For several years, officials in Hudson, New York have been working with a consulting firm called Public Works Partners on a plan for the future of urban development in the city. The resulting proposal is called Hudson 2035. The CEO of Public Works Partners, Celeste Frye, recently talked about their findings with WAMC's Sam Dingman.
INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT
Sam Dingman: Something that jumped out to me in looking at Plan 2035 was this preliminary study that you guys conducted, as a way of kind of getting some bearings. And the Black population in the city of Hudson has declined by 40%. Only 229 new homes have been built since 1990. Twenty-five percent of the housing stock is either vacant, second homes, or vacation rentals. Those are sort of staggering statistics, and I wonder what you made of those when you got those results?
Celeste Frye: Around 2010 - the mid 2010's - people from New York City and thereabouts started really discovering Hudson as a fun vacation destination and a second home destination. And that is the source of why, as you said, 25% of the homes are second homes or vacation rentals. And that has led pretty directly to displacement of some of the longtime residents, including a historically strong Black population and kind of working age population.
Sam Dingman: One of the next steps after you got these preliminary findings together was to start having conversations with residents. Talk to me a little bit about what you heard in those conversations that gives some real-world illustration to these numbers.
Celeste Frye: You know, a lot of people's immediate concern is around jobs and employment, and most Hudson residents have to leave Hudson for full-time jobs. You know, one of the largest employers that's kind of right on the border is a large hospital system, and then there's also some logistics, trucking, distribution, that sort of thing, just slightly outside the city limits. Those are jobs that pay around that median income...
Sam Dingman: $48,199?
Celeste Frye: Yes, and again, as rents have increased, it makes it harder and harder for people to be able to live close to where they work, and vice versa. And you know, one example, a story that we heard, was that Hudson is known for its antique stores, and they're wonderful, they're great, but again, they tend to cater to the vacationers, and they're often not open year round, or every day of the week. And so that makes them not a great employer for people who are full-time residents of the town.
Sam Dingman: Well, you've proposed a couple of solutions to the issues we've been talking about. One is something called inclusionary zoning. Tell me what you mean by inclusionary zoning.
Celeste Frye: Absolutely, Hudson historically was zoned to have, you know, residential areas in certain neighborhoods, and then have more commercial and business uses kind of along the main corridor strip. And so inclusionary zoning can help make sure there is a mix of uses that don't conflict with each other, but that complement each other. So, for example, rather than a building that's right on the main street, having essentially empty offices on the upper floors, those offices could be converted into apartments.
Sam Dingman: That's a very nice idea that you've just articulated, but I could imagine that one of the challenges in implementing it would be that a business, in order to be on, say, Warren Street in Hudson, you know, one of the places with the most foot traffic, where all the antique shoppers and the people who want to go to the restaurants are walking around, their rent is going to be very high. Is there a danger in that situation, if you build a new building that has a business on the first floor, and then has apartments upstairs, that the rents on those apartments are going to have to also be very high?
Celeste Frye: Yes, so part of what we looked at was to help the city look at options for providing some affordable housing options through bringing in state and federal funding to help with the financing of those buildings. Also to look at senior housing, right where there could be opportunities to have some of these buildings include affordable and or senior units that can leverage different financing streams to help keep those units affordable.
Sam Dingman: How vulnerable would the city - and by extension, Plan 2035 - be were one of these anchor economic institutions, Columbia Memorial Hospital, for example, which you alluded to earlier, to shut down?
Celeste Frye: It's a great question, and I think one of our goals in the plan was to help Hudson think through how to diversify its workforce and its employment and business base. You know, there is one development site close to the train station, so kind of lower down, closer to the river. And so we worked to help Hudson think through, how do they set themselves up to have a successful negotiation with a developer? So that that development site can really become an anchor institution, whatever it ends up being.
Sam Dingman: Got you. So, if I'm hearing you right, it's almost a priority guideline when it comes to development, that those priorities would have to be integrated into new development projects?
Celeste Frye: Yeah, absolutely, that's a great way of putting it.
Sam Dingman: So, a lot of this work was done under the previous mayoralty of Kamal Johnson. Joe Ferriss is the mayor now. What has your collaboration with the Ferris administration been thus far? And when do you suppose Hudson residents are going to start to see Plan 2035?
Celeste Frye: Sure, so you know, while certainly the mayoral administration in Hudson did change, some of the city council members are still in place, who were actively a part of this planning process. And, you know, we have certainly been in touch with the new administration, and have offered to kind of give them briefings. I anticipate that will happen, but I think that the new administration is kind of taking its time to to to understand the frameworks and the plan, and we anticipate that we will be able to kind of help bring them up to speed on the plan as as they begin to implement.
