BY: Keith S. Shikowitz, Editor in Chief/Investigative Reporter
This is part 5 of the continuing situation with CHPE (Champlain Hudson Power Express) and the Route 9W Corridor project. In this installment Mayors Mike Kohut and Robert D’Amelio explain how the project has affected their villages. In these interviews, you will see how different the effect of the CHPE work was on the various segments of the 9W corridor. We will be exploring the effect on the Village of Haverstraw first.
Village of Haverstraw Corridor of the CHPE project
The CHPE project has been going on for the better part of two years here in Rockland County. It has caused many businesses along the 9W corridor from Stony Point to Congers to lose tens of thousands of dollars in revenue. It has also caused people traveling through the area untold minutes of sitting in traffic and going around areas via detours. Even tractor trailers were being detoured through the residential neighborhoods.
The main crux of what’s been going on, on the 9W corridor has been massive destruction and disruption for businesses, all up and down the corridor. Congers is feeling it. Stony Point is feeling it. How is it doing here in Haverstraw? They closed off 9W heading to 304 by the mountain there. Have you had any problems in the village or along the 9W corridor?
“Well, sure, there’s been disruptions the whole time and the amount of disruptions have varied. Sometimes it’s clear sailing through the village. Sometimes you’re stopped in multiple places, right now they’re doing some paving which everybody’s thankful for because our section was in particularly bad repair, the south end going towards 304 because it was just so choppy down there.”
He says that impacts have been significant for some businesses and for some there’s no alternatives, so people are going there anyway. Then there’s been a lot of bypassing 9W and coming down through the village, so adding more traffic into the village and it’s all being managed as best as it can, but then again, sometimes what should be a 5 minute trip on 9W is a 15 minute trip or a 20 minute trip, even overnight, I’ve had people complain that they were coming north on 9W and they were stuck for 20 minutes at 1 in the morning, but they were working overnight to try to avoid having to work during the day.
“It’s kind of 6 of one, half a dozen of the other. The reality is that we knew this was going to be a painful process, and it’s proven itself to be a painful process, but it’s almost over.”
Did anybody consult the businesses that were going to be impacted by this and try to work out ways for customers to be able to get in? Titan Gym is in Kohut’s jurisdiction. Well, the owner of that was complaining about at the round table with Bill Weber how much her business has been disrupted by this.
Kohut agreed, “I’m sure they were disrupted and they should have been contacted. I think it was an oversight on the part of CHPE not to think about the tenants, but they dealt extensively with the landlords, and the landlords should have been speaking with the tenants and trying to make accommodations for them. The landlords were paid a lot of money and not just that circumstance, but in all those circumstances.”
“They did a lot of our work in the village. They tried to do as much at night as they could but there’s times you can’t, or in certain circumstances, DOT wouldn’t let them do work at night. You’re in the state DOT, because 9W is a state road. They were, and then you had O &R, mix into it. Like I said, they tried to think of all the, I think they tried to think of all the scenarios and, and worst-case stuff, but. It’s a Pandora’s box. You open it up and you’re never sure, quite sure what’s going to come of it. In hindsight, I’m sure everybody could have done a better job.”
Are there any plans for the local governments, you and Howie and Rob, everybody to try to get some pressure on, dealing with Bill Weber and Pat Carroll and all the, maybe, gang up on Hochul, you’ve got to help these businesses.
According to Kohut, there’s been some discussions about that. He’s not sure how far it’s going to go in reality, but there’s, there’s been some discussions on that. Even if they make the attempt, and Hochul says, no, at least they, can say look, we did what we had to do.
There are businesses losing tens of thousands of dollars. “There are a few doing that for sure.” Kohut noted.
There’s one business up in Stony Point that lost $10,000 on an 80-person party that was canceled because of the mess up there. Stephanie Melowsky said at the Lawler press conference, and this was about 6 weeks ago at this point, That hundreds of businesses in the area have lost in the excess of $10 million. You’re going to have businesses going out of business.
I think you are going to see a couple of businesses have problems sustaining themselves or continuing on. They may go out of business if they haven’t already and it’s terrible and it’s unfortunate and I don’t know what to do about it, honestly. I’m not sure what relief could be given. I don’t think you can just hand out money necessarily, unless there’s a verifiable way to, to prove it. But listen, if they can, if everybody can figure out a way to do it, I’m willing to be part of the solution.
Kohut’s gone up and down the corridor himself. Would he consider this a disaster?
“I think you’re mixing apples and oranges there. Disasters are floods, fires, earthquakes, and tornadoes. This is an economic issue. Now, you want to call it an economic disaster, fine. But I don’t know if you can call it a disaster.
