertetis (unlike his former ally, Mayor Rick Scalera) was careful to maintain a civil relationship with plant opponents, and showed an interest in having the City conduct a proper review. At first, many of us assumed that Mike was proceeding cautiously only to ensure that a botched process wouldn’t open the door for a successful lawsuit. But over time, the heavy-handed tactics of SLC (in particular their belligerent attorneys, Bob Alessi and Tom West) tended to alienate more moderate supporters like Mike.
By keeping communication open with folks like Mike, our side maintained the possibility of his voting against SLC’s proposed Host Community Agreement, a package intended to buy the City’s support.
That in fact happened on the same day that Secretary of State Randy Daniels found the project violated New York’s Coastal Policies, dealing a crushing double-whammy to the project on April 19th, 2005.
THE BUSINESS COMMUNITY • Opposition needed to be rooted in more than just environmental arguments.
While some business leaders automatically supported the project without doing any due diligence, others took the time to gather facts and assess the situation. Farmers and realtors (including Steve Kingsley, who generously donated free office space when we were just getting our feet under us) were two early groups with a lot at stake, taking a stand against SLC as a threat to their livelihoods.
Germantowners Nancy Gordon and Paul Swedenburg, whose hightech company HAVE, Inc. is located in Hudson’s former Simpsonville neighborhood, were among the first to step out of ranks with those businesses falling in line behind SLC.
Before taking any position, they invited then-project managers Dirk Cox and Phil Lochbrunner to a discussion with me at their offices. They insisted on an open debate, with both sides present. After considering what they’d heard, Nancy and Paul issued a strongly-argued op-ed, setting forth precisely how the project would harm their business, and the commitment they’d made to employing local people. Richard Katzman, then a major employer in Hudson- Greenport, also gathered his own facts, and after losing confidence in the company, came out against it. He proceeded to underwrite the construction of a giant scale model of the plant, quarry and dock facility, and sponsored telephone polls (conducted by the same firm used by President Clinton and Mayor Michael Bloomberg) showing that by 2002, plant opponents had outnumbered supporters.
Toward the end of the fight, many of these same business leaders along with others such as Martina Arfwidson of FACE Stockholm, Don and Marnie MacLean of Thompson- Finch Farm, Deborah Bowen of The Inn at Green River, and David Rubel of Agincourt Press, worked with us to craft a Statement of Values for promoting greener, more sustainable development in the region: To ensure continued growth and stability, we need to protect our high quality of life. This includes a healthy environment and workforce, clean air and water, scenic and historic resources, and public enjoyment of our unique natural surroundings. [We conclude] that the overall scale, design, location and impacts of the St. Lawrence Cement facility proposed for Hudson and Greenport pose too great a risk of harming the health, quality of life, and economic viabililty of our region, and therefore it is not the right fit for our communities.
By the time this letter was presented to the State, more than 200 businesses representing over 1,150 full-time and another 450 part-time jobs in the area, had signed on. Their message was clear: in the mid-Hudson Valley, the fate of the environment and the economy are inextricably linked. We were fighting not only to stop something, but also to preserve the possibility of a brighter future.
THE EXPERTS • Citizens’ groups always are held to a higher standard of accuracy than slippery politicians. We knew we had to be painstakingly accurate in our public statements, and to back them up with full documentation and professional confirmations by independent experts.
One such expert was living right under our noses in Claverack: toxicologist and EPA consultant Travis Kline (son of Pamela Kline, founder of Traditions). Kline was asked to speak at an SLC forum, set up by the company in hopes that they’d control the dialogue and make opponents appear marginal and ill-informed.
But the opposite occurred, as major public attendance forced the events to move to a large Columbia-Greene Community College auditorium. As panelists were peppered with tough questions from the well-prepared audience, they were emboldened to step outside the limited scripts SLC expected they’d stick to. Much to the company’s chagrin, Travis made a devastating presentation about the health risks of volatile organic compounds and products of incomplete combustion resulting from the burning of impurity-laden limestone and coal. Calling for a multi-disciplinary risk assessment and test burns, he warned that the existing regulatory process was inadequate to protect residents from harm. By his second forum appearance, SLC had lost control of the dialogue, causing some of its supporters to lose their cool. Four “young guys feeling their oats,” sporting the company’s free blue tshirts, attempted to menace Travis, who was escorted out of the hall for his own safety by State Police Investigator and forum member Gary Mazzacano. These occasional and pathetic attempts at intimidation only made SLC look worse.
