Alms House denial needs another vote
Despite previous action, city Planning Board must formally reject application, lawyer says
Even though the city Planning Board last month voted against the site plan and permit for apartments in the former Alms House, it still must vote on a resolution to deny RUPCO’s application for the project, Kingston’s assistant corporation counsel said Thursday.
Daniel Gartenstein said the board’s vote on Aug. 20 was on a resolution to approve the site plan and grant a special use permit to the affordable housing agency for its proposed Landmark Place project at 300 Flatbush Ave. That resolution failed, but now, Gartenstein said, “there needs to be a resolution to deny [the site plan]. Otherwise it’s in limbo.”
The Planning Board voted 3-2 against granting site plan approval and the special use permit.
Voting against the resolution were board Vice Chairman Charles Polacco and members Jamie Mills and Bridget Smith Bruhn. In favor were Chairman Wayne Platte Jr. and member Robert Jacobsen.
Polacco, Mills and Bruhn did not publicly state why they voted against the approvals.
Gartenstein said when the Planning Board meets again later this month, it first will continue its August meeting in or-
der to vote on a resolution to deny the Landmark Place site plan. He said the public will not be able to comment.
“We are picking up from where we left off,” Gartenstein said.
He said once the Planning Board has concluded that vote, it will open its regular September meeting, and the public will be
permitted to comment as usual.
The Planning Board is scheduled to meet at 6 p.m. Monday, Sept. 17, in City Hall, 420 Broadway.
Gartenstein said his office’s position is there has to be a vote to deny the site plan because the city expects RUPCO to take legal action over the August denial.
In an email Thursday evening, RUPCO Chief Executive Officer Kevin O’Connor said the agency had “no comment at this
time.” He previously called the board’s August vote “unexpected, unexplained and unlawful.”
If RUPCO sues, it would not be the first time the agency has taken court action against the city over the Alms House proposal.
In July 2017, the Common Council rejected a request from RUPCO to rezone the Flatbush Avenue property from single-family residential to multifamily residential. The vote was 5-4 in favor of the rezoning, but that
was two “yes” votes short of the “supermajority” the council had deemed necessary for approval.
RUPCO responded by filing a lawsuit against the city, and a judge ruled in December that simple-majority approval was sufficient.
RUPCO’s project was proposed to comprise 34 apartments in the existing vacant Alms House structure and 32 more units in a four-story building to be constructed on the site. The housing was to
be open to people 55 and older, and some of the units were to offer support services for a mix of homeless populations with special needs.
Under the rejected proposal, the historic Alms House building would have contained a mix of studio and one-bedroom apartments, while the new building would have contained one-bedroom apartments. Of the apartments, 35 would have offered supportive services for special needs populations,
including a minimum of seven apartments dedicated to the frail or/ and disabled elderly
Constructed in the 1870s as a place to care for the city’s poor, the Alms House later was used as a tuberculosis ward in the 1950s and, most recently, housed Ulster County offices.
In April, RUPCO completed its purchase of the property for $950,000 from the Ulster County Economic Development Alliance.