Patten is the wrong developer to shape our city

His buildings are bland, his comments ugly

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At the Glens Falls Planning Board meeting on Tuesday, when board member Brigit Culligan asked developer Chris Patten whether he had spoken with neighbors about his latest project, one neighbor in the audience yelled out, “No.”

What Patten has said is that two apartment houses he would tear down — 391 and 399 Glen St. — are in poor condition, and the six apartments at 391 Glen are empty.

“The building should basically be condemned,” he said of 391 Glen. “It’s been chopped up into six apartments, none occupied.”

Patten was arguing it would be better for the city to approve his project, with two large buildings containing 60 apartments, along with a fitness and recreation center, than preserving the existing houses and character of the neighborhood.

Two of the six apartments at 391 Glen are occupied, however, and have been for years.

“I lived here 10 years in May,” said Joann Sullivan on Saturday morning, as she moved stuff out of the building for a lawn sale.

Denise Baldwin, who I reached later Saturday, has lived in another one of the apartments for “seven or eight years,” she said.

“It’s definitely not unoccupied. It’s not like we just moved in,” Baldwin said.

“The thing that worries me is absolutely nobody has said anything to us,” she said, referring to Patten’s plans.

Both women agreed the apartments are not “condemnable,” a word Patten used to describe them. The appliances work, and although the building could use a good cleaning, it’s livable. It’s also inexpensive and close to downtown.

“I haven’t been told,” Sullivan said, of the possibility she might soon have to move. “I haven’t been given an eviction notice. Nothing.”

Joann Sullivan has lived in this apartment at 391 Glen St. for more than 10 years.

Sullivan’s apartment is cluttered but cozy and clean.

Patten told the Planning Board he wants to get going on the project quickly.

I called him Saturday and asked how he knows the apartments are empty.

“I know the attorneys that own it,” he said.

He also toured the building, he said.

“I didn’t knock on every door. It’s pretty empty,” he said.

Two people live there, I said.

Maybe they just moved in, he said.

“They’ve lived there for years,” I said.

“That’s news to me,” he said.

Then his facade of minimal courtesy crumbled.

“You’re an asshole,” he said. “Go fuck yourself. Go hang out with —- (he mentioned the name of someone we both know who has been critical of him online). Fucking loser.”

Then he hung up.

I’ve had people mad at me during 40 years in journalism, but I can’t recall ever having anyone speak to me like that. Patten was sneering at me from the moment he answered the phone. He questioned me before I could question him — “aren’t you retired?” he said — and he mocked the work I’m doing now.

Usually, the attitude of interview subjects toward the reporter is left out of stories as irrelevant. But I mention Patten’s because a couple of people I spoke with said they were hesitant to talk about him, fearing blowback.

Rose Carlsen, a college student who lives on Goodwin Avenue with her mother, Frieda Toth, told me an unsettling story about Chris Patten.

Rose and Frieda attended city board meetings in the summer of 2021 when Patten was seeking approvals for a 20-unit apartment building that would go between Goodwin Avenue and Union Street — two narrow, one-way streets.

Neighbors objected to the increase in traffic and to having a large, utilitarian shoebox-shaped building plunked down among the mix of older houses in various styles that characterizes Glens Falls neighborhoods.

But Patten got his approvals. Last year, Rose saw him again.

“Last year, right before I turned 18, I was walking home, and a car starts following me and pulls up next to me,” she said. 

Chris Patten was driving, window down.

“He goes, ‘Hey, you were at the Planning Board meeting, right?’” she said.

“He goes, ‘How do you like my building?’

“I go, ‘Oh, ha-ha-ha,’ and I run inside.”

It was unfriendly, she said.

“It was very aggressive. I was trying to walk forward, and he kept moving his car,” she said.

In 2021, Patten told city officials he had talked to neighbors about the project. But he never spoke with her, Toth said, nor with a couple of other neighbors she knows well.

Patten promised the Zoning Board of Appeals his Goodwin/Union project would include landscaping — islands with trees and grass in the parking lot. His remarks can be found posted on the city’s Youtube channel for the July 19 meeting, starting at about the 6-minute mark. 

Here’s an excerpt, the best I could make it out:

“If you guys all know the parcel, it’s a completely paved parking lot. So, as far as, green space, there’s none. As far as permeability, there’s zero. 

“So we’re actually grandfathered in to not building any … what we’ve done …

“We don’t want to see a parking lot just back up to a 20-unit building. We’ve actually provided some green space areas.

“We’ve submitted spots from where we’re going to be able to plow snow.

“We have separation from the original Heritage parking area with several islands of trees.

“So all these things are above and beyond once we are done with that.”

The parking lot, now finished, has no islands, no green space and no permeability. It does have a cement wall about 3 feet high at the border of the Heritage Apartments lot. Besides that wall and a strip of fake grass next to the building for dogs to poop and pee on, what Patten built was “a parking lot that just backs up to a 20-unit building.”

This is the wall that separates the Heritage Apartments parking lot from the parking lot of Chris Patten’s building (in background) between Goodwin Avenue and Union Street. Patten told city officials he would put islands of green space, with grass and trees, at this spot.

The larger issues of the city’s character have to be considered with this project. Along with the buildings Patten is now finishing along Washington Street, this new project would create a veritable wall of bland, cheap- and institutional-looking construction, two and three stories high, along one side of downtown. 

The character of the developer should also be considered. Can he be trusted to do as he says? Do his methods reflect well on the city?

Shortly after our phone call, Chris Patten texted me this message:

“People like you like to stir up trouble, not for the greater good of our city or its citizens, but rather to stir the pot and try to attract new subscribers to your website. You’re just another internet blogging troll.

Do not call or text my phone again.

Did-nothing.”

A little while later, he texted again: 

“Double-checked with the owners, and to clarify, there are two tenants living in that building. I’ll correct the record with the board as well. Have a good one.”