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Scalera has his own vision for the county

Hudson-Catskill Newspapers

HUDSON — While county supervisors are pondering which departments to relocate to the old Ockawamick School, Mayor Rick Scalera has his own vision for how to provide space for all departments, while keeping the big ones in Hudson.

“There is no doubt their choices are limited,” he told the Register-Star Wednesday. “There are two locations for DSS [the Department of Social Services].”

The first is Ockawamick, a move that has engendered fierce opposition in Hudson and among certain social service providers. The second, Scalera said, is 325 Columbia St., the present location of the Departments of Public Health and Mental Health, which is 44,000 square feet.

“My understanding is there’s a gentleman’s agreement that Mental Health and DSS will stay in Hudson, with DSS moving to 325,” Scalera said.

Board of Supervisors Chairman Art Baer, R-Hillsdale, said there is no agreement on any option at this point. He agreed that 325 Columbia is a “conceivable location for DSS,” but said there’s no commitment that will happen.

However, Baer said there’s no other space option in Hudson he was aware of that could accommodate Mental Health if DSS took over its present quarters.

Scalera, though, is aware of one.

He proposes building a new structure for the Departments of Health, Mental Health and the Office of Aging in the present parking lot on Fourth Street behind 401 State St.

What about all the parking needs for all the various county offices?

Scalera said there are three buildings on Columbia Street just east of the present Health/Mental Health parking lot whose owners have indicated a willingness to sell if it were in the interests of the city.

Those could be purchased and torn down to make way for a new parking lot. Parking would also be available in the city/county lot under construction across State Street from the Hudson Area Library. This lot, Scalera added, would also be useful to the library on weekends and Helsinki on the Hudson, the new restaurant/club under construction at Fourth and Columbia, in the evenings.

The final piece in the mayor’s municipal jigsaw puzzle is the northwestern corner of Fourth and Columbia, whose current owner, T. Eric Galloway, “has expressed numerous times he would be more than happy to sell the lot,” Scalera said. This could also become a parking lot.

“Ideally, we’d like to see a parking garage built,” he said. “But an enormous endeavor like Helsinki is a destination waiting to happen, with major events for which parking will be needed.”

A 34,000-square-foot building would be sufficient for Health and Mental Health, the mayor said, and the county’s voting machines could be stored in the basement, freeing up their current residence in the basement of 325 Columbia for records storage.

Scalera said he told Baer, “The fact you committed to Ockawamick doesn’t prohibit you from scaling down [that] project.”

This isn’t the first time Scalera has come up with this idea.

A photo in the March 25, 2003 Register-Star shows him standing in Cherry Alley, pointing across Fourth Street to the parking lot behind 401 State St. The accompanying article quotes the mayor as suggesting that site would be an ideal location for the new quarters for the Health and Mental Health departments and Office for the Aging, which were then in the old Charles Williams School at Third and Robinson streets.

The project Scalera is pushing this time would give the county a campus of essential agencies — Health, Mental Health, Office for the Aging, DSS — within a block of each other, the mayor said.

“Nobody fought to keep DSS in order to lose Health and Mental Health to Ockawamick,” he said. “When we did our homework four years ago, they were talking about moving to Greenport and another site outside of Greenport. It all would have been difficult for people who walk in and use Health or Mental Health. For employees, there’s not much difference, but for the customers, there is.”

He said he has been in communication with the construction firm BBL, which submitted a proposal to the Common Council to build a police/court complex at Fourth and Columbia in 2005, and they gave him insight into how the county could lease to own and deal with certain regulations.

Baer said Scalera’s proposal is interesting. He said the mayor should “do some homework and come up with an economic proposal showing how this will be more cost-effective than renovating Ockawamick. But we’re not going to stop the process of allocating the space the county owns. Our information suggests his numbers are not realistic enough in terms of construction costs to make it viable.”

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