While SLC expected opponents to bring nothing to the table, impressive experts were retained to back up our positions during official reviews.
One day in 1999, Hudson art dealer John Davis had a visit from a loyal client named Gabe Miller. Gabe spotted one of our flyers on John’s desk and said: “You really don’t want something like this in your community. I know, because I build these things.” An NYU chemistry professor and senior engineer at Camp Dresser & McKee, among the largest international industrial consultants based in the Northeast, John arranged for Gabe to meet me for lunch at the St. Charles Hotel, whereupon we became the first environmental group ever represented by CDM. His firm’s work was supplemented by Dr.
Alex Sagady, a pit bull of an engineer from Michigan, who represents citizens groups at discount rates. Alex’s preferred method of working was to file Freedom of Information requests with State agencies, then fly to Albany to camp out in the offices of the Department of Environmental Conservation, where he’d invariably find lots of useful information that bureaucrats, such as Project Manager Michael Higgins, had previously “overlooked”.
As our network expanded, similar finds began emerging on a regular basis. One after another, experts came to Hudson to educate our membership in public presentations: Neil Carman of the Lone Star chapter of the Sierra Club, Florida kiln activist and elected official Penny Wheat, Downwinders at Risk leaders Jim Schermbeck and Katy Hubener, Bonnie Sanders of South Camden Citizens in Action. Sanders, who died the following year, was particularly moving as she talked about her neighborhood’s experience with SLC: “They spread around a lot of promises of jobs and grants for local organizations. They led our church pastors to think that this company would do good for minority residents.
Once they had their permits, we learned that all they cared about was making money. We only gained a very small number of jobs. What we ended up with was pollution that made my grandchild, other kids and our seniors fight for breath, and truck traffic so heavy it shook house foundations. [But] even if SLC stood behind their promises, the hardships wouldn't have been worth it. You can't trust this company, and you don't want them in your area.” The Allies From the start, we knew we couldn’t go it alone. The fight had to be expanded to the whole Valley and into the downwind states of New England. After a lonely couple of years, one by one, more than three dozen groups stood with us—some contributing just their names, others biting off major pieces of the legal fight.
During one difficult winter meeting at City Hall in Hudson, a group of about five young, purposeful people in outdoor gear strode into the Council Chambers: Alex Matthiessen and his Riverkeeper crew had docked their boat and come up Warren Street like the cavalry to save the day.
Meanwhile, at his office in Pittsfield, my all-time favorite conservation activist George Wislocki, founder of the Berkshire Natural Resource Council, used his decades of contacts and stockpile of credibility to convince EPA’s New England Regional Administrator to issue a stern letter against SLC—and her support was echoed by the Massachusetts DEP and Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal. Across the river, Athens officials such as Andrea Smallwood and Chris Pfister opened up a western front against SLC by passing a Local Waterfront Revitalization Plan and submitting strong letters cautioning against Hudson impairing the State’s investment in the Village’s newly-restored park and docks along the Hudson.
THE GO-TO GUYS & GALS • But for all the specialized skills and thoughtful analysis that go into long grassroots battles, possibly the most valuable asset of a citizens’ organization is to have plenty of worker bees ready to swarm out of the hive at a moment’s notice. We weren’t lacking in that department. Whether it was an urgent mailing to get stuffed and stamped, or rounding up auction items for our next benefit party, or needing a small crowd to assemble for an unexpected meeting, or volunteers to help set up for an event, people gave generously and endlessly of their time: Warren Collins, Fran DeGrazia, Bob and Monica Mechling, Diana Jelinek, Dick Donovan, Claire Oravec, Chloe Zerwick, Jennifer Arenskjold, Marty Davidson, Martha Lane, Carole Clark, Hillary Hillman... This list could go on forever, and still be missing important contributions.
