ABOUT FoSS

Friends of Second Street is a growing group of Hudson residents and citizens who believe better housing for Bliss residents and better planning for Hudson should go hand in hand.

We came together because the proposed redevelopment of Bliss is simply too large, too expensive and too consequential to move forward without rigorous public scrutiny. In a city of roughly 5,700 people contained within about two square miles, a project that could nearly double the number of apartments at Bliss, expand the development onto additional land, reshape North Second Street and unfold over many years will affect far more than the boundaries of the HHA property.

Hudson has been here before. Bliss Towers was built in 1973 with the confidence that came with large-scale urban planning of its era. Fifty-three years later, we are being told that the building is obsolete and must be replaced. FoSS believes Hudson has an obligation not to repeat that mistake in a different form. What we approve today will shape this neighborhood—and the lives of the people who live there—for generations.

We support the urgent need for safe, dignified and well-designed new homes for the current residents of Bliss and Columbia Apartments. Our concern is not whether this housing should be replaced. It is whether the current proposal represents the best way to do it: its scale and density, architecture, cost and financing, brownfield remediation, difficult soil conditions, traffic and parking, loss of mature trees and open land, construction impacts, resident relocation and the long-term effect on the surrounding city.

FoSS has become an organized community effort because these questions deserve serious answers. We attend the meetings. We read the plans. We compare the changing versions. We submit public comments. We ask for documents. We speak with neighbors, professionals and public officials. And we work to make a complicated proposal understandable to the people of Hudson. This project belongs in the public conversation—not just in technical drawings, financing documents and meeting rooms.

We are not asking Hudson to choose between better housing and a better plan.

We believe Hudson can—and must—have both.

We are not trying to stop Hudson from moving forward. We are trying to make sure that a decision this important is one we will still be proud of fifty years from now.