SamPratt.com

2013 in review

Some of the biggest ups and downs of the year include:

• Biggest Sale of a Small Object: Auctioneer Colin Stair of Stair Galleries in Hudson sold a Tsarist figurine by Fabergé for $5.2 million in October to an undisclosed phone bidder. The figurine was discovered in a Rhinebeck attic.
• Wackiest Would-Be Terrorist: County resident (and Kinderhook Elk) Eric Feight was arrested as part of a harebrained plot to build a ray gun intended to beam radiation into mosques, with the apparent crackpot goal of giving Muslims cancer.
• Most Avant-Garde New Building in an Historic District: Grigori Fatayev built this handsome black box off Willard Place behind the Allen Street home of painter Tony Thompson. The building now serves as Thompson’s studio.
• Most Welcome Threat to Leave the County: Following two catastrophic fires in 2012, and after suing the Town of Ghent for upholding its zoning code in 2013, TCI of NY threatened to move their PCB (mis-) handling business across the river to Coeymans. While many breathed a sigh of relief, reminding TCI to not let the door hit them in the back on the way out, it remains to be seen whether Coeymans will really take on the troubled company. The first weeks of the New Year may provide an answer, as the end date for the postponement of TCI’s lawsuit comes due. The company agreed to drop the suit if they found a new home.
• Liveliest Glimpse of Old Hudson: A  video of people hanging out and partying in the 7th Street park in the early 1990s was posted by YouTuber Satansdarkmetal.
• Most Misleading Local Headline: The Register-Star titled an article about the Board of Supervisors voting to keep on pursuing eminent domain against Meadowgreens owner Carmen Nero: “Board Rejects Eminent Domain Resolution.”
• Most Pandering Local Headline: For its article about a local engineer who allegedly “zoned out” while speeding a Metro-North train into a fatal accident around a curve at Spuyten Duyvil, Columbia Paper editor Parry Teasdale used this headline: “Germantown Engineer Assists Crash Probe.”
• Most Heartening Turnout at a Public Meeting: Hundreds streamed into the Livingston Town Garage for the first public meeting of Livingston Farmers & Families, which is organizing to alter or stop a massive power line project from Upstate to NYC. The meeting featured the political speech of the year, a ripsnorter by farmer and Town Board member Will Yandik, who seems destined for higher office.
• Clumsiest Campaign Rollout: The first major media introduction of newly-minted Hudson Valley resident Sean Eldridge, who is seeking to unseat Congressman Chris Gibson, came in the early Summer pages of the New York Times. But the article mainly provided fodder for his opponent. The Times’ revelations about the cost of Eldridge’s Shokan house, with the implication that he and Facebook zillionnaire Chris Hughes had shopped around for a district to run in, were swiftly followed by an Albany Times-Union exposé of how Eldridge’s campaign was paying area residents $100 a pop to focus group attack messages on Gibson.
• Most Revealing Comment by an Official Once Thought to Be More Enlightened: Mistakenly thinking that the press and public had left the room, Hudson Development Corporation director Sheena Salvino denigrated citizens who had come out to support the Community Garden as a “mob.”
• Most Revealing Comment by an Official Never Thought to Be More Enlightened: County Economic Development tsar Ken Flood shared his unvarnished opinion with Ghent resident Kevin Delahanty that “restaurants in Hudson and Chatham ... don’t provide good jobs except for the owners.”
• Worthiest Ideas Gathering Dust on Some Politician’s Shelf: In July, the Columbia County Emergency Management Council proposed a series of sensible, forward-thinking guidelines to prevent major disasters. Little or nothing has been heard about their recommendations in the six months since.
• Ugliest Use of Social Media by an Elected Official: Ghent Town Board member Richard Sardo opined in a Facebook post that MSNBC host (and Berkshire County resident) Rachel Maddow “looks very much like an ugly man.” Sardo, who coupled this assessment of Maddow’s looks with his barely-disguised hots for FOX anchor Megyn Kelly, badly lost his Tea Party bid for Town Supervisor against Republican Mike Benvenuto.
• Most Gratifying Told ’Ya So: The Valley Alliance was vindicated as the City of Hudson glumly acknowledged the group’s contention that the people, not Holcim, already owned 4.4 acres along the Waterfront. Research by the Alliance demonstrated that the riverfront lands had been improperly sold in the early 1980s without State approval.
• Least Merited Award: Hudson Phoenix president John Tonelli was given the Chamber of Commerce’s “Businessperson of the Year” award in June, just months after announcing the arrival of his plastics extrusion business. But Phoenix seemingly never made any hires, and according to a Chamber source the company had “ceased operations” by November.
• Least Festive Street Fest: A car show put on by American Glory’s Joe Fierro, with little or no notification to neighbors, shut down the 300 block of Warren Street on a Spring Saturday, but attracted little interest.
• Most Hilarious Banter Between Star Chefs: A New York Magazine article about the opening of Fish & Game featured this exchange between the restaurants’ principals, Zak Pelaccio and Jori Jayne Emde:

  Foraging for ingredients turns out to have its limitations. Before long, Pelaccio suggests we give up the mushroom hunt. Emde reluctantly agrees. “I mean, I can smell mushrooms though,” she says, then tells me about recently sniffing her way to ramps. “Zak calls me a hound dog.” She gives an animalistic howl. “It’s weird, that’s the sound I make when we’re having sex.”
  