We also lost some of our most valued soldiers over the years: the hilariously wise Cassandra Danz (a/k/a Mrs. Greenthumbs); the fearless Bud Mann; artist Hannah Williamson; Phyllis Herbert, who never threw out a single article about the plant; and the ever-ready Vinny DeGrazia, our favorite bartender and raconteur. Their contributions live on each time anyone looks toward Becraft and still sees a hill, rather than a 1,200-acre hole in the landscape.
NEXT UP: The conclusion of this five-part series. Click here to continue...
* Readers who want to read the full, original OT article as edited by Enid Futterman and designed by John Isaacs can download it as a PDF right away by clicking here. A full, week-by-week chronology of the fight can be found at Stop the Plant.com.
[ Click for Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 4 | Part 5 ]
NOTE: This piece originally appeared in last year’s environment issue of Our Town (the Columbia County quarterly), under the title The Bullet We Dodged: How the Cement War was Won.* I’m offering it here in several installments over the next week, in a somewhat expanded form, and with added visuals and links, both for those who lived through the tumultuous years of 1998-2005, and for others who moved to the area more recently—who may wonder what all the fuss was about...
THE HISTORIANS • Willard Place resident Don Christensen came to Hudson in the 1980s with no intention of getting involved in local affairs.
Relentlessly curious, and with fine radar for irony, Don had always wondered how the once-fabled South Bay, which he could see from his back window, had been transformed from a stunning and economically productive inlet, into a degraded, polluted, landfilled swamp. Now the threat of SLC turned this casual question into a matter of fight-or-flight urgency.
Going through old deeds at the Columbia County Real Property Department, dusty files at the County Historical Society, spinning through acres of microfilm in area libraries, checking the archives of historic sites and museums, and quizzing astonished bureaucrats at obscure agencies such as the NYS Office of General Services, Bureau of Land Management, Division of Lands Underwater, Don unearthed the true history of the Bay. His research raised serious questions about the SLC’s title to illegally-filled acres along the river, and resulted in a major exhibit at the Hudson Opera House—Seeing South Bay. Don became keenly aware of the tendency of the past to repeat itself in Hudson. For one example, in the 19th Century, quarrier Fred Jones convinced Hudson officials to let him trash the Bay by running a railroad trestle across it by first threatening to lay the tracks on Allen Street—a strategy we’re now seeing deployed again by Holcim in 2010.
Don’s solitary work was performed against a more communal backdrop of interest in local history led by residents such as Carole Osterink, Ellen Thurston, David Kermani and others at Historic Hudson. Their keen interest in preservation was complemented by that of Kinderhook’s Ruth Piwonka, responsible for most of the nominations of Columbia sites to the State Register of Historic Places, who spotted many holes in SLC’s inventories of historic resources threatened by the plant. Groups such as Hudson River Heritage in Red Hook (then headed by Kate Kerin) and The Olana Partnership (led by Sarah Griffen), collaborated to make preservation another key reason to stop the plant.
THE GO-GETTERS • While some preferred parsing the SLC application, or searching the internet for the company’s latest environmental atrocities, others knew that the war could not be waged solely at our keyboards. It was essential for the opposition to have a human face, and to reach people who, at the turn of the 20th century, might not yet have email.
One method devised for this purpose was leafletting and buttonholing neighbors on Saturday mornings at busy post offices around the region. Each week, I’d arrange to meet residents of a specific town— say, Cyndy Hall in Claverack, or Joan Hintermeister and Sally Drummond in Germantown—to meet me at their local PO, Our non-confrontational presence reached out to new constituents, showed our commitment to the cause, and put a human, recognizable face on the movement. It became a lot more difficult to believe the company’s smears about opponents if you’d actually met one.
Opponents eventually gathered over 16,000 petition signatures, which were patiently transcribed back at the office after each weekend’s haul, by volunteers such as Gabi Hermann, Chet Stark and Alice Platt. The signer’s name would be hand-written on an envelope containing a bumper sticker, a flyer, a donation form, and a copy of the petition for the signer to circulate as well. Before mailing, an employee such as Ann Birckmayer or Maiysha Kramer would enter the name and contact info into the database for future follow-ups.
