Most Landing comments copy Web posting

By Paul Kirby, Freeman staff Daily Freeman January 25, 2006

KINGSTON - Over 1,000 e-mailed or written comments about The Landing at Kingston and Ulster, a proposed large-scale housing/commercial project, have been received by city officials, with a majority made by people forwarding a Web site posting compiled by an environmental coalition.
City Planner Suzanne Cahill said the city has received 1,050 e-mail or written comments on the proposal by AVR Acquisition Corp. of Yonkers to construct 2,182 housing units and more than 300,000 square feet of commercial space along the Hudson River.
Cahill said about 800 of those comments were routed, through e-mail, to her office through a posting on a Web site maintained by the Friends of the Kingston Waterfront, a coalition of environmental groups. Those responses, Cahill said, were sent to her office during the week before the comment period on AVR's draft environmental impact study was up on Jan. 17.
Cahill said her office is attempting to sort out the e-mails and other responses to determine where they were sent from, but some of them came from outside the city and as far away as California and Wisconsin. Additionally, Cahill said, her office has received another 250 individual written comments.
Jay Burgess, a spokesman for Scenic Hudson of Poughkeepsie, said his group believed visitors to Friends of Kingston Waterfront Web site who clicked on position statement carefully read it and truly endorsed what it promoted. Burgess said Scenic Hudson, which has led the effort to oppose the development, has collected 400 more of the e-mails and will submit them to the city as well.
Also, Burgess said, 90 percent of all the senders were from the Hudson Valley region. The Friends of Kingston Waterfront statement, among other things, says the project is too large, would put strain on the city sewer system, sacrifice natural resources, and create an inordinate amount of traffic.
"I think that people do take it seriously when they sign or put their name to something when it is part of an (official) process," said Burgess, who added that he did not think that people simply "pressed a button."
While Mayor James Sottile said he appreciated getting all of the responses, the city would have been better off had it received individually written comments rather than a "form letter."
Burgess said the Web page posting did suggest that people could add comment or edit the position statement and send it off and that 300 of the 1,200 responses included changes.
"I would have much preferred individual comment and not having an organization or group speak for them, but that is the process and we welcome their input and we will move forward with this project and try to find middle ground," Sottile said.
Sottile said getting the position statement sent from out-of-state and as far away from California illustrates how fair the review has been so far.
"We have got people from California who are worried about whether Kingston can grow its tax base," Sottile said. "This has been an open process from coast to coast."
Last week, representatives of Scenic Hudson outlined a plan that they could support at two parcels on the waterfront that would include 650 housing units built on the former Tilcon property where AVR wants to build 2,182. Scenic Hudson has said the project would still be profitable for the developer but an AVR official has said, among other things, the firm could not build some of the amenities at the site, such as a mile-long promenade along the waterfront, with that little housing.©Daily Freeman 2006

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