  “It boosts my self-esteem,” says Pelaccio.
  
  “Like you need it,” she returns.
  
  “We always need it,” Pelaccio says.

• Least Effective Tool for Promoting Business: In March, the Columbia County Industrial Develpment Agency (IDA) had to revoke its Payment in Lieu of Taxes (PILOT) plan for fish-breeder Local Ocean, as the company had gone into default. Yet another past Chamber award-winner, the company announced its closing in August.
• Lamest Campaign by a Candidate Claiming to be a Skilled Organizer: Hudson’s Victor Mendolia garnered the lowest number of votes of any mayoral candidate in a two-person race in recent memory, possibly in City history. The former City Democratic chair lost his campaign manager in the process of losing to incumbent Bill Hallenbeck, despite Democrats having a massive registration advantage over Republicans, and despite Hallenbeck himself earning fewer votes than his first run. Turnout was almost half of Hudson elections of a decade ago, despite the number of registered voters staying the same. As of August, Mendolia had spent more on restaurant dinners than his campaign had banked up for the Fall campaign.
• Most Important Unread Mail: Government records uncovered by Ghent resident Patti Matheney revealed that the Department of Homeland Security had warned local emergency officials of the presence of highly-explosive sodium in the TCI building. But the warning apparently went unheeded, contributing (along with egregious negligence by the company itself) to some 12-15 explosions when water was dumped on the company’s smoldering building. Shamelessly, TCI attorney Bill Better shamelessly tried to use this revelation to deflect responsibility from his client.
• Most Confusing Campaign Signage: Road signs for the Taghkanic Republican slate seemed to deliberately conflate 20something candidate Ryan Skoda with his much better-known father, farmer (and sitting Town Board member) Richard Skoda.
• Most Concerted Effort to Deny the Obvious: Hudson City Attorney Cheryl Roberts, Alderman Cappy Pierro, Council President Don Moore, and attorney Giff Whitbeck repeatedly attempted to deny that Standard Oil had occupied a key piece of the Hudson Waterfront, even after clear evidence was brought forth to prove it. Roberts, who had incorrectly identified the Standard Oil location, and lectured citizens about being “completely wrong,” even wondered aloud whether oil tanks existed in the 1880s. Moore similarly wagged his finger at the public about “being careful.” Eventually, the Gang of Four could not help acknowleding their mistake, brushing it off with barely a shrug. (Their motivation appeared to be a desire to avoid any investigation into contamination.)
• Most Selfish Bogarting of Scarce Public Services: The new Barlow Hotel somehow convinced the City of Hudson to not only build an awning over the sidewalk, but also to grant the business exclusive use of two parking spaces in the 500 block of Warren, ostensibly for loading and unloading of baggage. The request was granted despite the block being the the busiest in Hudson, and there being a vast public parking lot immediately behind the hotel. (This frequent perambulator of that part of the street has yet to see a single guest using the two much-needed spaces for their intended purpose.) The City has not clarified what the criteria are for securing one’s own private parking spaces, but no doubt others would love to get the same special treatment.
• Least Dignified Post-Election Email: Claverack resident Chris Lastovicka broke with American election tradition in trashing the Town’s voters in the wake of her partner’s loss of her Supervisor seat. Incumbent Robin Andrews lost by 20 votes to Republican Kippy Weigelt. Lastovicka blamed weekenders whom she claimed did not turn in enough absentee ballots—despite Andrews picking up 60 votes from absentees. No blame was assigned to the candidate herself for failing to take a stand on issues such as TCI or the County Airport, or for opposing both an increase in the State minimum wage and common sense gun regulations.
• Most Blatant Media Conflict of Interest: Community radio station WGXC had scheduled an interview with recently-departed Mendolia campaign manager Clay Laugier. But the interview on the @Issue show was abruptly canceled without explanation—the most obvious being that Laugier was likely to be critical of Mendolia—a co-host of the show, on leave at the time.
• Two Most Pleasant Out-of-County Finds of the Year: Discovering that Dope Jams Records of Brooklyn had reopened in Oak Hill (Greene County) and stumbling upon an utterly authentic northern Chinese restaurant in Wappingers Falls.
• Most Missed Bar, Bar Owner, and Bar Patron: 2013 brought the sad demise of the Iron Horse bar, its owner Frank Martino, and one of its most loyal patrons—former Hudson Police Commissioner Jeff “Sweeps” Bagnall. Join me in pouring one out tonight, New Year’s Eve, for all three.