Meanwhile, Jock Spivy and Ally Anderson-Spivy of Kinderhook were rounding up signatures on a separate National Cultural Petition supported by artists, historians, curators and others alarmed by SLC’s threat to the Valley’s “spectacular scenery and its seminal role in the development of America’s culture and ideology.” The signatories ranged from locallybased but internationally known figures such as poet John Ashbery and painter Ellsworth Kelly, to celebrity Uma Thurman.
Activist clichés about “taking it to the streets” meant more than marching down Warren Street. Working with members of Columbia Action Now (an allied group in the northern part of the County) such as Spencertown's Hannah Hanani, we took our fight to the sidewalks of Manhattan for a 2001 protest outside the Swiss consulate. Armed with proof that the proposal would not be allowed in the home country of SLC's owners, residents held signs with humorous slogans like “Build it in the Alps” and "Chocolate, yes. Mercury, no,” provoking a panicked meeting with consulate staff and a great deal of exposure in the European press. Similarly, with the help of Jay Rasku of New England's Toxics Action Network, Hudson residents like Leo Carlin stormed the belly of the SLC beast, delivering thousands of petitions by hand to chilly staffers at Holcim headquarters in Waltham, Massachusetts.
Both actions were intended not merely as good political theater, but were part of an overall campaign to influence the company's leadership to withdraw. Self-professed capitalists such as Dick Jenrette of DLJ, Christopher Burge of Christie's and Craig Fitt of UBS, wrote jointly to Holcim board members calling the Hudson Valley a bad business bet.
THE CREATIVES • Aiding in the Spivys’ effort were photographer Lynn Davis and screenwriter/ novelist Rudy Wurlitzer, who constantly lent their creative talents and connections to the cause. The pair must have turned a few heads when they traveled to places like Midlothian, Texas and Devil’s Slide, Utah, cameras in hand—Lynn with her black leather jacket and long white tresses, Rudy with his shambling gait and radical sense of humor—bringing back proof of what life was really like in cement towns.
They returned with photos of monstrous cement blight, and videos of downwind residents sharing stories of sick cattle and cancer-stricken relatives.
Many of Rudy and Lynn’s friends, such as photographers William Wegman and Annie Leibovitz, and musicians Philip Glass and Patti Smith, donated their talents to billboard campaigns and benefit concerts.
The arts were also enlisted at more grassroots levels. Photos of the Hudson River by Freehold’s Thomas Teich were exhibited to help opponents pay to open a storefront office.
Aerial shots of the local quarries and waterfront, as well as existing blight in Catskill and Ravena, were taken by B. Docktor. Opponents circulated blank plywood signs and stakes and Lisa Durfee, Alan Hamilton, Bridget Rockwell and two dozen others handpainted their own “Stop the Plant” signs, which were then bid on by other members. These contrasted strongly with the mass-produced signage underwritten by a company that had to pay people to distribute and display its PR materials.
THE MARKETEERS • In the first months after announcing the project, SLC’s launched media onslaught was intended to make resistance seem futile. But with the help of the many advertising and design professionals hiding out in the nearby hills, opponents were able to start to level the PR playing field.
St. Lawrence outspent opponents by millions, but fortunately, their materials were both clumsy and insulting to viewers’ intelligence. One early pro-plant TV ad seemed to have been recycled from the 1950s, starring a housewife removing a sheet of chocolate- chip cookies from the oven and exclaiming, “I just don’t know how anyone can oppose it!” Our side received key early assistance from marketing guru Ken McCarthy in Tivoli, and graphic designer Frank Aultman. Separately, the pair convinced us to be more ambitious than passing out a few hundred flyers here and there. Ken pointed out that so long as each mailing paid for the next one, it was free publicity. His experience in direct mail also suggested, contrary to conventional wisdom, that we should err on the side of more information, not less—an approach which proved effective, since many were craving detailed rebuttals of the company’s ubiquitous slogans.
