300 block of Columbia buildout

Keeping the county in the city: a closer look at Site #5

Here's a somewhat closer look at a potential buildout for county offices in the 300 block of Columbia Street (Site #5 on my recent post.). This is a particularly prominent and complex site with significant design challenges. It consists of two parcels bisected by Columbia street. The southern parcel lies adjacent to the PARC Foundation pedestrian way and is quite visible from Warren Street. Any building constructed here would have to bear significant civic weight, as it would lie on axis with City Hall Place and the Opera House.

The northern parcel also abuts the "PARCway," although it appears that the park has not been fully developed at this location. The parcel is somewhat less prominent than its southern companion, but also presents significant design challenges. The grade on the back/alley side is two stories higher than Columbia street, which would make it difficult to get adequate daylight into a building interior. This, combined with the possibility of using the sloping grade to conceal part of the building mass, suggests it might be more suited to a parking garage. However, this would still introduce a scale problem vis-à-vis the handful of wood frame houses nearby.

This exercise, however, is charged with the simpler task of determining if the site offers adequate space for a new Columbia County headquarters. Given that it is located adjacent to an existing 30,000 s.f. county building, it has a bit of a head start on the 100,000 s.f. target. However, with a garage on the northern parcel and a 3-story office building to the south, the scheme falls about 25,000 s.f. short. A 4-story building might produce enough space but almost certainly would be too massive. An alternative would be to build an additional office building on the northern parcel (assuming the daylighting problem could be solved), and to site a garage somewhere nearby.

I wouldn't rule this site out for county offices, but given its complexity, it can be properly analyzed only in context with other nearby sites and other city development needs. Its civic visibility and size might make it more suited to a police station or courthouse than to county administration. Too, there has been talk of creating separate senior housing when the Bliss public housing project is redeveloped. Perhaps one of these parcels would prove suitable.

4th and Columbia Buildout

Keeping the county in the city: a closer look at Site #6

I've taken a closer look at a potential buildout at 4th and Columbia Streets (site #6 on my previous post) for county offices. The scheme might also be able to incorporate a new city police station and/or courthouse. My main goal was to see how much space could be created with buildings comparable in scale to the existing county office building at 410 State. In other words, I wasn't trying to make architecture or engage the nuances of a more proper urban design undertaking.

The exercise yielded three buildings of about 30,000 s.f. each (3 floors @ 10,000+/- s.f.) for a total of about 90,000 s.f. of new space. This is within spitting distance of the county's 100,000 s.f. target, and it exceeds it when the existing 30,000 s.f. building is included. With a more accurate site plan, it is conceivable that only two new buildings would be needed to meet county needs, with the third used for the police and/or court.

As noted in my previous post, the county also needs about 200 parking spaces. The garage I've drawn below is probably generous (although not so generous to TSL, whose parking lot I've commandeered), perhaps as much as three times that size. So if the TSL site were to become available to build on, the garage likely wouldn't be as offensive as what I've shown.

If compelled to live in separate buildings, the county would like them to be linked. Overhead connectors must be ruled out, however, as they improperly territorialize public streets. Instead, city infrastructure allowing, I'm suggesting underground connectors (right), which would be suited to use by employees on foul weather days. The rest of the time, it would be better if workers used the outdoors in moving between buildings to activate city streets. I would discourage any such connector between any of the buildings and the garage, however, as morning and evening commuters should likewise walk the streets.

Next time I will look at the buildout potential of the mid-300 Columbia site (Site #5 on my previous post; left side of above photos). 

Will they stay or will they go?

A look at some possible sites for Columbia County offices

Because of—or perhaps despite—recent events having made the intentions of Columbia County officials cloudier than they already were, I decided to take a look at sites within Hudson that might be suited to new county offices. The county estimates it needs about 100,000 square feet of space, and likely a parking garage for about 200 workers. I haven't been systematic in my site search or analysis, I've been partial to sites located within or immediately adjacent to the grid where street life stands to most benefit, and I might be engaged in a colossal waste of time, but here goes.