Everybody that’s dealing with this, the people driving through it say it’s a disaster because of the way it’s being handled.
He responded, but then you’re mixing apples and oranges again. The definition of a disaster is something God made. It’s not created by somebody.
Man could create a disaster. We’ve had manmade disasters.
“I suppose, but…”
This is what people are saying that this is a manmade disaster.
This is, this is an economic crisis, is what it is, for, some businesses, for sure.
For a lot of businesses, I’ve spoken with. There are about, I’d say there were at least 15 businesses at the round table that Bill Weber held. A number of them spoke up. A number of them sat silent, but they were there as, you know, say, look, you know, we’re being affected by this and they spoke pretty much for all of the businesses that were represented there.
“And I’m sure they were. There’s no doubt in my mind. Yeah, absolutely.”
I’m seeing this as just a major misstep and miscommunication actually a lack of communication between all the parties involved in this, that were running this show with the people that it was affecting.
He took a second and replied, “Yes, but I don’t know that all the communication in the world would have changed anything because the same result, they still would have had to do the same thing. Whether you as the owner of ABC Business were aware of this, every little single detail from the beginning or not wouldn’t have changed the fact that 9W was one lane in front of your place for six months or whatever.
They were closing off entrances to people’s businesses. There was no need to close off an entrance to the business. If they could get through on the one lane and turn them in, then let them leave it open to people can get into the business.
“I agree. Those issues should have been addressed immediately. That should have been a call from that business to either the public servant, myself, Robert, Howard, Jim and say, listen, can you help us with that? Then we go to CHPE or use the CHPE line and go to them directly. They have an office right at the top of the hill here that anybody could walk into and say, listen, this is my problem. Nobody can get into my store. What are you going to do about that? Then they could have tried to work around that.”
It just seems that people are saying that it just seems that CHPE didn’t care. They’re coming in, okay your business is being inconvenienced, big deal. We don’t care if you’re being, inconvenienced. We have our work to do. It just, it’s just what it seemed like to the people that were being affected by it. I mean, you had one situation where, They had people complaining on Facebook about the work that was going on, and from what I’ve been told it’s been rectified or, or not happening anymore, but that the supervisor went into one of the food stores and said, you know what? We’re getting too much flak from people on Facebook and stuff, so we’re not coming into your business anymore to buy sandwiches. It’s not the business’s fault that people are complaining.
“But, but people are human. On both sides, you know. It was not, it was not a good look for, if that actually happened. It was not a good look for that person from CHPE or from the construction company or whatever to go in and say that.
Well, it happened. The person brought it up at the round table with Bill Weber. The person’s not going to bring that up if it didn’t happen on a roundtable with a…
“I’m not disputing that.”
You said if it happened, I’m just telling you that where they said it, where it was said was at a public meeting where the press was there.
“So that was stupid on that person’s part, but again, everybody’s human, and if he was frustrated by getting abused all the time. Sometimes you say stupid things.”
But you don’t take it out on the business owner.
“No, I know, but at the same time, if, I walked into your place of business and you, cursed at me every time I walked in there. How many times have I got to…”
No, that’s different. You’re coming into my business and I’m, and I’m mistreating you. That’s not other people saying things about what you’re doing, and you’re taking it out on me. That’s a totally different, that’s totally it’s uncalled for.
“I’m not trying to defend these people, and I don’t know why we even got off on this topic, Keith, but I’m just saying. You’ve got to remember that both sides are just humans being and sometimes they say stupid things, or they do stupid things, so everybody needs to get past all that. I do know that I do know that CHPE and their subcontractors and everybody else were trying to spend money locally to help offset what business was lost, buying lunches in this place once a week, this place once a week, whatever the case may be. I know they were trying to do that.
The thing is that people are complaining about, businesses and residents is that it just seems to them that CHPE didn’t care who was affected by it and how they were affected by it. One person had sewage back up into their houses, because of what CHPE did. They’re being told, oh, you have to wait. They’re being told that they have to wait for this, that and the other thing, but they got to repair the house. They don’t have the money to do it and it wasn’t their fault that it happened.
“Yeah. That’s not right if that was the case.
This is why people say these people don’t care.
“That’s what people think. I don’t think that they don’t care. There’s got to be accountability on both ends. When Suez or Orange and Rockland do something stupid, you have to jump through the hoops with them too, and it’s not always right and it’s not always fair.”
Getting back to your little section of the planet you say, are they almost done here or, what’s the story?
“From what I’m being told, they’re buttoning up things. The paving was to get everything through the winter. They’ve closed up. They were doing some work up through a week or two ago. They still had some digging to do. I have not, since I’ve been out of commission for a couple of weeks, I haven’t been up on 9W enough to know what’s really going on up there.
