One way to stop the Stewart's expansion and six ways to make it better

The new Stewart's store will be sited almost exactly in the footprint of the yellow house on the far right.

Stewart's plan to expand at Green Street and Fairview Avenue has been moving forward. We will see the latest version at the next meeting of the Hudson Planning Board tomorrow at 6:00PM. Stewart's ambitions were greased last year by the enactment of Local Law No. 5. Prior to it, Stewart's, as a nonconforming use in a residential neighborhood, was forbidden to expand. But with the law at its back and now two adjacent residential properties in hand, it is poised to build a vastly enlarged gas station and convenience store on the site.

I've been looking for a hole in LL#5, as I believe that good urban planning should facilitate the development of locally-owned businesses, not externally-owned businesses that remove local money. Not to mention that this will be an unattractive, suburban project inserted into a semi-urban site. Several times I thought I had found a loophole, only to be disabused on my next reading. The only obstacle to Stewart's ambitions I see is for someone to sue the city for "spot zoning," the largely illegal practice of preferentially zoning a specific property. This case seems to tiptoe very close to, if not over, that line.

Until that happens, I am heeding the frequent exhortations of Walter Chatham, the Planning Board's head, to "not let perfect be the enemy of the good." This exhortation has been embraced by Stewart's own representative, who echoed Chatham's axiom to him in initially engaging the board.

Stewart's proposed site plan

In this spirit, I took on a brief study of the site. First, let's look at Stewart's current proposal (right). It is a little hard to read, given that the proposed scheme is overlaid on the existing conditions. But if you know the site you can discern the major pieces. The existing gas pumps and canopy are at the lower left corner, at a 45 degree angle. The existing building, to be demolished, is tucked partly under the proposed canopy. Once you spot the two existing structures, you will realize how much larger the new site will be—double the size of the existing one.

My proposal looks superficially similar, as I could not move the basic pieces very much. But some key tweaks will go a long way toward creating a project that will look like it belongs where it was built. Here is my proposed site plan:

My proposed site plan









The following explanations are keyed to the plan.

1. New landscaped traffic island. The existing intersection is big, open, and ugly, with lots of asphalt, and the new Stewart's will bring even more paved openness. I propose a traffic island between the existing thru-travel and dedicated right-turn lanes on Fairview to provide softening and better spatial definition. Ideally, the island would be larger than what I drew, with the lower left corner (as viewed on the drawing) squared off to create a more triangular shape. However, trucks turning left from Green onto Fairview need the radius shown.

2.  Revised curb radius at transition of Fairview to Green. This adjustment will narrow this portion of Green Street NW-bound from two lanes to one. The space gained will become a planting buffer that reduces the scale of the intersection and screens views of the gas pumps. Incidentally, there is an existing bus stop on Green Street at the proposed curb cut location. If this is or will be an active stop, it will need to be moved a little farther up the street (for either Stewart's or my scheme).

3. New pedestrian crosswalks, signals, and signage. I've gone back and forth on the best crosswalk locations. Pedestrians usually should cross at corners, but this would force two of the crossings to traverse the traffic island and right-turn lane, which seems awkward and would reduce planting space on the island. So I have shifted them away from the corner to allow pedestrians to cross the streets perpendicularly.

4. Geometry tweaks. It's hard to tell on the Stewart's plan above, but the proposed gas pump canopy is skewed a few degrees off the geometry of the houses on Green Street. I suspect the proposed building is similarly skewed. That this is hard to discern might make it seem it can be ignored, but this is precisely the kind of thing that causes a building to subliminally convey, in real life, that it is alien to its surroundings. So let me put a finer point on things:

a. Set the gas pump canopy and the Green Street facade of the new Stewart's building exactly parallel to the facades of the existing houses on Green Street. Ditto for all parking spaces, interior curb lines, etc.

b. Set the Fairview Avenue facade of the new Stewart's building exactly parallel to the facades of the existing houses on Fairview Avenue. I suspect that Fairview and Green aren't exactly perpendicular, in which case the Stewart's building would not be precisely square/orthogonal. C'est la vie.  

Top: Stewart's suburban prototype. Above: an "urban" Stewart's in Troy, NY.

5. A two-story, flat-roofed Stewart's building. Stewart's initially proposed its ubiquitous, low-slung, suburban-style prototype (top right). Negative reactions at an earlier planning board meeting led Stewart's to suggest a version of its flat-roofed Troy store (right bottom). This is indeed more urbanistically appealing, although the second floor isn't really a second floor and the entry facing the sidewalk isn't really an entry. In defense of the latter, two entries are a security nightmare for a business that has only one or two workers on the premises. If you're Stewart's, you're going to have only one operating entry and it's going to face the parking lot. But if you're an urbanist, you want the entry on the sidewalk. With this in mind, I propose the following adaptation of the Troy prototype.