The Partnership’s Part

Olana has recently published Art Meets Art: Perspectives On and Beyond Olana, a collection of essays and images about the famous Church landscape. I was asked to contribute the following short piece about The Olana Partnership’s role in the nearly seven-year “stop the plant” battle against St. Lawrence Cement; my text appears below.

The new publication is available at the historic site’s bookshop, and also includes texts supplied by poet John Ashbery and TOP president Sara Griffen.

---

Olana’s Role in the Cement Plant Battle

by Sam Pratt

“We are very concerned about the visual impacts on the Olana viewshed, and also about acid deposition from the plant's air emissions endangering its historic structures.” So said Margaret Davidson before an anxious throng of 1,000 attendees who packed a sweltering gymnasium on the campus of Columbia-Greene Community College on June 21st, 2001. 

That day marked the first major public hearing about the St. Lawrence Cement proposal for Hudson and Greenport. With Administrative Law Judge Helene Goldberger presiding, the hearing ran from 10 am until nearly 1 am the next day. The proceedings were punctuated by thunderstorms, both actual and metaphorical.

The comments of Davidson, like those of TOP president Sara Griffen and countless other Olana supporters, were prompted by a Swiss-owned company’s vast, coal-fired project, which centered around a forty-story smokestack and 1,400-acre mine, along with a sprawling waterfront barge facility. Citizen after citizen stepped forward to denounce the proposal, with Frederic Church’s home a constant theme of longtime Olana boosters such as Arthur Baker, Peter Jung, Ruth Piwonka, and many others.

A sign designed by illustrator (and Olana board member) R.O. Blechman for the Stop the Plant campaign

A key principle established during the nearly 7-year struggle was that this “250-acre landscape at the Center of the World” was intended to be experienced as a whole. Staff and experts argued successfully that Olana consists of much more than just its famous southwestern Hudson River view. After SLC claimed that Church never depicted the area where the main facility would be sited, Hudson resident Don Christensen identified sketches of Becraft Ridge in the Olana archives, proving the company wrong.

Davidson further noted that “the Olana Partnership is concerned that the plant and its plume would be a focal point in the viewshed on both the ridge road, the carriage trail closest to the house, and from Cozy Cottage, Church’s original family house,” which was only then beginning to be restored.

Like its two main allies in the fight, Friends of Hudson and the Hudson Valley Preservation Coalition, Olana likewise argued that there was a strong economic argument to be made against the plant. While the project would not create new jobs, due to the transfer of workers from another facility, it would have caused great harm to other economic engines in the area. 

When the project was finally turned down by Secretary of State Randy Daniels in April 2005, Griffen told The Independent’s Richard Roth that “the Hudson Valley’s aesthetics are important not just on historic but on economic grounds. They talk about places like Olana being strong economic drivers. In order to protect that, you have to protect the resources around it.... I hope [the cement plant ruling] can serve as a precedent for many other decisions around the country.”

 

Letterhead ain’t what it used to be

This building stood by the Hudson River on North Front Street, along the railroad tracks, just south of the Furgary Boat Club but was demolished in just the past few years. Dated 1913, the letterhead is from a private collection in Hudson (NY).

Plumb line

According to Hudson resident and stylist Peter Frank, only the exterior scenes of the Plumb-Bronson house seen in The Bourne Legacy were actually shot locally. The interiors were shot, Frank reports, on a “meticulous recreation” of the historic house on a Brooklyn soundstage. (No wonder Hollywood budgets are so ginormous.)

Olana Modern

Noted architectural photographer (and Greendale resident) Peter Aaron has a must-see suite of photographs of the Olana landscape on view at their Coachman’s House gallery through late October. 

Aaron spent some three years on the project, “wandering Olana’s hills and surrounding landscapes” to capture the site during different seasons, weather and lighting conditions. He writes that before becoming a Hudson Valley homeowner, he

... considered Frederic Church an almost expressionist painter who exaggerated all he saw.  Now, having lived down the hill from Olana for twenty-five years, I recognize that Church’s swirling, flame-colored clouds, twisted trees, river reflections, God-rays, fog, and deeply saturated colors are in evidence for every visitor to see.

Walking the landscape at dawn or dusk is an experience that’s always full of surprise and beauty.  There are moments when a light snowfall blankets the carriage trail but not the woods, creating serpentine shapes through the trees.  In the fall, a tube of fog forms over the Hudson River at dawn, disappearing before full sunlight comes.

