The city’s two top elected officials are proposing to demolish the 1970s-era system of covered sidewalks in Uptown Kingston known as the Pike Plan.

In a joint communication to the Kingston Common Council, Mayor Steve Noble and Council President Andrea Shaut wrote that the porticos had outlasted their intended purpose and were out of place in the heart of the city’s most historic neighborhood.

“Collectively, we believe the best decision the City of Kingston can make regarding this structure is to remove it and return to the historic façades of our Stockade District,” the memo reads.

The Pike Plan, named for its designer, Woodstock artist John Pike, is a series of porticos abutting 40 properties on Wall and North Front streets in the city’s Stockade District. The plan emerged in the mid-1970s as Uptown Kingston’s business district, once a bustling neighborhood of department stores and other retail shops, was rapidly losing market share to suburban shopping centers. The porticos, part of a larger, never-implemented streetscape plan, were intended to create a mall-like experience to draw shoppers back to the area.

By the late 2000s, the porticos had fallen into disrepair. Property owners complained of rotting wood, spotty electrical service and poor drainage from the canopies causing water damage in adjacent buildings. At the time, many Uptown business owners favored removing the canopies entirely and restoring the historic buildings’ façades. But in 2010, an influx of federal grant money led to a decision by then-Mayor James Sottile to carry out a refurbishment of the canopy instead. The $1.8 million project included replacing wooden canopy roofs with translucent panels, replacing old woodwork and masonry and installing a new electrical system.

But problems with the canopies persisted after the project was completed. Legal action against contractors on the project allowed the city to recoup $315,000. Meanwhile, maintenance of the canopies continued to be a drain on city finances and a headache for property owners. In 2019, after asking the Common Council to approve $125,000 to repair one section of the canopy, Noble called the refurbishment project a mistake.

“The people who were raising these issues [about the problems with the canopies] back then are in a position to say, ‘I told you so,” said Noble in 2019.

Around the same time, the city produced a cost estimate for removing the Pike Plan of $868,300. This week, Noble and Shaut said that the same project carried out today would cost $1,056,000. The price tag would not include restoration of building façades. In their message to the council, Noble and Shaut proposed a two-phase approach which would involve first demolishing the canopies and weatherproofing the points where they attached to buildings, then creating a detailed plan to assist property owners to restore historic storefronts.

On Tuesday, Shaut said that she believed now was the time for the city to act. “It's a decision that we keep kicking down the road,” said Shaut. “We can’t put off this decision. It’s time to make a decision and do it because [the canopies] are in bad shape.”

While, based on her conversations with Uptown stakeholders, support for the Pike Plan is about 50-50, Shaut said she favored taking it down to restore a bit of historic authenticity to Kingston’s most historic neighborhood. The message to the Common Council was accompanied by photographs of the old shopping district from the early and mid-20th century.

Shaut noted that the plan had failed to achieve its purpose of reversing the outflow of retail from the neighborhood, making it an obsolete and ahistorical feature in the Historic District.

“Everyone talks about how it’s part of historic Uptown Kingston but that is not accurate,” said Shaut. “It was built in the 1970s for economic reasons and if we really want to preserve our history, we would take it down.”

Noble and Shaut are expected to present their plan for the demolition of the Pike Plan to the council’s Finance Committee on April 10.