Several possible sites for new Columbia County offices

1. X-tyal site. This waterfront site, with a new building complementing the existing large brick warehouse, could make for a very attractive project. (Note: the foreground building in photo has been demolished but the one at left remains.) However, the owner may have a more commercial use in mind. From an urbanistic perspective, the city might not get much bang for the buck here, as whatever benefit county offices might bring would be limited by the fact that the city fabric barely touches the site. The success of a project here probably would depend on the development of a holistic vision for this part of the city, incorporating Bliss redevelopment and other projects.

2. Empty parcel, north side of State Street. I think the western part of this site belongs to the city, the rest to the Hudson Housing Authority. HHA has suggested locating a portion of the Bliss redevelopment on the parking lot at lower right, and also has expressed interest in building at Front and State (upper left of yellow area). However, the Bliss situation is fluid, so this site may be available for development. A building here would make State Street a somewhat more proper two-sided street, although the weak suburban housing on the south side is far from ideal. The site slopes fairly steeply in the rear, which would allow concealment of a parking garage.

3. Riverfront industrial area. I don't have a specific site in mind here. The area is so shapeless that it's difficult to know what a large county building would mean or where it would go. But the train station and Eric Galloway's proposed restaurant need neighbors, and additional new buildings are going to have to be built somewhere if the riverfront is to have the activity that many are envisioning.

4. Power Avenue. Two buildings in this declining industrial area are on the market. The sites appear large but they are removed from the waterfront and the life of Hudson, making these locations unappealing. However, their isolation might be precisely the thing that appeals to an apparent suburban preference among county officials.

5. 300 block of Columbia Street. This is an interesting location for a few reasons. It's a block from Warren Street and the Opera House. One parcel, now a parking lot, is adjacent to the existing 30,000 s.f. Columbia County Mental Health—er, Behavioral Services—Building. The Parc Foundation linear park would run between it and a new county building as continues to State Street; handled properly, this could be a dynamic space. Across Columbia Street, an existing tiered parking lot could be the site of another office building or garage. But are these sites large enough to give the county an additional 70,000 s.f. plus parking?

6. Multiple sites near 4th and Columbia. I find this location very interesting, as it offers a potential synergy between county offices and a future city police station, court, and parking garage. Also, it lies near Time and Space Limited, Helsinki, Musica, and the library, as well as the aforementioned sites in the 300 block of Columbia site. All in all, the location offers a wealth of space and flexibility.

Three to five parcels are involved, depending on how the counting is done. A former school building at the southern corner of 4th and State is currently occupied by the county, and this would presumably be incorporated into an overall development scenario. The empty parcel at the west corner of 4th and State is city owned, and the empty parcel at 4th and Columbia north is owned by Eric Galloway. The latter parcel was at one time the subject of a discussed land swap with the city, for a police station. At the east corner of 4th and Columbia is a county parking lot, with a private parking lot adjacent, owned by Time and Space Limited.

It should be easy to provide the desired 100,000 s.f. in this area via several smaller buildings that would be appropriate in scale for Hudson. The county, if compelled to use separate buildings, would like them to be linked. This should be done with underground passages (city infrastructure allowing) rather than overhead bridges, which improperly territorialize public streets.

7. Municipal parking lot and former shirt factory. The parking lot looks to be in excess of 40,000 s.f., while the shirt factory, currently for sale, is listed as 22,000 s.f. interior space. It's in the heart of the city, which from an urbanistic perspective is either ideal (right where the action is) or not so ideal (better to put the county in a dead spot to give it life).

  

8. Railroad Avenue. County Social Services are currently located in an existing 28,000 s.f. building on this site; presumably it would receive a very large addition. However, despite appearing fairly large, the site is long and narrow, which may make it difficult to develop more intensively. Also, a large building might have an undesirable visual impact on Oakdale Lake, adjacent. And somewhat like the X-tyal site, this site hardly interfaces with the city fabric, thereby limiting its benefits to Hudson.