Frank similarly urged that we leave behind the bake sale mentality common to grassroots groups, and make two big leaps forward in awareness- raising. He designed an attention- grabbing flyer featuring a map showing where pollution from the proposed plant would likely fall, paired with detailed info about the potential health risks and the company’s track record. The investment in this 5,000-piece mailer, paid dividends for years to come, catapulting the group’s membership from double- to quadruple-digits, and providing supporters with a new sense of momentum. Frank also designed a series of billboards strategically located at all the major entrances to Hudson, one of which was vandalized on Thanksgiving morning.
OurTown’s Enid Futterman worked closely with Tom Mabley and filmmaker Tarquin Cardona to craft a second image campaign for the battle’s next phase. Enid expanded the slogan to: “Tell the Truth. Stop the Plant,” words which thereafter appeared on all of our materials and paraphernalia. The team produced two powerful TV ads to complement the print campaign, focused on children living with asthma and the lack of projected jobs. While the budget was a tiny fraction of SLC’s, the ads gave supporters a sense of empowerment, reached new constituents, and freaked the company out enough to compel them to produce a limp parody.
John Isaacs designed the graphics for the TV campaign, billboards and “Stop the Plant” lawn signs incorporating the new slogan.
In 2003, Germantown-based filmmakers Barbara Ettinger and Sven Huseby began making a documentary about Hudson, eventually shown on PBS under the title Two Square Miles. While they set out to make a portrait of Hudson without reference to SLC, they soon discovered it was impossible to interview anyone for more than 20 seconds before the cement plant came up. While their approach was carefully neutral, the presence of film crews all over town, had an interesting effect: People tended to behave a bit better when cameras were rolling.
NEXT UP: Converts, businesspeople, experts and go-to-guys and gals join the fight, as plant opponents gain the critical mass necesssary to stop the plant. Click here to continue...
* Readers who want to read the full, original OT article as edited by Enid Futterman and designed by John Isaacs can download it as a PDF right away by clicking here. A full, week-by-week chronology of the fight can be found at Stop the Plant.com.
NOTE: This piece originally appeared in last year’s environment issue of Our Town (the Columbia County quarterly), under the title The Bullet We Dodged: How the Cement War was Won.* I’m offering it here in several installments over the next week, in a somewhat expanded form, and with added visuals and links, both for those who lived through the tumultuous years of 1998-2005, and for others who moved to the area more recently—who may wonder what all the fuss was about...
At the post office not so long ago, I ran into the internationally-respected lighting engineer Howard Brandston. We hadn’t seen each other much since the end of the cement fight, and embraced like soldiers who once had fought side-by-side in the trenches of World War I.
Like thousands of others, Howard and his wife Melanie had given themselves selflessly to the cement plant fight—passing out signs and gathering signatures, holding meetings at their home, speaking at public meetings, writing detailed and forceful letters to the papers and agencies, raising and donating money to a legal defense fund, helping to craft our strategy, getting their friends involved, and much more.
Seeing Howard again made me consider forming an organization called the VLW—for Veterans of Local Wars, to gather the survivors of the pitched battles which consume this part of the Hudson Valley every decade or so:
During that nearly seven-year period, it became almost impossible to have a conversation that did not turn eventually to the dryest topic on earth—cement. Two documentary filmmakers who wanted to make a movie about Hudson during this time without mentioning “the plant” gave in, since everyone they interviewed wanted to talk about SLC. Soon enough, they made the cement war the focus of their PBS film, Two Square Miles.
Still, those who moved to the area after April 19th, 2005 may wonder why the plant was so controversial, and considered such a massive threat—not just to Hudson, but to the entire Northeast.
Dubbed “a new industrial city” by Moisha Blechman, the vast, sprawling complex would have featured a skyscraper-sized 40- story tower and a dozen other structures between 10 and 20 stories tall, atop Becraft Mountain, within a mile of the hospital, cemetery and thickly-settled neighborhoods.
From that 406-foot stack would have belched a pollution-laden plume extending as long as six miles, roughly the distance from Greenport to Philmont in a direct line.
This gun to our collective heads would have been loaded with 500 million pounds of coal annually, to pulverize limestone blasted from a 1,200-acre quarry nearly as large as the entire City of Hudson. “Alternative” fuels such as garbage, tires and hazardous waste could have been added to the cauldron— a side of incinerator to go with your cement plant.
