CITY PLANS REMOVAL OF UPTOWN CANOPIES
Mayor, Common Council president cite costs, disrepair
The city is considering demolishing the Pike Plan canopies that have been a fixture along Wall St and North Front Street in Uptown for decades, officials announced on Tuesday.
Mayor Steve Noble and Common Council President Andrea Shaut said they are bringing a plan in front of the Common Council calling for the removal of the canopies. Noble and Shaut will present the proposal before the Common Council’s Finance and Audit Committee next week.
The Pike Plan is the system of interconnected canopies over sidewalks on Wall and North Front streets. The canopies, designed by Woodstock artist John Pike, were built in the early 1970s and overhauled for two years starting in 2011. They were found to be in poor condition in December 2015 as a result of poor craftsmanship.
Noble said his office and Shaut are proposing a twophased approach that would first see the canopies removed and making immediate weatherproofing repairs at the attachment point of each building. A second phase would then see the assessment of each facade and creating a detailed scope of work to assist property owners in returning the impacted sections to their original conditions.
“The Pike Plan has been a source of debate and concern for many years, and now the structure has reached a crisis point,” Noble said in a prepared statement. “Both President Shaut and I believe the best decision is to remove the canopy and return the historic facades of our Stockade District to their original form. Kingston has worked extensively to protect and preserve its historic buildings and architecture and the Pike Plan is not a part of that historic fabric.”
Shaut said that the Common Council has discussed the Pike Plan multiple times over the last several years without making a concrete decision.
Shaut cited the current condition of the canopies as they reason to call for their removal.
“Considering Kingston’s rich history and our desire to preserve it, I believe that the most appropriate path is removing the canopies,” she said. “I look forward to conversations with my colleagues on the Council as we move forward with a tough, albeit necessary, decision.”
A press release noted the canopies were constructed during the 1970s at a time when retail business in the historic Uptown Business Distict was being siphoned off by malls in the town of Ulster. The city’s solution was to attach the canopies to 40-plus buildings, each of which make up a core part of our National Historic District Designation, the Mayor’s Office said.
Noble’s office noted that plan failed to stop the loss of retail in Uptown and the sidewalk canopy has caused issues to the buildings and the businesses ever since.
Noble’s office noted that the noticeable deficiencies in the canopy’s design and construction were indentified shortly after a reconstruction project using state and federal dollars that stretched from 2011 to 2013.
Noble’s office said the city filed a lawsuit against the design, engineering and construction firms involved in the project in December 2015 but the state Sumpreme Court ruled the firms could not be held li
able as the statute of limitations had expired. The release noted that the city did secure a $315,000 settlement in 2018.
Later in 2019, the city enginner estimated a removal of cost of $868,300 which adjusted for inflation as ballooned to $1,056,000.
That is less than $4-5 million dollars that Kingston Uptown Business Association Vice President Don Tallerman estimated it would take to replace the canopies in August 2023.
Aldermen have considered the question of taking down the Pike Plan over the years as sections have fallen under disrepair and were later repaired.
However, a city survey in 2019 found broad public support for keeping and maintaining the canopies.
In early 2019, Noble raised some eyebrows in the community by posting a photo on his personal Facebook page of the Pike Plan section of Wall Street before the canopies were built. “Wall Street without the Pike Plan,” Noble wrote in the Jan. 27, 2019 post. “Very cool.” The post caused pushback from former lawmakers.
In February, Real estate investor and developer Neil Bender, who has sued the city over a dozen times over the Kingstonian development plan, filed a notice of claim against the city, this time regarding alleged damages to several of his properties on Wall and North Front streets due to improper maintenance of the city-owned Pike Plan canopies.
Victoria Polidoro, an attorney representing Bender’s William Gottlieb Management, which owns the properties, said at the time that the “dilapidated condition” of the Pike Plan was causing property damage to the firm’s various holdings on Wall and North Front streets.