I, For One, Am Going To Miss Galvan (If They Ever Actually Leave)!

About a month ago, at the southeast corner of Washington & 6th, Galvan opened a 38-space paved parking lot for tenants of their new apartment building located closer to 7th Street than 6th Street, the monstrosity known as the Depot Lofts that is not filling up with tenants nearly as quickly as Galvan and their pal Kamal Johnson had hoped.  Depending on how many grocery bags one is carrying, how much traffic there is, how dark it is, how old one's knees are, which way the wind is blowing, how many children are in tow, how hard it's raining or how much ice and snow are on the sidewalks, the time required to walk between the lot and the entrance door of 76 North 7th Street is, in my estimation, anywhere from 3 to 6 minutes for tenants paying for a parking space.  Of course, depending on the conditions, more or less the same amount of time is required to turn around and return to one's car parked in the lot.  (I'm not sure precisely what the monthly cost of a parking space in the lot several hundred feet away from the apartment building is, but I seem to remember it's no less than $150.  Whatever the price, it's a friggin' deal!  We should all be so fortunate to have such an option!)

The construction of the parking lot took several months to complete and included a new sidewalk.  When Galvan bought the property a few years ago with the plan to build the lot, I probably wasn't the only nearby resident who assumed and hoped that the garage in front that had housed a car repair station would be removed.  It never fit into the neighborhood at all, it still doesn't and it never will.  Why would Galvan possibly need to leave it there?  Heck, just a few years ago around the corner, with the blessings of our so-called mayor and demolition permits from the Code Enforcement Office, they removed three perfectly good, large, occupied and not at all unattractive houses of theirs as part of an effort to make life better for all Hudsonians! Surely, Galvan would want to continue to improve and beautify the neighborhood by getting rid of that ugly garage, and not just for their tenants' sake, right?  Even Sean Roland and Gabe Katz across the street at the Pocketbook Hotel and Baths would probably appreciate that garage disappearing! 

Alas, the ugly metal structure of the type more at home in an industrial zone at the end of a dead end dirt road is still standing in the city's latest go-to residential neighborhood while a few tenants have begun to park their cars in the lot behind it. But one can't help but wonder what the heck the garage's purpose is.  Is it nothing more than the parking lot's visual buffer, attempting to obscure the utter banality and ugliness of another parking lot, just the thing that Hudson City Hall wanted to avoid by getting rid of the off-street parking requirements a few years ago for large developments such as Galvan's Depot Lofts, their hotel at 4th & Warren, and the Pocketbook Hudson Hotel and Baths?  (The PBH's planned parking lot that will be built on city property adjacent to Galvan's lot will have a buffer zone with trees!) 

Then there's this view from inside Galvan's pay-to-park parking lot to wonder about:

People pay a lot of fucking money for this shit!  Maybe extra!  Who wouldn't pay extra!!!  Wouldn't you?

Shabby Chic?  Classy Country?  Hip Hudson? 
Tasteful Toxicity?  Just Plain Dumb?

The brick building in the background houses the Hudson Code Enforcement Office.