Do You Ever Feel Like Time Has Stood Still For Quite A While Here In Hudson?

In September of 2021, the Hudson Code Enforcement Office left its longtime, antique cramped quarters at 429 Warren Street (there was a large old cast iron radiator in the narrow front hall you had to squeeze past to get to and from the CEO office!). That was 4 years and 4 months -- approximately 1,600 days -- ago. (Holy hell, do I feel old!) According to current property tax info on the Columbia County Real Property Tax Service website, the city sold the building 2 years later for one dollar to an LLC with a mailing address of 309 Warren.

".... over 4 years ago! And then they 
re-relocated!  Good luck finding them now!"

With no space in City Hall or elsewhere to house them, CEO then moved a few blocks east to an office at 751 Warren, sharing the first floor with a podiatrist.  Foot trouble to the left, code trouble to the right! The rent was $2,000 per month, all of it coming from the CEO budget.  Parking was included.  As far as I was aware of at the time, this was the only instance of a city department not located inside a city-owned building, and the only instance of a department paying for its space out of its own budget.  (Late last year, fiscal trouble came to light, and not just at CEO.  Go figure.)  Before the city settled on relocating CEO to their rented space with the podiatrist, there was talk of setting them up inside a trailer in the Firstation's dirt lot across from 77 North 7th Street at the intersection with Washington. (I'm not kidding!) That's how desperate things had become. 

The good fellas at CEO remained neighbors with the podiatrist for over a year and a half, paying at least $40,000 to do so; $40,000 that could have been utilized to enforce the code and clean up the city.  Oh well!  Stuff happens!  Or doesn't!

In late March of 2024, when City Hall left its temporary Covid location at the Firestation to return to 520 Warren, fortune struck: the Code Enforcement Office was able to (allowed to?) move into two large rooms in an unused or underused portion in the northwest corner of the Firestation.  No more rent to pay!  That was about 20 months ago.  The paper sign still taped to the inside of his new front door after nearly two years indicates that Craig Haigh may have at last found an adequate, stable, long-term, permanent location that isn't affecting the bottom line of his CEO budget anymore.  That "sign" and the permanent wooden sign near the street, however, do not indicate what the CEO office's hours of operation are.  Never have, not for 20 months.

You've got to wonder what, if anything, that LLC has done with 429 Warren to make something useful out of the property they've owned for over two years that is still displaying the Code Enforcement relocation sign that was taped to the inside of the door by the city over four years ago.  Perhaps Craig Haigh should pay his old digs a visit to make sure the inside isn't a rotting, neglected, dangerous code enforcer's dream/nightmare.  

If something does ever become of 429 Warren (there are 3 floors!), I only hope those wonderful old front doors remain.  I'm probably not the only one who would hate to see them go.  Admiring and touching them was typically the highlight of my visits to Code Enforcement.  Even the ancient metal doorknobs were classy.  But that was years ago... when I was young!  Things seem to have only gone downhill for the city since Code Enforcement left the 400 block of Warren.  Just one thousand six hundred days ago, give or take a few.