[caption id="" align="alignright" width="150" caption="Kaz warehouses. Photo from The Gossips of Rivertown."][/caption]Gossips of Rivertown's Carole Osterink has researched what is happening to the old Kaz warehouses near the train station in Hudson, given the company's recent sale and other matters. A conversation with Mayor's Aide Carmine Pierro, she notes, yielded the information that Hudson Development Corporation has been the new owner of the warehouses since last week. Her story also uncovers much about how the Amtrak parking lot has changed since parking fees were instituted a year ago, with a growing realization that much of the space had been used for auto-storage. The Kaz, Inc. factory on Route 9 in Greenport, as well as its warehouses, have been for sale for the past two years, according to the Times Union. The industry once employed over 300.

A year ago, when it became known that the City, through HDC, might acquire these buildings, Mayor Richard Scalera said the idea was to demolish them in order to expand the long-term parking lot at the train station--for Amtrak passengers as well as people attending events at riverfront park. The plans are different now. When parking fees were introduced at the long-term lot, 30 percent of the cars that had been parked there disappeared. It seems that many people were using the lot to store vehicles. At its current size, the lot is more than adequate for the 140 to 150 cars that are parked there every day while their owners go someplace on the train, so, according to Pierro, the City is now hoping that some business will want to lease or buy the warehouses for a purpose that would create jobs. Those who live in proximity to the warehouses hope that purpose does not also involve the return of truck traffic to Cross Street and idling trucks at the loading bays.