At a glance
A special Thursday meeting entirely on the Bliss Towers redevelopment. After engineering review, architect Alexander Gorlin's detailed presentation, and a traffic analysis showing minimal impact, the board issued a State Environmental Quality Review negative declaration and scheduled a public hearing for July 21. The plan replaces today's 135-unit Bliss Towers and Columbia Apartments with 166 units across three new buildings, two four-story apartment buildings and six townhouses. Phase 1 builds first, so existing tenants can move in before phase 2 takes the tower down. The application was also referred to the Columbia County Planning Board.
Opening and a public conflict-of-interest disclosure
The chair opened the special meeting and outlined the night's three topics: engineering, architecture, and State Environmental Quality Review. A board member who had previously served on the Hudson Housing Authority board addressed the public record on perceived conflicts of interest.
Key points
- The chair explained that the project was too large to share a single agenda with other monthly Planning Board business, hence the dedicated special meeting.
- A board member who had served on the HHA board until shortly before her appointment to the Planning Board addressed concerns aired in the local press. She said she has no financial or relational interest in the project, did not shape the development (she joined the HHA board after the development committee had completed most planning), and has received legal clearance to participate fully.
- The chair noted that under Planning Board rules, each member decides individually how to engage with any matter, there is no chair-level recusal mechanism.
This page is built from YouTube's automatic captions. The transcript has no speaker labels and garbles many names, so this summary describes speakers by role and uses applicant and team names only where they were clearly stated aloud. Check anything important against the city's official minutes.
The project, end to end: what's being built and why
The Hudson Housing Authority and its development partner Mowco Construction & Development Corp walked the board through where the project stands, what's funded, and what's planned.
Key points
- The existing site, 135 units between Bliss Towers and the Columbia Apartments, was found by a comprehensive needs assessment to be obsolete and not viable for rehabilitation. Full replacement is required.
- The proposed project: 166 units across three new buildings, two four-story apartment buildings (A1, B1) and six townhouse units on a separate parcel, for a total of 276 units when phase 2 replaces the existing tower in a future stage.
- Phase 1 builds the two apartment buildings and the townhouses first. Phase 2 takes down the existing Bliss Tower after current tenants move into phase 1, and replaces it with an L-shaped building on Columbia Street, creating an open central green space.
- Funding: the primary funder is New York State Homes & Community Renewal's Housing Finance Agency. The project has been accepted into the New York State Brownfield Cleanup Program, has received Pro-Housing funding from the state, and has received a Downtown Revitalization Initiative (DRI) grant. The state has signaled potential financial closing in December 2026 if all approvals are in place by then.
Engineering review: variances, the sewer separation, and a townhouse question
The board's engineering consultant walked through the May 14 submission, focusing on big-ticket items: the townhouses' need for a separate zoning approval, water and wastewater capacity, the State Environmental Quality Review materials, and the traffic and parking reports.
Key points
- The townhouses sit on the R4 zone where the project's other buildings sit on GC, and they trigger about **seven area variances** (setbacks, lot coverage, and number of dwelling units). The application is tentatively scheduled for the Zoning Board of Appeals on June 17.
- The code enforcement officer is reviewing whether those variances are correctly identified; a letter from him will lock that down before the public hearing notice.
- The applicant is keeping the townhouses in phase 1 even if the Zoning Board of Appeals process tightens the timeline, they're considered an important early piece.
- The city's combined-sewer separation project is already complete in this part of the city; the engineering team can rely on the new separated sewers.
- Storm water is handled with underground retention basins. The phase 1 parking lot has retaining walls down to the forest with safety fencing and guide rails along the top.
- The engineer asked the applicant to make sure the traffic and parking study numbers match the site-plan numbers across documents.
The architectural case: what Gorlin proposed, and why
Design architect Alexander Gorlin gave a thorough presentation of the project's design philosophy, explicitly framing the replacement of Bliss Towers as a correction of the urban-renewal-era choices that severed the site from the city grid.
Key points
- Gorlin recounted the project's history in the city: the site originally sat at the city's edge above the south bay; Hudson's strict grid had service alleys between major streets; Chapel Alley was closed during urban renewal in the 1970s, and the tower itself is a textbook example of the 'tower-in-the-park' model from Le Corbusier's Radiant City, a model that severs buildings from streets.