The behemoth would have been connected to the Hudson waterfront by two miles of conveyor belts, through wetlands and across three major City entrances. At the waterfront, 700-foot-long Titanic-scaled HudsonMax barges would have constantly offloaded coal, slag, and gypsum, while onloading two million tons of finished cement each year.
Their wakes, fumes and noise would have endangered smaller craft on the river, and chased away residents trying to enjoy the adjacent public park. Meanwhile, back in Greenport, as many as 265 daily truck trips** would have serviced the main facility.
By SLC’s own admission, the plant sought permits to emit up to 20 million pounds of pollutants per year, including greenhouse gases such as nitrogen and sulfur dioxides, heavy metals and volatile organic compounds: arsenic, benzene, cadmium, chromium, lead, mercury and more.
The medical staff of Columbia Memorial Hospital, following the lead of Drs. Jeff Monkash, Ira Marks, Michael Brown, Steve Kaufman and Stu Kaufman, concluded that emissions of fine particulate matter (PM 10 and PM 2.5) would result in more asthma among local kids, more premature heart attacks among older residents, and higher incidences of cancer among the general population. The American Lung Association concurred, stating that:
The pollution belched by this coal-burning plant would not only trigger asthma attacks in children and cause serious respiratory problems in seniors with lung disease, it would put at risk the health of those of us who do not currently suffer from respiratory problems.
Worse still, citizens discovered that SLC and its Swiss-owned parent company Holderbank—now called Holcim—had an appalling track record of fines for pollution and price-fixing violations. Whatever promises the company was making, it had broken similar promises to other communities worldwide. (The company had also used slave labor in Europe during World War II, and actively profited in South Africa during Apartheid.)
Indeed, the plant wasn’t opposed only on environmental grounds. Over time, many business leaders and workers alike realized that the project would be the death of any sustainable local or regional economy. By the end, over 200 businesses representing over 1,000 jobs had signed on to the fight with a Statement of Values [PDF] explaining both their positive vision for a greeneer economy, and how SLC would that economy at risk.
To those who weren’t here, it must seem odd, even bizarre, that this colossally foolish idea wasn’t just dismissed out of hand. Yet when first proposed, the cement plant was considered a “done deal.” And none of the above details would have become known in time to stop the plant, if it hadn’t been for a cluster of fewer than 40 residents, who started to ask the tough questions avoided by the powers that be.
Before it was over, SLC had spent $58 million—over $1,000 per adult in Columbia County—to no avail. In the next installment of this piece on Monday, I’ll take a look at some history of local activism, and begin to explore how this massive industrial proposal was stopped against such long odds.
[ Click here for Part 2 ]
* Readers who want to read the full, original OT article as edited by Enid Futterman and designed by John Isaacs can download it as a PDF right away by clicking here. A full, week-by-week chronology of the fight can be found at Stop the Plant... I’m currently working on another article for the next issue of Our Town, on the topic of the local media.
** This number is not much different than the traffic now proposed through Hudson’s South Bay, which certain local leaders now say would require no permits; the Greenport proposal was subject to weeks of grueling hearings on traffic impacts, despite that Town having no zoning.
The French dairy powerhosue Eurial International is said to be coming to Columbia County—opening a goat cheese operation in the former Entenmann’s warehouse on Route 9 in Livingston, according to three separate sources.
According to a description in Gourmet News in 2009, “Eurial produces Couturier/ Soignon fresh goat cheese from only the fresh milk it collects from their farmers.” According to one source, the company will initially import curd from France until it secures adequate supplies from regional sources.
Founded as Soignon in 1885, its Couturier division began distributing goat cheese (then a relatively recherché item here) in the U.S. in the early ’80s, and was subsumed into Eurial about 10 years later. The company currently markets its French cheeses in the U.S. through Couturier NA, based in Warwick, Rhode Island.
This continues a recent trend (exemplified by the arrival of 50 new jobs with Etsy in Hudson, 12 new jobs in Stuyvesant with Milk Thistle’s new facility, not to mention the proposed 65 associate positions at Hannaford in Livingston) of Columbia County managing to add blocks of new jobs steadily without any obvious environmental or other so-called “downside impacts.”