I will look at these sites in greater detail as I am able. If I've missed some worthy candidates, please let me know.

Quantifying the unquantifiable: relocation of county offices

Two months ago, Columbia County floated a proposal to move most of its operations, currently housed in four separate buildings in Hudson, to an empty Walmart building on Fairview Avenue. The proposal was widely criticized, although perhaps not as much as an earlier proposal to move social services to the Ockawamick School in Claverack. More recently, the county issued a Request for Proposals to attract a qualified firm to formally study its spatial needs and recommend how and where county offices (save for those legally mandated to remain in Hudson) ultimately ought to live.

 The Ockawamick School in Claverack [photo from http://newsroom.wgxc.org ]

I briefly considered throwing my own hat into this ring, but quickly realized I would not be capable of the objectivity required. I am partial to county offices remaining in Hudson and I wouldn't be able to conduct a study that might have to conclude they should move out. Too, I think any formal study of the matter is automatically stacked against Hudson on two crucial counts:

1. Parking. Any suburban site wins against Hudson, unless someone figures out how to get a parking garage built in the city for short money. Although there are probably few fans of parking garages in these parts, Hudson may have reached the point where it needs to get serious about building one—for the county, for police vehicles (in concert with a new police station), for seniors (if/when a senior center is built), for visitors to Club Helsinki and TSL, for our general tourist population, and for us. Presumably a number of these players would fund it, but garages don't come cheap. I plan to blog on this in detail soon.
2. Culture. Hudson wins a cultural face-off against any suburban location, in no small part because suburbs don't have and don't desire to have culture—at least, not of the shoe-leather-meets-the-pavement variety. A properly located and well designed county headquarters in Hudson could be a great help to Hudson's culture, and also would bring the cultural benefits of Hudson to many of its employees. (Although I suspect a fair percentage of county employees are hardcore suburbanites that see no benefit to being in Hudson.) But how does one objectively measure culture?

The objective measurements such studies have to use are important, but they may work against Hudson. "Efficiency" has been trotted out repeatedly by the county to justify its previous proposals to move to the suburbs, and the word appears five more times in the RFP. Implicit in such usage, I believe, is a simplistic notion prevalent in American culture for decades, that a suburban building is inherently more efficient than an urban one. There's something about that unfettered, freestanding building in the middle of a parking lot that leads too many decision makers to conclude that real work is being done there, while the same operation in an urban setting is believed cluttered with irrelevancies that compromise operations. I found it telling that at the county's December 5 presentation on possibly moving to Walmart, "efficiency" was used dozens of times as an ostensible justification for the move, even though no data of any kind was provided to back up the argument. Suburbs are efficient, urban places are inefficient, is the assumption.

Efficiency is an important consideration, but it's very easy for those who control the things being measured to leave out factors that are oblique but nonetheless important to the efficiency equation. In this case, I am wondering if and how the needs, costs, and inefficiencies that a suburban location will visit upon departmental clients will be measured. Hudson mayoral aide Carmine Pierro (via Gossips of Rivertown) states that forty-six percent of Health Department clients and fifty-five percent of Department of Social Services clients live in Hudson. What costs and inefficiencies will they incur in driving or schlepping to a suburban location? This alone would seem to cancel out the efficiencies presumed inherent in a suburban location, and that's before we get to the fossil fuel burning and air polluting and paradise paving aspects of the picture. 

Ken Flood, Columbia County's Planning and Economic Development Commissioner, was careful to note in my conversation with him on Monday that the county will not use bottom line cost as the sole basis for making a decision on relocation. The county knows there are benefits to being in Hudson that aren't about efficiency. So keep your eyes and ears open as to whom the RFP is awarded, and make sure you get on them to include in their study all the stuff they might not know how to measure, but that we Hudsonians know are important to both us and the county.