Nyack’s Village Board will seeks funds to conduct a feasibility study for the Superblock before bidding out the project. Riverspace board members Josh and Debbie Goldberg say this process will take too long and that Riverspace’s options on the theatre and M&T bank property will expire before the study is complete leaving the Village to pursue the process on its own. Riverspace backers had hoped the board would issue a Request for Proposals (RFP) or Qualifications (RFQ) without the study.
Everybody was using the Citizen’s Advisory Committee’s (CAC) recommendations as a blueprint. The problem was that people were reading it differently. Last night, the Village really had the following choices:
- Start with the CAC’s first recommendation– search for money to pay for a “feasibility” study, thus losing Riverspace as a partner.
- Skip step 1 of the CAC recommendations and go to a RFQ/RFP process with Riverspace as a partner.
- Do nothing.
The Board chose option 1, which is to take a “cold hard look” (John Shapiro’s words to the CAC) at the site and go through a structured process to determine the uses of the site. This process will take time, many months, if at all, to find the funding for the study which will be many months. An optimistic timetable, just guessing, will be a year to complete the feasibility study. Riverspace will be long gone by then.
Part of the problem is that the CAC recommendations put the Board in a lose/lose situation. The report said the Village had to move quickly with timelines and deadlines, and then recommendation #1 is a process that will take a long time that is impossible to control. Recommendation 1 is to “search for funding from grants, government, etc. for the feasibility studies.” The problem is that searching for grants takes time and there is no way to predict or control the timing.
Riverspace wants to skip recommendation #1 and go right to #2, which is to retain “an expert to design and manage the Request for Proposals (RFP) process.” This makes sense if the Village feels confident in its plan on what uses it wants for the site. The Village has been “studying” the site for a couple years now, although not in the “cold hard” manner of a formal process lead by an expert.
The Board basically decided to follow the first recommendation, to search for funding for undefined feasibility studies, which will take a long time. And Riverspace has been clear that it can’t wait that long. The decision was definitely a cautious one, and reflects an unease about moving ahead with the Riverspace vision.
Riverspace started the whole process of the superblock’s redevelopment. The question is if Riverspace is not going to be a partner, and the Village is basically going to start over with the superblock’s planning, then is its redevelopment the top priority? Perhaps improving the sidewalks and streets downtown, but implementing the streetscape plan, is a better use of limited resources.
It’s a do-over?
The Village board is going to look a lot different in a few months regardless of who becomes Nyack’s next Mayor.
Under the circumstances it may not be such a bad thing for the incoming Mayor and Trustees to not be burdened with a decision made by a lame duck administration trying to appease a narrow, and shrinking, constituency.
Nyack needs to change from the ground up, not the other way around
I attended this board meeting as I have attended every board meeting since I decided to run for Mayor. This meeting again is another example of a board who can’t make decisions. Continuously making mo decisions, or postponing the decision making process is the very reason why Nyack, this potentially beautiful village, has been so neglected and mismanaged. The Goldberg’s spent a fortune of their own money on a great set of visionary plans that could feasibly restore Nyack to it’s rightful glory. Perhaps the plans needed only a bit of tweaking,in size,in location of the proposed parking, in shape; but the plans were the best opportunity for a great ressurrection of the downtown area which was destroyed by fire in the late sixties. They have personally financed the Riverspace rental for the past few years and have exhausted their funds and can no longer maintain their option for the M&T property as well as the theatre property.
It frustrates and saddens me to see yet another meeting with the decision making process postponed again. Nyack has been hampered by roadblocks set up by the village board. We have files filled with costly study after study and nothing is done.
Tarrytown took 17 months to prepare their Comprehensive Master Plan and implement it. Nyack has worked on ours for 12 years and still nothing has been done. Where are the leaders in this village? When you make no decisions, nothing gets done!
If I hesitated to make business decisions or see opportunities come to fruition, I would never have found success. There are those few people who are leaders, not afraid to take chances, not afraid of the “what if’s”. There is a certain amount of risk to every decision, but an educated intelligent risk is the difference between success and failure. Every business owner is a risktaker. I have proven my success rate all my life and I took many risks. I don’t believe in reckless ventures, but a downtown redevelopment is absolutely necessary for a successful viable village as a destination place.
Take a look at all other neighboring villages. Why does every one of them look so beautiful, so well maintained, so new and updated? They all made intelligent decisions with board members who were not hesitant, not afraid to vote YES!
With 3 board members, Marie Lorenzini, Denise Hogan and Richard Kavesh all running for Mayor it is obvious that they all were afraid to vote in favor of the downtown redevelopment. The Goldbergs repeatedly asked them to vote, to make a decision, to expedite this process and yet they could not manage to make a decision. This project has been 4 years in the making, and literally blown up in a cloud of smoke.
I would never have gone into business, nor would I have had any great success if I spent my life hesitating to make decisions out of fear of the unknown. People are afraid of change, but change is what we need now here in Nyack. A fresh new change, new ideas, new faces, new people in the government with enthusiasm,energy and good hard work ethics. Out of my frustration with the village board and my confidence in my ability to lead, to manage to make intelligent expedient decisions, and to bring the residents and merchants together as one community, I am running for Mayor. I will promise to work together with the board to bring Nyack back it’s glory days. Being one of 11 children raised in a large community, I know how to compromise, how to get along, how to give and take. I will have a board that will learn to get along despite their personal differences and to work together as a team.