Businesses which make use of existing infrastructure, choose sensible locations, and are compatible with the character of the area find the region attractive—and arrive without controversy (unlike, say, the vast, coal-burning plant proposed by St. Lawrence Cement, which promised only one net new job for local residents, yet burned up tons of energy and resources to no purpose).
Over time, the addition of 10 jobs here, 50 jobs there, builds a stable economy, with risks distributed among dozens and dozens of employers—rather than relying on a handful of large industries, who either stay and destroy local residents’ health while chasing away cleaner business, or else stay only as long as they don’t get a sweeter tax deal or other incentive elsewhere. With Taconic’s “mouse farm” laying people off in Livingston, the rumored arrival there of Eurial would seem particularly timely.
Projects like the Americlean toxic waste processing plant (to which Hudson Mayor Scalera and County Development official wanted to give $600,000 to trash the City’s waterfront) or SLC (which would have burned 500 million pounds of coal annually, causing increased asthma, cancer and heart attacks among vulnerable residents) were opposed by citizens not merely on scenic or environmental grounds, but also because they would have diminished the appeal of the area for businesses like those now relocating here—in a beautiful, historic area, where high-tech business can occupy stunning warehouse buildings or agricultural businesses can find quality water and soil.
During the long SLC controversy, there were some who could not give up the 1950s notion that “real” economic development could only mean big smokestacks and giant corporations... even though such industries today only need handfuls of highly-trained engineers to perform work that once required hundreds of people doing manual labor. Growing up in a different era, it was perhaps understandable that some had a hard time accepting that a local economy does not have to rely on a handful of large corporations.
Instead, a community can stitch together lots and lots of smaller businesses—and that in the long run such economies are more diverse, enduring, and mutually-supportive. Even as the nation struggles to see its way out of a depression largely caused by reckless banking and investment practices, it would seem this part of the country is finding its footing on a new, 21st Century path.
So the news is finally out of the (handmade) bag... Over the past few months, the most exciting but worst-kept secret in Hudson has been the persistent rumor that Etsy, the wildly popular online marketplace for artists and artisans, would soon be opening an outpost in The Cannonball Factory on Columbia Street.
(In my own case, this was first whispered to me during the Valley Alliance’s Halloween benefit party in that location... Like many others, I was told to keep this “hush-hush” as the deal had not been finalized, and talking about it publicly might mess things up.)
After a Sunday post on The Gossips of Rivertown finally spilled some of the beans, Etsy founder and CEO Rob Kalin—profiled just last week in Crain’s—confirmed the rumors in an email to many Hudson business owners. Kalin indicated that the site currently employs 175 people in Brooklyn, and hopes to grow the site’s Hudson outpost to 50 jobs with real benefits.
In many ways, this welcome news confirms what those who pioneered the revival of Hudson in the 1980s and ’90s (and fought to protect the area from destructive proposals) always thought was possible... Namely, that if City residents kept steadily building upon Hudson’s unique history and architectural fabric, protected its community character, maintained an active main street full of locally-owned businesses, and took advantage of Hudson’s terrific location, the possibilities for attracting greener, more forward-looking businesses was boundless. Great businesses want to locate to great towns.
(Another defining feature of Hudson and Columbia County over the past dozen or so years is that there are an unusual and ever-increasing number of home-based businesses, “cottage” industries, and self-employed people here. So while Etsy addresses a global marketplace, it’s that much more of an appropriate fit for the region.)
For anyone unfamiliar with Etsy, their stated goal is “to enable people to make a living making things, and to reconnect makers with buyers.” The site, which now features sellers in 150 countries (concentrated in the U.S., the E.U., and Australia), aims “to build a new economy and present a better choice: Buy, Sell, and Live Handmade.”
One feature of their website allows you to find craftspeople and artists by geographic location; clicking here will give you results of a search on “Hudson, NY.” This turns up many pages of results, though many are from the Hudson Valley rather than Hudson proper. Below are links to a few sellers who identify themselves as being in Hudson proper:
The news has also caught the eye of members of the Etsy community, who have begun a discussion of Etsy’s plans here.
