OurView Dueling visions

OurView
Dueling visions

Nobody’s ever going to call Yonkers and Kingston the Twin Cities, but the different-scaled settlements on the Hudson River have rejuvenated and rejuvenating waterfronts in common.

In Yonkers, a 3,000-page draft environmental impact statement has just landed on officials’ desks outlining a $3 billion-plus plan for high rises, mixed-use space, even a 6,500-seat ballpark to join an already-happening scene anchored by Peter X. Kelly’s X2O Xaviars restaurant on a former dilapidated Victorian-era pier. Of Yonkers’ waterfront, Kelly said, “Now’s the time. It’s gonna happen here.”

A tack across the Tappan Zee and north into Ulster County reveals a smaller-scale approach to waterfront development that is nonetheless just as vibrant. Kingston, once the state capital, has a sheltered area everyone calls the Rondout. There, artists and developers are making hip what a generation ago was hapless. Artists have led the charge and their bright, quirky energy is making something of a Santa Fe on the Hudson, chockablock full of galleries, a pair of museums, restaurants and inclusive events.

In the midst of these happenings, there sails a force on the river’s ever-cleaner waters: Scenic Hudson.

The conservation group tells us it has been involved with Yonkers waterfront plans since the mid-1980s and with Kingston’s Rondout since the late ‘80s, all in the name of what spokesman Jay Burgess calls a “once-in-a-generation opportunity for well-thought-out development.”

Burgess offers concerns for the scale of waterfront developments along the river and points to the entire region’s often dubious record with sewage, which seems to end up in open waters after winter nor’easters and summer gully-washers. He notes there has been a shift in thinking from the days when the Hudson River was thought of as a cesspool to its current, much-improved reputation. Scenic Hudson, he says, wants to reconnect communities with the river while establishing “lasting economic gains” via proper ratios of residences, businesses and parks.

And who can argue?

The devil, however, has always been in the details. So we listen when Cappelli Enterprises Inc. Executive Vice President Joseph Apicella says, “In the context of the real world, it’s not realistic economically. And they haven’t built on the waterfront. They don’t know or understand the challenges.”

What we have here are two views from two entities with proven can-do records.

Is Cappelli right for wanting to turn the rotting, rusting Yonkers waterfront into a 21st-century showcase?

Is Scenic Hudson wrong to insist on less mortar with an eye toward “a lively, exciting place where people can live, work and have fun?”

As with much in American history, the answer will likely fall somewhere in the middle. It is our belief, based upon what we have reported, that the scales should tip toward more development than Scenic Hudson would like. But let there be no demonizing of the environmental group. Let Scenic Hudson’s input sway, if not completely guide, the plans now on the table. Surely, the uber-failure of urban renewal in the 1960s taught us not to let developers call all the shots. Once the waterfront is built up, those decisions are literally set in stone.

Reader Comments

Please send us your comments!

Add Your Comments

TalkBack & let us know what YOU think.

If you have something to add to this discussion topic, we'd like to know.

To send a comment:

1. Enter your full name
2. Enter your email address
3. Post your comment and click 'Submit'

Full Name:

Email Address:

Example: johndoe@aol.com

Comments:
Post your comment here
(WestfairInc reserves the right to edit any text for broadcast)