Alms House alderman opposes rezoning
Davis says site should have ‘some type of commercial use’
Alderman Anthony Davis says he’ll vote against the zoning change that would allow RUPCO to establish affordable housing at the Flatbush Avenue site of the former Alms House.
The property is in the city’s Sixth Ward, which Davis, a Democrat, represents.
Common Council members Maryann Mills, D-Ward 7, and Debbie Brown, R-Ward 9, have been critical of the RUPCO proposal but have not said whether they will vote against the zoning change. If five of the council’s nine members vote “no,” the zoning change request will be rejected.
The council’s Laws and Rules Committee, which must act before the matter goes to the full council, tabled the issue at its May 15 meeting. The committee will take the issue up again when it meets at 7 p.m. July 6 in City Hall, 420 Broadway.
RUPCO needs a zoning change for the 300 Flatbush Ave. site from single-family residential to multifamily residential for its proposed Landmark Place project to proceed. The agency’s plan calls for 34 housing units in former Alms House and another 32 in a four-story building that would
be constructed on the same property.
More than half the total units at Landmark Place would offer support services to a mix of homeless populations with special needs, including veterans and frail or disabled seniors, RUPCO has said, and the housing would be open only to individuals 55 and older.
Davis on Wednesday said he supports RUPCO’s work in affordable housing but thinks there are better uses for the Flatbush Avenue site.
“I want to first state that I am not against affordable housing or RUPCO, [as] they provide a needed service for the community. But for this property, this location, I feel it would be more fiscally sound for the city of Kingston and all the people of the city of Kingston if it was rezoned for some type of commercial use,” Davis wrote in an email.
“Since the application proposed at this time is for rezoning this property as multifamily residential, I will be voting against this proposal at this time,” Davis wrote.
RUPCO’s proposal also has drawn considerable opposition from residents of Wards 6 and 7.
RUPCO Chief Executive Officer Kevin O’Connor disagreed with Davis that a commercial project would be better.
O’Connor, in an email response said:
• There has been no proposal for a commercial use of the site.
• RUPCO’s plan would include $20 million worth of site redevelopment, create construction jobs and benefit local building suppliers.
• The costs covered by taxpayers to shelter people in motels and similar facilities would fall.
• The property would be on the tax rolls for the first time ever. (The Alms House, built in the 1870s as an infirmary for the poor and later used as a hospital, most recently housed Ulster County offices. RUPCO wants to buy it from the county for $950,000.)
• Because the Landmark Place project would be a housing development, RUPCO would pay the city of Kingston a one-time recreation fee of $132,000, a fee from which commercial developers are exempt.
• Kingston hasn’t had any new senior housing built since 2001, while a total of 469 such units have been created since then elsewhere in Ulster County.
Also, O’Connor said, “developers we’ve contacted suggest that commercial development on that corner will need to cut down all mature trees lining Flatbush [Avenue] and East Chester Streets, make additional curb cuts and bring truckloads of fill to raise up the site,” O’Connor said. “Our proposal ... does none of that.”
The Kingston Planning Board voted 3-2 on May 8 to declare the RUPCO proposal would not harm the environment.
Mayor Steve Noble has said the property’s zoning should be changed, but he has stopped short of endorsing RUPCO’s plan.
An attorney for RUPCO has said Alderwoman Mills’ actions in objecting to the Landmark Place proposal could put Kingston in legal jeopardy.
Michael Moriello wrote in a May 31 letter to the Kingston Common Council that Mills was acting in a purely political manner and that it could cost the city in the end.
“It is my opinion that ... Mills has prejudged my client’s zoning petition and has attempted to utilize her position as a Common Council member to wield political influence on behalf of and in league with project opponents based upon the affordable housing aspects of the Landmark Place Project,” Moriello wrote. “This pandering to those working at variance with a lawful affordable housing project is wholly inappropriate and could expose the city of Kingston to substantial monetary liability.”
Kingston Conservative Party Chairman Richard Cahill Jr. — an attorney, former city alderman and twotime mayoral candidate — wrote in a blog that Moriello’s letter was a “shameful attempt to bully.”