Manna Jo Greene, local recycling foremother and now environmental director for the Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, was also at the meeting. She said in her view, AVR should pay for the promenade. “As the developers went through the [environmental review] process, they basically boasted they were providing this amenity. Now they’re looking for a partial subsidy from public funds. I would love to see the City of Kingston benefit from the money from the CFA, but there should be some return to the public and the city if the costs the developer was originally willing to incur now are going to be provided by the tax base.”
Greene added she was concerned that no mention was made at the meeting of green infrastructure. “We asked [AVR] to be in communication with the DEC’s Hudson Valley Estuary Program and other organizations that have expertise in how to develop along a shoreline” but there was no response, she said. That section of the river is an especially sensitive fish habitat, so ensuring the shoreline isn’t “hardened,” which would result in destructive runoff of storm-water into the river, is a particular concern of Clearwater, which is working with the city on other projects to mitigate the problem of excessive storm-water run-off after it rains.
AVR reps didn’t answer phone calls by press time. However, Gallo said the walkway would definitely employ permeable paving (which allows rain water to seep into the green, lessening the stormwater runoff) and solar-powered lighting. Finkle added that AVR and its municipal partners might also pursue funding for a green stormwater system, to further mitigate the problem of stormwater run-off into the Hudson River.
Once built, ownership of the promenade would revert to the city and town, with maintenance possibly financed by a tax or surcharge on the owners of the AVR units (although this wasn’t spelled out at the meeting). Gallo said the city planned to partner with a non-profit organization, such as The Kingston Land Trust or Scenic Hudson, to operate and maintain the walkway once it is built. “In the short term you need an arrangement with an organization that has the capacity to maintain it,” he said. “When build-out occurs, then the residents of the project would be taxed.”
Walkway, but no units?
Greene said she was concerned about the possibility that “the larger economic picture doesn’t allow these units to get built. Then we’d have a promenade to nowhere,” raising serious doubts about the value of the $5.7 million investment. While expressing confidence that the AVR units would get built, Gallo said that even in the worst-case scenario that they don’t, the walkway would still be a boon to the city.
“The public would have a mile-long promenade, which no other municipality on the Hudson River between New York and Albany has,” he said. Such an attraction would be sure to attract visitors, judging from the city’s success in attracting noteworthy crowds for special events or holidays — 22,000 people for the St. Patrick’s Day parade, 8,000 people for the Artists’ Soapbox Derby, and over 1,000 people counted on the Rondout Creek walkway last Mother’s Day.
“I look at this as a riverfront preserve,” Gallo said. Combined with the 300 acres of open space to be preserved in the development plan, the walkway would be a great public asset, where people could observe the river from gazebos and benches, launch kayaks, and learn about the site’s industrial history as well as the local flora and fauna from interpretative signs, he said. Plus, he said, “we’d be creating a new neighborhood and expanding the city.”
Premature is what I think and at the expense of other worthy projects in the city.