My proposal, view from Fairview Avenue



The major change is a single corner entry in lieu of two separate entries or one entry facing the gas pumps. This would give the store a reasonably urban sidewalk presence while allowing it to conveniently serve customers approaching from the parking lot side. Stewart's already has corner-entry stores, including one a couple miles south of Hudson at Routes 9G and 23, so this is not at all a stretch.

Schuylerville shop, 1946

A modest stretch is a walk-up window for ice cream service. But ice cream is in Stewart's roots, and so is engaging communities in a personal way. A gesture like this will go a long way toward making this store look like it belongs where it is built, and will help turn the sidewalk into a truly friendly space.

A greater stretch, which in an ideal world would not take this project to the breaking point: how about a real second floor with an active dwelling unit or commercial space?

If I had time, I would study the Fairview Avenue setbacks a little more. On the one hand, I am inclined to match the setback of the main building and entry "porch" to the houses and porches a couple doors away on the same side of the street. However, siting the Stewart's slightly closer to Fairview than the existing houses helps block their view of the ugly gas pump canopy, and helps give Stewart's an adequate footprint to do business.

6. New, mature trees along Fairview Avenue and Green Street. I believe I have heard that Stewart's will be making a contribution to the city to maintain the Green/Fairview intersection. I suspect that any such monies will be meager, and will go into the city's general fund—i.e., they will disappear. Instead, there needs to be a substantial, dedicated, up-front payment by Stewart's to cover the complete planting and landscaping of the site and intersection (trees, traffic island, etc.) as well permanent annual funding for replanting and maintenance. All the better if these monies and responsibilities go to a neighborhood group that takes personal responsibility for it.

And there you have it. Not fully urban, but more urban than Stewart's proposal. Not threatening to perfect, but definitely "gooder." Which should satisfy all involved.

New City Jail, er, Senior Center on tap

Last week I attended a meeting on the proposed Hudson Senior Center. The meeting brought out over 30 seniors as well as a number of local officials, including Mayor Richard Scalera and Common Council President Don Moore.

The Senior Center is to be built as an addition to the existing Youth Center building at Third and Union Streets. If well conceived it promises to be a boon to seniors as well as others using the building and this part of Hudson. But from what can be discerned about the project at this point, there are many reasons for concern. Chief among them are a weak design concept and, I believe, an unrealistic schedule.  

The existing building (above) is not a classic beauty; it is rather brutish in scale and is not in the best of repair. It appears that some detail has been stripped over the years and replaced with mismatched brick. The upper windows have been replaced with bronze aluminum storefront while the front entry was mismatched with anodized aluminum. Nevertheless, it is a building of substantial presence in Hudson, and it lies at a significant entrance to our small city. As such, the addition needs to give far greater respect to its location than the proposal (below) allows. The addition put forth is badly proportioned (squat height, a meager 8’ ceiling on the first floor, windows more scaled to a suburban split-level than a public building, oversized rather than standard brick, and more) and arbitrarily detailed. Note, for example, the quoins pasted onto the corners of the addition and the dentils applied along the cornice line; no such features appear on its predecessor.

Existing Hudson Youth Center. Senior Center addition will be at left.



Proposed Senior Center: Cherry Alley elevation

I have to think that these aesthetic problems point to some more elemental problems in the design process. How carefully have the needs of the building’s users been considered when, for example, this proposal was put forth without benefit of a single meeting with the seniors’ group? How practical can the design be when it was created without knowledge of the specific programs that may/should/will go on inside? To what extent did the designers put themselves in the shoes of the elderly when they didn't think to put an overhang above the door? How much study was made of the relationship between the seniors and the youths who share the building? What opportunities and problems was this found to present? The apparently unaddressed design issues go on from there.

To be frank, this is what happens when a city hires an engineer instead of an architect to design a building. I do not mean this as a swipe at my colleagues in the engineering profession. Engineers can do things that architects cannot do; thank goodness for that. But the opposite is true as well; architects do things that engineers cannot. We are trained to work closely with a building’s users to uncover the core issues--practical, psychological, historical, material, all the rest--that need to inform the design process. Only after some real understandings are attained do we move the process forward. Crucial to this process is an understanding that architecture is not something that gets applied to a building after it is "engineered"; if anything, it is the other way around: The engineering of a building is but one of many concerns the architect integrates holistically into the design process.

