Standing out on the lawn in front of the Kingston police headquarters in the Rondout on Tuesday, September 24, mayor Steve Noble invited those gathered around him to look across the street to envision 200 apartments along with 30,000 square feet of commercial and non-profit space instead of an empty, three-and-a-half-acre grassy field.
“It’s a new day for this area and for this site in particular,” said Noble. “We identified this site because of a lack of development …. This site has been sitting here vacant for over 50 years, and so we think that that’s long enough.”
Before the destruction of over 500 buildings under the rubric of urban renewal in the late Sixties, Noble said, the area had been a part of a vibrant downtown. “So this was the home of 461 families, and there were 94 businesses located in this section of Kingston where we are standing today,” he said, “and it was all obliterated thanks to urban renewal.”
An attempt to fix urban blight by funding the demolition and cleanup of old buildings, the federally funded urban renewal was a disaster for Kingston. When the dust at the Broadway East Project after $35 million worth of demolitions and cleanup had settled, numerous historically important architectural treasures had been lost forever. A whole neighborhood had been destroyed and many scores of residents had been displaced. Detractors called it ‘urban removal.’
Offering an anecdote, city housing director Bartek Starodaj said, “Citing the lack of adequate homes to relocate displaced families, in 1966, the Congress for Racial Equality labeled the Broadway East urban renewal project a quote ‘cruel hoax’.”
Local alder Steve Schabot, a lifelong resident, said one of the reasons he had originally ran for alderman twelve years ago was to bring back the downtown.
“I grew up right up the street from here,” said Schabot. “When people drive by this, they see this empty lot. It’s just a bitter reminder of what happened down here. I don’t remember a lot of it. I remember some of my friends missing from school. They’d be gone, and the house was gone. You know, that kind of thing. It was a tough time.”
In the aftermath, little development took place.
“One of the problems with urban renewal is the government didn’t follow through on their promise to relocate people,” said Schabot. “Maybe this is what they had in mind, to do something like this, and if they had [done it], we wouldn’t be having a lot of these conversations.”
Noble said the city has sent letters to the owners of the vacant acreage — Hudson Land Development Corp., Rondout Landing at Strand, and JAF Partners — in hopes of encouraging an “amicable resolution and property sale.”
Failing that, Noble announced his intention to forge ahead regardless with legal action that he acknowledged could be lengthy and expensive.
“Tonight at the housing and community development committee,” said Noble, “we are going to be working with the common council in order to start an eminent-domain proceeding.”
Controversial in times past, the legal concept of eminent domain grants a government the right to condemn privately held land or property in order to seize it for a public use.
Most often this has meant seizing and demolishing property to make way for roads or bridges. Noble wants to use the municipal power to clear the way for housing development.
“Being that we’re right in the middle of a housing crisis, we need to be able to take the bull by the horns,” said Noble, “and actually try to do something ourselves to be able to help get housing units built here in the City of Kingston.”
If eminent domain is invoked, the city will still have to provide “just compensation” to the private owners of the land.
But how will the city define just compensation?
All the parcels within the three-and-a- half acres Noble has identified are currently assessed by the city at the value of the land rather than at their potential full market value.
Among the acres to be condemned are 41 subdivided and modestly sized-housing lots currently assessed at $500 each. Brick townhomes on adjacent parcels command a full market value of over $320,000.
Reached over email, the mayor’s office said that a new appraisal will be conducted as part of the acquisition process.
Noble pointed out that this would be the first eminent-domain proceeding pursued during his near-decade-long tenure as mayor.
If the city goes ahead with this plan, a loop of sorts will have been completed. To take possession of the buildings slated for demolition in the late Sixties, the municipality relied on eminent domain. Now the construction of hundreds of apartments in the Rondout could depend on the exercise of exactly the same legal prerogative.
Later in the evening, Kingston city housing director Bartek Starodaj, proposed a public hearing to the housing and community development committee for October 29. He also said a full finding statement had to be put together for the needs of the project and its environmental and public practices. The committee voted unanimously in favor of holding the public hearing.
Market values and full values
A business entity called Rondout Landing at Strand owns one acre currently assessed at $9600 within the area in which the mayor is interested. The Hudson Land Development Corporation owns the remaining 2.5 acres, within which is a .79-acre lot valued at $40,000 (full market value $70,175), 41 separately subdivided parcels each valued at $500 each (full market value $825 each), and a parking lot valued at nothing.
A row of brick townhomes were built next to these vacant parcels in 1998. The full market value of a lot the same size with a brick townhome built on it is currently assessed at $320,175 with the land assessed at $35,000.
Just up the hill, the two-acre Cornell Park is assessed at $219,500.
Join the family! 
