California company sees Cold Spring as opportunity
A dormant commercial building known as the Impellittiere garage at 37 Fair St., in the Village of Cold Spring, could become the site of a model modular home and sales office for the national building company Blu Homes.
The California-based company has submitted preliminary plans for a project to the Cold Spring building inspector who referred the matter to the Planning Board where it was briefly discussed at the board’s monthly meeting on Wednesday (Oct. 15). The company apparently believes the Hudson Valley is fertile territory for its product.
The plan would require the demolition of the existing structure, once a Ford automotive dealership, and the construction of as much as 40,000 square feet of space.
Planning Board members, who have not reviewed any plans, speculated the dimensions would likely shrink after the company had an opportunity to review the Cold Spring Zoning Code and meet with the board for a discussion of the possibilities.
Barney Molloy, board chairman, said the board would meet with the company at the board’s Nov. 5 meeting when the ongoing review of the Butterfield project will continue.
The Fair Street property is not within the local historic district, but one parcel over the line of designation. It is likely the project would need zoning variances involving the village Zoning Board of Appeals (ZBA). Molloy said that would come after a site review by the Planning Board determined the acceptable dimensions of the project and then the ZBA would assess where the conflicts were with current zoning.
The Planning Board agreed to retain the services of Barton & Loguidice, consultant for the Butterfield project, to assist in evaluating the Blu Home plan.
This is interesting news. Blu Homes has been a leader in the contemporary rethinking of home design/build. They are not the modular homes of the past.
It would be great to see a new language of architecture spoken in the Village. Since I purchased a home in this idyllic community in 1999, the old Impelettiere space has been a slowly dying shell of what must have been in its days a glorious and contributing business to the Cold Spring community. To use this space in the parlance of life in the 21st century could provide great strides towards making Philipstown the destination again for forward thinkers, expats from the cities and their families and those associated with the arts as well as those looking to ensure this community’s tradition of harkening back to the old all while moving forward.
Repurposing remarkable buildings into useable current space can only serve to beautify and brighten Cold Spring and unite us as a community with a wide range of people respecting the past but looking forward to better days reflected in the urban planning such a project affords. There are several buildings that could use a bit of updating and perhaps this project could get the ball rolling.
This would be a super cool thing to locate in Cold Spring. I once saw a modular home park in Sweden — people go and pick out a house on the lot like you would a car. In Europe over 90 percent of new homes are modular. Modular building techniques eliminates a lot of the wasted materials and CO2 emissions caused by transporting everything and cutting and assembling on location like in traditional on-site construction.
Fabulous company that grew out of a college project. Smart design and energy efficiency!