“I think it’s the first time I’ve seen a modern perspective on Olana,” said Joan Davidson at the opening which coincided with the region’s Heritage Weekend, a concept with which she is credited.

Rogerson’s reloads

Dennis McEvoy of Rogerson’s in Hudson is joining forces with Bart Slutsky, a collector and dealer of rare, vintage and antique hardware, fixtures and more. Slutsky is now in the process of moving a dozen or so vanloads of handles, locks, latches, lights, pulls, tools and more from his warehouse in Westchester.

Only a small fraction of Slutsky’s inventory is on display at this point, but each piece that’s been unboxed so far is impressive: durable, useful and refined treasures from the past century or more. It complements Rogerson’s own remaining stock, as well as the region’s remarkable building stock. Renovators should find many solid matches or upgrades for existing pieces in older homes, as well as new ideas for home improvements based upon the high-quality engineering of the past.

This really seems like an ideal fit for Hudson, and a fitting new chapter in Rogerson’s storied local history. (I’m going back for some heavy-duty chrome latches later today.)

Shadows on the Hudson

An anonymous donor dropped in my mailbox this week a February 1970 copy of American Heritage (the rare publication to appear regularly in hardcover).

The issue contains an article of local interest by David G. McCullough, who at the time was the magazine's Conservation Editor, but went on to much greater fame as a biographer, TV narrator, and Presidential Medal of Freedom award-winner. (Its Senior Editor at the time, coincidentally, was one my grandfather’s favorite clients—the Civil War historian Bruce Catton.)

Pages 104-105 feature McCullough’s essay entitled “A Wrecker’s Dozen.” McCullough wrote:

There are places on this earth... where conservation is taken to mean the preservation of the notable works of man as well as nature. Magnificent old railroad stations and churches, public buildings, historic houses, architectural landmarks of all kinds, are valued for their beauty or for the memories they evoke, for the sense of continuity they give a place, or, often, just because they have been around a long time and a great many people are fond of them. But here in America we don’t—most of us, anyway—seem to feel that way.We have, apparently, a traditional, perhaps congenital, passion for forever destroying and building anew. [...] Now that spirit has been institutionalized officially: we call it urban renewal. [...] The wrecker’s ball swings in every city in the land, and memorable edifices of all kinds are coming down at a steady clip.

McCullough then goes on to list his “wrecker’s dozen” of “thirteen doomed landmarks.” Of those, two were in our area:

• The General Worth Hotel, built in 1837 and a prime specimen of Greek Revial architecture in America.

• The Hill [was] built in 1796 by Henry Livingston, Revolutionary soldier and Supreme Court justice. This historic mansion overlooking the Hudson River is modelled after a Palladian villa.” The Hill was spared, being added in 1971 to the National Register of Historic Places, and it remains today in the Livingston family.

But The General Worth, infamously, was doomed indeed—demolished to make way ostensibly for a downtown Dairy Queen. (40 years later, residents fought to prevent an historic firehouse from becoming another ice cream shop, and prevailed. Washington Hose now houses the Columbia County Chamber of Commerce.)

A blogger who calls herself Vassergirl notes that American Heritage revisited its story 20 years later, writing that the 1969 demolition occurred

in late 1969 after a long and heated battle between concerned citizens and the town's mayor, Samuel T. Wheeler. The hotel was designed by Isaiah Rogers on the model of the Tremont House in Boston. Lincoln stopped at the Worth during his inaugural trip to Washington in 1861, and it was long considered the finest hotel in the northern Hudson Valley. In its place today is an electrical supply company and a parking lot.

Goings + comings

 

• It was unusually sad to hear from friends last month of the passing of Donald Blasko, the legendary co-proprietor since the 1970s of The Turnpike Inn. The last time I saw Don (while picking up one of Mady Blasko’s excellent pizzas), he seemed in poor health but great spirits—doing a spirited shuffle behind the bar to some tune he was humming. Now there was a life well-spent.


• Historical Materialism, which began many years ago on Crosby Street in Soho and has graced the corner of 6th and Warren in Hudson for roughly a decade now, is moving on—and Regan & Smith are said to be moving in, from across the street. Hudson really will miss what (I suspect) is the only antiques store in recorded history to be named after after a Marxist concept.


• In another switch, Mix has completed its move out of Hudson’s 400 block. A sign in the window cryptically announces “Coming Soon—George!” Is President Bush getting into the furniture business, or Ihlenburg Plumbing opening a storefront office?


