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Subject: Who said it doesn't happen? Author: Gene [ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ] Date Posted: 15:48:54 07/18/05 Mon I see the Independent has failed to publish Al's letter. Could it be someone got to them? When was the last time you saw a policeman directing traffic on Warren St due to the heavy tourist traffic? Probably never. If you want to see heavy tourist trafffic all you have to do is go to Stockbridge, a town one quarter the size of Hudson, there you will see two policemen directing traffic. Oh, if Hudson had this many visitors, what a boon for the shopkeepers and the many residence of the area. No problem then to support the school district and the library. Tom and Tom, how do you like the color of the building in the 200 block of Warren St? Tom seeing you are ancient did they paint the building that color way back when Hudson was a booming town. Were they that color on Diamond St back in its hayday? Passioniate pink maybe? [ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]

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[> Subject: Lost in space? Author: Ned Depew [ Edit | View ] Date Posted: 20:53:14 07/18/05 Mon Gene - Did you by any chance count the number of traffic lights in Stockbridge? Can you count to Zero? That's when all your fingers and thumbs are folded in together... They have no automated traffic control in Stockbridge. Massachusetts has a "stop for pedestrians in crosswalk" law that they enforce closely. If they didn't assign police on weekends to control pedestrian traffic, motor traffic would come to a complete standstill on Route 7 - which is a major truck and passenger route. But that was probably too hard for you to figure out. Tourism has been very good here this summer - the hospitality industry is reporting rental units are ahead of last year. It isn't Stockbridge. But I lived there, and I think I can say that you wouldn't want it to be. I know I wouldn't. Stockbridge is a nearly lilly-white town that has frozen out economic (and other) diversity through astronomically high rents and real estate prices. The wealthy people who can afford to live there can also afford to support a library - especially one that, like Stockbridge's, has been endowed for almost a century with an independent income by a long history of generous bequests from rich benefactors. By the same token, their education system benefits from being in a district where the median home price is above a quarter million dollars. And where many of the $500,000 and up homes are second-homes owned by fabulously wealthy part-time residents whose children don't attend local schools - yet they still pay school taxes. A balance of tourism, vacation housing and other sectors like manufacturing, retail, construction, service, agriculture, etc., is the most workable economic model. That's something Stockbridge - a pretty straight Tourist Town - lacks, but that we in Columbia County are trying to achieve.

[> [> Subject: Lost in space 2,,,, Author: Gene [ Edit | View ] Date Posted: 08:33:05 07/19/05 Tue Just the point I was trying to make, we have traffic lights and back when the ATlas Cement was a force which SLC could have been, we had Officers directing traffic. Now you have no where the amount traffic, even on weekends. How are you going to have a balanced economic base when you and the Nimby's are here to drive out business unless of course it is of their own making. One farm after the other is going under and you say agri business is important yet no one does anything to help the farmer. Just grab more of his land and make ridicules zoning laws which only help the super rich Nimby's.

[> [> [> Subject: Re: Lost in space 2,,,, Author: Thomas Koulos [ Edit | View ] Date Posted: 09:50:30 07/19/05 Tue Sorry to see another business fold up between 3rd and 2nd Street where that Pinkie or Orange stand out has come on the scene to maybe sell ORANGE Juice to the Diamond Street Tourists.Tom Koulos

[> [> [> Subject: Gene's dream... Author: Ned Depew [ Edit | View ] Date Posted: 10:32:11 07/19/05 Tue Gene - Hudson was indeed busier before the advent of mall culture drove shopping out of town - but you can't blame that on FoH - although I'm sure you'll try. There was more traffic in the past - especially on "Diamond Street." Is that the past you long for? Stockbridge is a two-street town with half a dozen stores and three restaurants- so a few hundred tourists make it seem crowded. Warren Street is a mile long, and much development is now going on on the side streets as well - so many more tourists can disappear in the scores of stores and restaurants. If you want a fair gauge of how busy the town is, try to get a seat in a restaurant anywhere on Warren Street at lunch time, Friday, Saturday or Sunday (and on other days too during the summer!) There are no "NIMBYS" around here that I know of, except people like you and Tom who don't want those with different values and different points of view in your "backyard." The truth is that conservation easements have saved much land from development already, and helped many small farmers keep their land and go on working it. The farms that are closing are dairy farms - and their closing is at least partly the fault of poor national Farm Policy, that favors Agribusiness at the expense of family farms. But intervention by local organizations (including the Columbia County Land Conservancy) has helped new farms start up and expand, particularly in the specialty foods and organics sectors, which are some of the fastest growing and most profitable parts of the agricultural economy. Those are the facts, Gene, your fond dreams of yesteryear notwithstanding.

[> [> Subject: Empty space and it ain't on the moon. Author: Gene [ Edit | View ] Date Posted: 15:47:28 07/19/05 Tue "astronomically high rents and real estate prices", Gee, doesn't that sound like Hudson. See Stockbridge and Hudson do have something in common, even if it isn't "lilly white". Hudson would be thrilled if they had 200 hundred true tourists. Most days you can roll a bowling ball from one end of Hudson's Warren St. to the other and it wouldn't hit a single person on the street. Oops, they must all be in the shops or eating. Hudson hs a lot of empty buildings, all you have to do is walk around town and you can see them. It takes people to make a town, not empty apartments with all the same curtains hung in the windows. Glad to hear you have relocated to Stockbridge, enjoy the lilly white atmosphere. Bon Jorno.

[> [> [> Subject: Apparently, in your case, it's where the rational faculties are supposed to be Author: Ned Depew [ Edit | View ] Date Posted: 16:39:38 07/19/05 Tue