Well, I can tell you there’s a lot of stoppages and a lot of one lane. Things going on, and the fact that it’s closed at the quarry to up to 304, you know, creates so many issues There’s a detour.
“Yeah, detour and they’re going through that, through Ridge Road over there. They’ve done that multiple times over. The course of the past year plus, and it’s an inconvenience, but the detour works pretty well. You’re not sending them through residential neighborhoods.
Ridge Road is technically a residential neighborhood there are houses on there, but Ridge Road is a main highway anyway.
Businesses right on the corridor have been directly affected by the CHPE work. Have the businesses in the village on the corridor been affected by all of this? And how have the ones inside the village been affected?
Village of West Haverstraw Corridor of the CHPE project
They say that the three most important things when buying a house or setting up a business are: Location, Location and Location. This statement seems to hold true in the case of the Village of West Haverstraw in the area along the 9Wcorridor where all of the CHPE work is being done. I spoke with West Haverstraw mayor Robert D’Amelio on the phone about the situation.
D’Amelio opened the interview by stating; “I’m fine. It’s cold outside and I am not responsible for it. Put that in your article.”
We’ve got a lot happening on Route 9W.
Is there anything that you guys have done like letters to other officials about the situation there? You’ve got over by Samsondale Plaza they’ve taken over half the parking lot, that bad part of the parking lot, There’s construction going on all over the place one lane here one lane there, slowing traffic to a crawl in an area where traffic is a nightmare on a normal day without lane closures.
We’ve been fortunate that recently we haven’t had any of that one lane traffic. That one lane traffic is as soon as you hit the village of, not as soon as you hit the Village of Haverstraw, but all throughout the village of Haverstraw 9W, you know, my corridor of West Haverstraw, which is 9/10 of a mile on the west side and like 7/10 of a mile on the east side, we’ve avoided that for a while.
“We had congestion when we had them doing work, not in the intersection, but near the intersection of Railroad Avenue and 9W, and at that time we had the State Police down here along with Haverstraw PD moving cars in and out pretty quickly, and that was, that had to be this past summer sometime, but other than that, you know, there, there is the occasional,, they’re not, not closing down the road, but because they’re working up in Helen Hayes and you know how the way people are, they see, they see an action, they see something going on, they slow down.”
He says they haven’t had that real road closure issue. Right now, they have Kennedy Road coming out of Samsondale. They’ve had the one the entrance onto 9W closed for a couple of days, and we let our residents know about it and the closure is during the day. He added that he really doesn’t really get many complaints.
How much disruption was there to I know when I was there, there was some, but you’re telling me that, that all they did was destroy in the parking lots.
“Yeah, well, no, there was a time. They were kind of in 9W, like I said before, 9W at the intersection of Railroad Avenue and 9W. They had traveling north; they had a they had a one lane road closure traveling north. So right now, when you come to that light, there’s 3 lanes, right? There’s a right-hand turn lane, on green, a straight on green, and then there’s a left on arrow entry. For a while, for like maybe, if I remember correctly, I’m going to go with 2 weeks there was the, the eastbound right lane turn closed, so the only way you could make a right turn was you had to be in the lane going straight to make a right.”
He said that when that was happening, the state police was in the road directing traffic and getting them in and out. Other than that, they have not really been in my 9W road other than that they’ve been around it. They’ve been near it, they’re near it right now..
D’Amelio spoke about the closure of Stop and Shop, “That parking lot of Stop and Shop has nothing to do with Stop and Shop going out of business. Stop and Shop was closing up, and the property owner there, Jack Simon, who’s the managing property guy that I deal with, they’re looking for tenants to fill that spot.”
Well, I never said it did. Everyone knows that was happening long before the construction. Did the businesses in the area, I mean, Carvel and all of them, suffer any major financial, distress and losses because of the construction?
“Not that I’m aware of. Nobody has brought it to my attention, and I’m almost in every business. I will tell you that there’s had to be days where, even though they didn’t complain to me, I would say yes.
But there’s also days where I was in the Italian Deli, West Haverstraw Bagels, and I see people in construction uniforms buying 20 egg sandwiches because there’s workers out there. So, again, I’m not a fool. I’m not going to tell you there weren’t days where it had to affect the businesses, but nobody has, nobody has called my office and I’m in all those businesses.”
So, no major, no major financial losses like the other the hundreds of other businesses are saying that the, construction is caused in Stony Point and in Congers.