• Two friends and I had a truly well-balanced supper the other night at Crossroads Food Shop in Hillsdale, which appears to be hitting its stride. Big hits were the parsnip soup, a hake and clam stew, a leek-mushroom-endive quinoa, and three spoons for the panacotta dessert. The cooking was smart but understated, sophisticated without getting flashy, with attentive but not smothering service.


• An observer reports that former chair Tom Swope appeared before Hudson’s Historic Preservation Commission recently as an applicant, in his new capacity representing developer Eric Galloway... but left in something of a snit when informed that the photographs he’d brought regarding a change to a roof were inadequate for a decision to be rendered. (He’ll be back.) The Commission is also looking for a new preservation architect to fill its ranks.


• When last I checked, the City still had not submitted its Local Waterfront Revitalization Plan (LWRP) to the State for approval—despite being passed by the Common Council last October amid great controversy. It’s not known exactly why, but the State presumably would want to see the land deals with Holcim finanalized before reviewing a hypothetical plan. Or it could have something to do with this.


• Lonely Planet named the Hudson River Valley as its #2 U.S. travel destination for 2012, writing that our “leafy drives, wineries and plenty of farm-to-table foodie options [...] draw even spoiled-for-choice Manhattanites away from the city.”

Triage vs. Precaution

Further to yesterday’s post on the matter of State policy for assessing the visual impact of development projects, below is another important passage from the 2001 Issues Conference on the St. Lawrence Cement Greenport project. This was the first major test of the new DEC policy, which had been completed concurrently with the agency’s initial, positive review of SLC’s application.

(Some might say that the policy had been tailored, consciously or not, to avoid conflict with that company’s goals; at the time, the Pataki administration in general and Encon Staff in particular were believed to be pro-plant. The still-contested Athens Gen project, visible from the northern side of Olana and from other vistas in Columbia and Greene counties, may also have put pressure on staff to circumscribe its guidelines.)

The speakers below are Adminsitrative Law Judge (ALJ) Helene Goldberger and DEC staffer Rick Benas, who was also a member of Saturday’s Olana panel. This passage appears on pp. 1709-10 of the official transcript [PDF] of the July 2001 hearings, and immediately followed stern challenges from Olana attorney John Caffry to the State’s premature acceptance of the project’s visual impacts:

   16                     JUDGE GOLDBERGER:  […] But Staff is

   17      satisfied that based upon the mitigation that's been

   18      offered by St. Lawrence Cement that it meets the SEQR 

   19      requirements?

   20                     MR. BENAS:  What Staff believes is

   21      that the Applicant has minimized impacts to the 

   22      maximum extent practicable, has offered substantial

   23      offsets and decomissioning that the decision-maker

   24      has to take into account, along with all other

    2      essential considerations to reach a decision in this

    3      case.

    4                     By itself, this discipline does not --

    5      the effects, the significant residual impacts are not

    6      significant enough to suggest denial.

The problem, again, is that the DEC visual assessment policy used by Benas and his colleagues (and still in use today) proceeds from an assumption that SEQR review is a form of triage. The regulator assumes and accepts that some of their patients—here, valuable elements of landscape—will be partially maimed or lost entirely. Not everyone will be saved. He or she then calculates which patients need the most care and which have the best chance of survival, and decides which are most important to try to save first.

In the cases of both SLC’s Greenport project and to some extent the review of Athens Gen, the southern Olana viewshed was deemed by some in Albany to be the more important “patient.” If you did what you could to protect the southern view, at the expense of the rest, that was acceptable from the stanpoint of regulatory triage. Building three medium-sized stacks to the north in Athens, or one gargantuan one to the east in Greenport, was deemed a secondary priority, one that could be sacrificed to benefit the view to the south.

Many citizens and historians, however, would start instead with a more fundamental maxim from medicine—the imperative to first, do no harm. For environmentalists, this notion is enshrined in the Precautionary Principle. And this notion (which polluter-friendly regulators rarely if ever want to contemplate) is in fact built into the State Environmental Quality Review Act as the requirement that proposals must be evaluated in relation to the “No Build Option.”

DEC’s visual assessment policy in this case gave cover to those who, like company attorney Tom West, wished to erase that option from the menu. Or at least, that’s how DEC treated its own internal guidelines in their first major test. This intersected with another common debate between the lawyers on each side: How to interpret the dictates of SEQR’s balancing provisions. How much triage does “balancing” allow? If one impact is unacceptable, but three others are acceptable, can the three take precedence over the one? (In a Coastal Consistency review by DOS, no “balancing” is supposed to occur—if you violate one policy, it shouldn’t matter how consistent the project are with the rest.)

And as it turned out, no such triage was necessary in the SLC case. Today, there is no cement plume from either a Greenport stack or a Catskill one. The Precautionary Principle prevailed. (The same cannot be said of Athens Gen, which was permitted cynically on an unachievable condition that there would be no visible plume from the facility, though one often sees a massive one over Athens from the Columbia County side of the river on cold, damp winter days.)