- The new buildings are oriented to face the street, with bay windows on living rooms, brick and Hardie-plank cladding, paired vertical windows for scale, solar panels and green roofs on top, and a central 1.6-acre open green space, comparable in size to other beloved Hudson parks like Promenade.
- The plan proposes reopening <b>North First Street between Columbia and State</b>, which was closed during urban renewal. Board members and the architect noted the planning board cannot bind future boards to actually carry out the reopening. Chapel Alley reopening is not currently feasible.
- All buildings will be fully electric, no fossil fuels, and meet New York State Energy Code requirements for sustainability, with solar on roofs and individually-controlled heating and cooling in every room.
- Gorlin showed examples of his firm's prior work on AIA-award-winning affordable-housing projects in Brooklyn and the Bronx, emphasizing his philosophy that affordable housing should not look like affordable housing, every resident deserves a dignified place to live.
Speakers referenced Hudson's comprehensive plan, which one speaker said mentions affordable housing 130 times and discusses repairing the harms of urban renewal.
Traffic, viewsheds, energy: questions for the board
Board members asked about open-space programming, building access, snow and storm response, and lighting.
Key points
- The 1.6-acre central park is intended as program-able community space; an open workshop with residents in September 2024 generated suggested uses, children's playground, dog run, fitness areas, amphitheater on the slope, fragrance and vegetable gardens.
- Fire access: the building is set with a 13.5-foot clearance through the archway specifically so fire equipment can get to the back parking lot. A board member asked for a written letter from the fire department on file.
- Resident access to the central park: clear pathways from each building, plus a crosswalk on State Street.
- Winter operations: buildings double-insulated, individual heating and cooling in each room, snow-removal handled by HHA management.
- Traffic analysis (Kim Moore's John Cannon): two scenarios studied, with and without pedestrianization of State Street (which is **not** in the current application). In both scenarios all intersections operate at level-of-service B or better; pedestrianization would shift roughly 100 vehicles per hour to Columbia Street, increasing delay there by about 6 seconds. No significant traffic impact found.
State Environmental Quality Review: a negative declaration, and a public hearing set for July 21
The board worked through the State Environmental Quality Review process, accepted the applicant's draft Part 3 narrative with minor edits, and voted unanimously to issue a State Environmental Quality Review negative declaration. The board then scheduled a public hearing for July 21.
Key points
- The board worked through the remaining open Part 2 questions on open space, transportation (concluding the new street and First Street reopening would not be a negative impact and would in fact improve circulation), electrical substation needs (relying on the energy code and forthcoming load letter from the utility), and brownfield remediation (relying on the New York State DEC's oversight role).
- Minor edits were accepted to the draft Part 3 narrative, clarifying that a small corner of the site is in a 500-year flood plain (no buildings there), and adding language from the DEC's lead-agency letter confirming no peregrine falcon or bald eagle nest is nearby.
- The board voted by roll call to **issue a State Environmental Quality Review negative declaration**, finding no significant adverse environmental impacts.
- The board scheduled a public hearing for **Tuesday, July 21, 6 p.m.**, with the location tentatively at the fire station (to be confirmed). The hearing will remain open for **10 days** afterward for written public comment.
- The board also voted to refer the application to the Columbia County Planning Board.
Engineering issues continue at the regular June Planning Board meeting. The Zoning Board of Appeals hears the townhouse variances on June 17. Public hearing on July 21. If everything stays on track, financial closing with the state could come in December.
About this page
FUTURE HUDSON is an experiment in civic engagement: every public meeting of the City of Hudson since January 2026, transcribed and made readable, so any resident can follow what the city is deciding without attending every meeting. This page covers one meeting; see the full archive.
How it was made
The meeting video was transcribed automatically; the transcript was then organized into sections and summarized. The raw transcript is above, every claim can be checked against it.
What to be skeptical of
The transcript is automated and contains speech-recognition errors; names and numbers may be wrong. This page has not been reviewed by a human. Nothing here is an official record, the city's official minutes are authoritative.