“I would have to agree that a lot of those businesses where it’s coming to that bottlenecking and those road closures took place, I would have to agree with those businesses, but I don’t know that for a fact. I’m not, I’m not up there, you know, but as far as West Haverstraw goes, you know, again I don’t almost want to say this publicly because I don’t want people to start calling me, but I’ll be honest with you, Keith, as far as the businesses go I’ve gotten 0 phone calls.”
Businesses are one thing. Residents are another. D’Amelio says that as far as residents go, he’s going to take a stab at like 55 phone calls, and he says that 4 out of the 5 were residents living in Samsondale.
I was at the round table with Bill Weber, Ed Day, Senator, Ortt, the minority leader, and, Stephanie Melowsky from the North Rockland Chamber of Commerce, and there were people in there that were just like, I mean, guys showed pictures to them of disastrous stuff that was done to their properties.
“The 9W corridor that lays in the Town of Haverstraw, really in the two villages, you don’t have myself at those meetings. You don’t have Mayor Kohut at those meetings, and that part of 9W, with all respect. I understand my Village is in the Town of Haverstraw. I totally understand that. Those jurisdictions are mine and Michael’s, and you don’t have us at the meeting because we’re not getting the phone calls. I understand what everybody else is doing and everybody has a job to do and when, a constituent calls and complains you definitely need to react and take care of it.”
He explained, “What I’m telling you is that you look at those round table meetings, the part of 9W that’s in Haverstraw is Michael Kohut’s and mine and I know Michael has gotten more complaints than I have, but I think Michael, I have spoken to Michael, and he has expressed that yes, it’s a problem at times, and we get phone calls, but, you know, we’re dealing with it.”
He continued, “The way this was explained to me that they are a public utility on a state highway, I don’t own that road. None of us owns that road. That if they wanted to come in and not be kind and nice, they could have just did that. They put $30 million of influx into the community. Now the municipalities had an opportunity to, you know, see what they wanted to do with the money. I’m not going to speak for other municipalities. The company, they support my HPAL for Christmas time. They support my food, my food pantries for Thanksgiving. TDI has been a nightmare to these residents, no question about it, but it’s not like they run from the phone or they’re not. If I call up, I get answers. You know, and unfortunately, no, let’s say fortunately, they don’t bullshit you. They don’t give you bullshit answers. They give you real answers. They’ve, they sponsored community events, you know. I don’t know what else to tell you that so I was told basically, you know, they could, they could put that line in 9W and not even come to you, and offer you any, any, you know, community aid. It’s a state highway and they’re a public utility.”
“I believe I’ve had some businesses such as the, if I’m not mistaken, the owner of the Wendy’s, and the Urgent Care, were not in favor of them going into his parking lot and ripping it up and doing it and I’m under the impression that they, went to court and that, the court ruled in favor of TDI under eminent domain. That as much as that property owner did not want to deal with it and did not want any, reimbursement or anything, just don’t, just come up, just don’t go to my property, that, when he challenged it, he lost. TDI had the ability to claim eminent domain and just do what they need to do.”
“They still had to make him whole for the taxes. Now keep in mind, Keith, in addition, In addition to the $30 million that they gave out, that line when it’s charged, is a rateable. Everybody will receive tax dollars for that line going in. So, everybody from Stony Point down to Congers will be getting tax revenue. I’m talking school districts. I’m talking the county. I’m talking towns, the villages. There’s a printout of what kind of money is in a PILOT program that’s in place.”
The county does not enter into PILOTS. “I would think maybe Mr. Day does not sign it. I don’t know.”
I have been told by a county representative that the county does have its own PILOT with CHPE. Ed Day has not signed off on it, for the county and in a press release, Day and the Legislature have said they are not signing the PILOT until funds are provided for businesses & residents.
Well, at the round table, he mentioned that he hasn’t signed it.
A lot of people at the roundtable were saying that they’ve made some phone calls and stuff like that and they’ve tried to talk to people and they’ve been put off and basically told, hey, we’re doing this and you don’t matter and that’s what they’ve been getting.
“You know what, I’m not on that phone call, but I would tell you that I find that hard to believe, but I’m not on that phone call and if that’s what those people are experiencing then that’s not right. You know, I don’t have those dealings with TDI. My dealings go very professional, and I’ve never gotten a response where they weren’t trying to help me and help my residents and help my businesses.”
I just needed to know what was going on in your part of the corridor, you know, because I said I’m trying to get a complete picture of this whole thing and get it out to my readers. I have part one of the roundtable story up. I have a story from the owner of Pasta Cocina up in Stony Point. All have spoken about the thousands of dollars they have lost due to this project which they call a disaster.
D’Amelio is not unsympathetic to the businesses that have been affected by this project. It just seems that the businesses in the West Haverstraw part of the 9W corridor did not suffer as badly as the Stony Point and Congers parts have.