As noted in yesterday’s post, the current visual policy serves as a non-binding set of guidelines for regulatory staff. It is not law, though a suggestion was advanced at the Saturday panel that it be made so. To do so would be to codify that dangerous assumption: that some “resources” may be sacrificed for others.

A bend in the river... and in State policy

At 3 pm on Saturday, The Olana Partnership presented an illuminating panel discussion at Stair Galleries moderated by Hudson resident and Manhattan attorney Dorothy Heyl about the successful late 1970s fight to stop a nuclear power plant proposed in Cementon—smack in the middle of Olana’s southern viewshed.

Overall, the panel discussion was highly informative, stimulating and at times even inspirational. Of particular interest were Carl Petrich’s recollections of how officials within the Oak Ridge lab of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission supported his landscape planning work in spite of his eventual conclusion that this wasn’t a suitable location for a nuclear plant.Petrich’s independent-minded analysis was in many ways responsible for the project’s demise.

Fellow panelist Wint Aldrich similarly recalled that he was afforded a remarkable degree of autonomy to question the project within the Hugh Carey administration. Today it seems hard to imagine that the same level of non-politicized, objective, but ultimately oppositional research would be as tolerated in our 21st Century Federal and State bureaucracies...

There were, meanwhile, a couple of moments when an informed observer couldn't help wishing for a longer and more detailed debate than is possible on a late Saturday afternoon.

For example, panelist Rick Benas, a semi-retired NYS DEC staffer, touted a visual impact assessment policy he helped finalize in 2000. As reported by John Mason in The Catskill Daily Mail, Benas heralded this internal agency policy as a signature achievement growing out of the nuclear plant fight—characterizing it as “the basis with which the DEC judges all submissions regarding aesthetics. You identify the resource, figure out how to minimize the impact.”

Benas (who had earlier offered an authoritative explication of the visual elements which make the view from Olana so powerful) touted the policy as “an objective way to measure a subjective phenomenon.” He further claimed that it “is supported by both industry and environmentalists, concluding that “What’s in here is what we all share. If an agency’s not doing its job, throw this in their face.”

That sounded pretty darn good... prompting another panelist to suggest that maybe this policy should become law, rather than just an internal guidance policy.

However, Mr. Benas neglected to mention that in 2001 he and his colleagues at DEC had interpreted that very same policy to justify their support for the proposed St. Lawrence Cement Greenport project—a project resolutely opposed by Olana primarily due to visual impacts.

In 2001 proceedings before Administrative Law Judge Helene Goldberger, Olana attorney John Caffry expressed amazement at Benas and DEC’s policy-backed assessment, calling it “mind-boggling.”

Why “mind-boggling”? Because the SLC Greenport proposal featured, among other things, a 400-foot stack the size of an office building, with a plume stretching five miles or more, as well as several dozen other major structures atop Becraft Mountain and at the Hudson Waterfront. County resident Moisha Blechman aptly called it a “new industrial city.” As seen in the documentary Two Square Miles, balloon tests insisted upon by citizens later confirmed just how colossal and pervasive the visual impact of that new “city” could have been.

Yet the DEC’s 2000 policy made it very difficult, if not impossible, for the agency to reject a proposal based on visual impacts... even impacts as vast as those proposed by SLC. That’s because their policy is based on the premise that if a company does everything it can to “mitigate” and “offset” its presence in the landscape, then the project can still be approved—even if after those efforts, there are still significant, adverse, “residual” impacts.

In lay terms, the DEC policy says: If a company gets an A for effort, it makes it OK for them to get an F on the actual test. The policy allows approval of a project despite its harsh and discordant elements, so long as the applicant makes a good faith effort to mitigate them “to the maxium extent practicable.”

So while Mr. Benas and DEC acknowledged in 2001 that it was impossible to hide such a big project, since SLC was offering as many mitigations as possible given the circumstances, the remaining negative impacts did not constitute grounds for a denial.

Thus Benas, backed by then-DEC attorney Bob Leslie, argued from their visual policy that hiding a small portion of the 400-foot stack in an 80-foot hole in the Greenport quarry, painting parts of it light blue, then removing several structures plus the plume from Catskill was an adequate combination of mitigation and “offsets” to warrant approval, even though the plant would still have undeniable visual impacts. Following this policy, the agency proceeds from the assumption that virtually every proposal will be built. In that context, the agency’s job becomes limited to making the best of bad situations—not to prevent them. (This mindset is not limited to government bureaucrats; Scenic Hudson president Ned Sullivan has similarly argued, in the pages of The New York Times, that his organization’s role is to “manage” development, not to stop it.)