As for the schedule, the mayor said the building will be ready next fall. Buildings can be designed and built in this time frame, but most often the process takes much longer. In fact, the more one rushes a design and construction schedule, the more things are likely to cost. The city will have to hire the first available contractor instead of taking time to find the right one. Cost increases during construction will be more likely, as oversights are discovered as a result of having rushing the design process. ("Oops, I didn't realize we'd have to relocate that utility pole...")

At the risk of parting with a cheap shot, I found myself wondering what this building will look like in three dimensions, so I Photoshopped the engineer's drawing onto a photograph. I then asked myself, if I were to drive by this building unawares, what would I guess it was? The only answer that came to mind was the city jail.

This isn't the right image for our seniors or our city. So before we walk farther down this path, can we all take a deep breath, step back, and engage the design process the right way?

New city jail? A three dimensional view generated from the engineer's drawing

Park Falafel and Pizza

I've enjoyed two trips to the relatively new Park Falafel and Pizza, on 7th Street facing the Park. The falafel was very good, the pizza a tick above average. I'll give the pizza a second try soon in case I happened to have it on an off night.

I remember seeing this building on the market earlier this year. As I recall, it was a foreclosure, asking price of 89K (I think). I am told that the building was pretty bad inside, but the location is excellent. So it was good to see it turned around so quickly, particularly given the demise of the pizza joint across the park sometime after my first visit to Hudson in 2009 and before I moved here in September 2010.

The storefront renovation is simply and effectively executed--a good lesson in hitting one's design marks without breaking the bank. Inside, large color blocks, muted somewhat from primary tones, strike an appropriately jaunty note for informal dining while helping create a brand identity. (Note to Kennedy Chicken: If you ever renovate, look here first.)

From what can be seen on the MLS, it appears that the apartments on floors two and three were renovated--good to know when there are so many substandard units in the city. But I am left wondering why most of the building exterior was ignored. While I don't expect the uneven settling of the brick facade to have been repaired (rarely a cost-effective undertaking), the rest of the building should not have been left in such a shabby state. 

Perhaps the building owner (I don't know if this is the same party as the restaurant owners) has plans to address this and hasn't gotten to it yet. With a bit of work, the building could be an amenity for the whole city, not just for those seeking a reasonably priced dinner, given its prominence at the busiest entrance to Hudson.

Personally, I'd like to see the signature color blocks used as a bold color scheme for the building exterior. The more visible the building, the more people will visit the restaurant and the more interesting and alive this little stretch of Hudson will become.

Imperfect, but OK

I came across this nifty little house on lower Union Street the other day. It is only about ten feet wide and the ground floor looks barely tall enough to stand up in, but I found it rather appealing. Note how carefully it is composed, with all elements in perfect symmetry: the center of the porch, the bay window, and the brackets above align precisely. Even the squatness of the ground floor contributes to the whole, as it makes the bay above it seem all the more ambitious.


Actually I'm fibbng; the image above was Photoshopped. The real house looks like this:

 

Notice that almost nothing lines up. While the bay window seems to be centered in the facade, the bracket above it, which one would expect would be centered, is several inches to the left (see below). Meanwhile, the middle porch column stands obtrusively in front of a window (I deleted it from the first image) and is even farther left of center than the roof bracket. And the left and right ends of the porch roof overhang differ from each other.



Why do such flaws occur? Why can't architects or builders get things lined up?

The reason is that when buildings abut, as they often do in urban environments, architectural features such as roof edges cannot turn the corner as they would on a freestanding house. The roof overhang on the front of this house couldn't be continued on the right side, because it would intrude on the neighboring house, which would create not only an aesthetic problem but a legal one. So the bracket on the right was pulled in a bit from the edge(below), even though the bracket at the left side is flush with the left edge of the house. To make the whole assemblage look more three dimensional, that is, to give a sense that at least part of the assembly turns the corner, the topmost molding was returned 90 degrees into the facade.

The abutment problem in urban places has a domino effect on the design of a facade: if you can't place a roof bracket quite where it wants to be, do you adjust all the brackets so they are evenly spaced, or do you let the spacing of the end one be mismatched? Do you place the windows so they align with the roof details or do you place them symmetrically in the facade without regard to the roof? Which "mistake" would be more or less noticeable?

No answers here, but on a completely different note, as I played with this facade, I found myself wanting to grow something out of the top of the bay. I had no idea why, until I realized that in removing a porch column I had turned the porch into a de facto table... a good place for a vase?

   
Mmm, maybe not.