Below is the key section of Benas’ 2001 testimony from the Issues Conference held at the Hudson Elks’ Lodge referenced above, pp. 1696-7:

10                     Staff is guided by DEC program policy

11      number DEP-00-2 assessing and mitigating visual

12      impacts.  The policy was the subject of public review

13      and comment, had a peer review and comment, and was

14      issued in July of 2000.

15                     What the policy does is, among other

16      things, it gives the universal list of all mitigation

17      strategies in this discipline.  With that list, if an

18      Applicant demonstrates that they have employed every

19      strategy of mitigation, then the Applicant can assert

20      that they have minimized impact and Staff can either

21      refute or confirm that by looking at the generic list

22      and making sure that  all strategies have been

23      applied.

24                     In this case, even after employment of

2      all those strategies, there remains a residual

3      significant adverse impact, then the policy directs

4      Staff to explore the possibility of offsets to

5      compensate for and reach the balance that SEQR

6      requires.

7                     Applicant has offered significant and

8      important offsets in this proceeding and, further,

9      Staff has gone to require in the draft permit that

10      the facility be decommissioned at the end of its

11      useful life, thus, minimizing the duration of the

12      impact.

13                     We believe that the issue before your

14       Honor, among other things, is are those offsets

15      sufficient to justify approval.

The decision had tremendous precedential value; fortunately, it was not left solely up to the discretion of EnCom staff, who worked closely and privately for year's with SLC to hone its application. For if the Greenport project could have been built here, pretty much anything could. One seriously has to wonder whether, under the terms of the current policy, DEC would be able to stop a nuclear plant at Cementon on visual grounds.

State regulators were also relying on an assumption that was wholly rejected by The Olana Partnership itself, namely that only the southern view from the site really matters... Frederic Church plainly designed a 360-degree experience at Olana, and sketched or painted other views in other directions, for example looking toward Becraft Ridge. DEC staff also rushed to ratify the cement company’s assertion that the project would have no significant, adverse effect on historic resources within the Coastal Zone, even though neither the Department of State nor the Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation (OPRHP) had weighed in on the matter yet.

Ultimately, citizens concluded that the DEC was not, in Benas’ own formulation, “not doing its job” and indeed threw more enforceable laws “in their face.” after years of wrenching controversy and millions spent by both sides, the project was denied via those same Coastal Consistency rules that EnCon had shrugged off … The decision came down from a different agency, much to the chagrin of many DEC staffers, from what opponents soon heard through various Albany grapevines. (“They were shocked and angry over the Secretary of State’s decision,” one well-placed Capitol source reported to me.)

As it turns out, there was no need to compromise one view for another, or to settle for making the best of a bad situation. The 2005 rejection of the Greenport project has now been coupled with clear confirmation of the closing of Holcim’s (SLC’s) Catskill facility. The visual plumes from that destructive, foreign-owned company now have been removed from both sides of the Hudson River, along with the pollution they discharged into our region’s environment. What had been posited as a tough either/or choice, pitting Olana’s stunning southern views against its overall experience, now has played out as a complete win/win for the site.

Another topic worthy of more detailed future discussion: the way in which boundaries were later drawn (under the guidance of Cementon anti-nuclear activist Loretta Simon) to protect the Catskill-Olana and Columbia-Greene Scenic Areas of Statewide Significance, but left a gap omitting all of the City of Hudson in between the two. But that’s something for another day, as this post has already gone overlong.

Abramovic bringing Koolhaas to Hudson

Koolhaas' design for the Seattle Public Library

UPDATE: According to a Hudson Supervisor, Koolhaas may handle the building's interior, while the exterior would be renovated by another architect.

---

New York Magazine’s “Vulture” blog reports some truly earth-shaking news for Hudson: Rem Koolhaas has signed on to build Marina Abramovic’s long-awaited museum. The Center for the Preservation of Performance Art is slated for the old Community Tennis building on the north side of the 7th Street park.

Without exaggeration, Koolhaas is among the very most respected avant-garde architects in the world today. His involvement means that the building should become a destination not only for performance art afficianados, but also architecture buffs. 

According to the article, Abramovic—who also bought a Dennis Wedlick house here in Columbia County—is anticipating an $8 million budget. She also says that she’s advocating with the new Mayor to support a hotel which would accommodate the large number of anticipated visitors, some of whom might be looking for something other than a B&B experience or a motel. (Note: A friend reports that the nearby St. Charles Hotel, which had suffered from some neglect over the years, recently has begun renovating its rooms.)

Describing the area, Vulture columnist Alexandra peers writes:

Hudson, New York, and the surrounding region southeast of the Catskills, is already something of a serious art-world hangout, with several expat galleries in town. It was the site of a New Art Dealers Alliance art fair last summer (not to mention the headquarters of the last century’s “Hudson River School” of painters and painting). 

It will be fascinating, among other things, to see how Hudson’s Historic Preservation Commission approaches the project. I’ve long argued that preservation in Hudson should focus primarily on (A) preventing demolition of historic structures and (B) assisting homeowners with making—and finding funding for—historically accurate restorations. A question I remember raising with my friend Tony Thompson way back in 1998 or ’99, at a garden party held by Sarah Sterling: What would Hudson do if a truly famous architect wanted to build something cutting-edge here? Would we spurn a Richard Meier, or Zaha Hadid, or Frank Gehry building because it was not period? Hudson is, today, a catalog of period vernacular American styles precisely because its building stock evolved with the times.

(Obviously, there is a big difference between an ambitious modern project and someone negligently stripping important period details from a historic façade... But how does one distinguish between the two in a preservation code, without essentially saying “You can change it, so long the result is really cool”?)

This project may put such theoretical questions to the test. However it turns out, Koolhaas’ involvement is huge, positive news for Hudson, promising many direct and indirect economic and cultural benefits.

[h/t Warren Reiss]

For what it’s Worth

Tag-teaming here on another GoR post, this one about the General Worth Hotel...

In 1940, the Federally-funded Work Projects Administration (WPA) issued the first edition of New York: A Guide to the Empire State. The guide was reissued again in 1949, and contained among others this entry for the City of Hudson:

The GENERAL WORTH HOTEL, 215 Warren Street, is a rare and unusually well-preserved example of Greek Revival architecture [...]

But by 1969, the City of Hudson was moving to tear down what just twenty years earlier had been deemed “unusually well-preserved.” The Worth had been closed for six years—long enough for any building to require some restoration and maintenance, but surely not long enough to warrant complete demolition.

Today’s Hudson officials like to claim that every building torn down in the ’60s, ’70s and on into the ’90s was beyond repair. The simplest rejoinder is the ample local evidence of how individuals have restored much farther-gone buildings—left out in the rain for 10-40 years longer than the General Worth.

Far more ordinary structures than Hudson’s famous Hotel survived far more years of neglect, just waiting to be rediscovered decades later. First-time home owners managed to return countless historic properties to liveable standards (and in some cases, close to their original glory) largely without government assistance.

In that same year, 1969, the prolific architectural writer Ada Louise Huxtable was awarded the first Pulitzer Prize for Distinguished Criticism. It was also the year that Huxtable published several stinging critiques of Hudson “leaders” as they moved to tear down the General Worth and push forward with increasingly discredited Urban Renewal programs.

As Huxtable noted in December of 1969, many American planners and architects had already concluded that Urban Renewal was a mistake. But that realization had not reached the developers and builders and bureaucrats overseeing these programs. And so the bulldozers continued their work erasing America’s architecture treasures. In The New York Times, Huxtable wrote:

The bulldozer approach [is] a thing of the past. Total clearance is dead. We are going to save our cities and spare our pastoral splendors and make an environment that is civilized and humane.

Or are we? Everyone who believes in fairies raise his hand and Tinker Bell will live. There is no corruption in Vietnam, no Mafia in Sicily, and there are no bulldozers anymore.

They’ve all gone to Lexington, Ky., where they moved in at night to start demolition of a three-block historic district, or they work weekends to insure the reduction of landmarks to rubble in Santa Fe. They stand poised to demolish everything around a few token preservation blocks in Denver; they wait to level 148 acres in Pittsburgh; they bide their time for the heart of the historic communities of Salem, Mass., and Hudson, N.Y.

Nothing much has changed except the statements of Federal policy that somehow get lost in the translation at the local level...

In a Wall Street Journal article earlier that year (anthologized in her book Kicked a Building Lately? (1976), Huxtable wrote more extensively about the Worth Hotel’s demise:

The Hudson River Valley Commission, the State Historical Trust, and the National Trust for Historic Preservation urged that it be saved. But political heads prevailed and Hudson demolished its National Register property. Ready for the biggest gag of all? Read it in the Hudson Register-Star:

“A modern Dairy-Queen Drive-In will be constructed on the site of the historic General Worth Hotel that fell victim to the bulldozers last year. The Common Council in special session voted to sell the site for $1,700. Council President Thomas Quigly said the purchase ‘was a step in the right direction to develop downtown Hudson.’”

There are more sadly ironic details in the original article. (Did Hudson ever get that drive-in DQ?) The point being that the approach taken by Hudson officials in the late ’60s and early ’70s was one much of the rest of the nation had already realized was a giant mistake. And yet the General Worth Hotel came down—and after that precedent was set, it was that much easier to find more local victims for the wrecking ball.