The Common Council voted Tuesday to authorize the demolition of Uptown Kingston’s Pike Plan canopies and the restoration of underlying building façades. The vote comes as an Uptown real estate firm with a long record of unsuccessful litigation against the city has filed yet another lawsuit seeking to halt the demolition.

A campaign to remove a 1970s-era system of canopies covering sidewalks along portions of Wall and North Front streets in the Stockade Historic District began last spring when Mayor Steve Noble and Common Council President Andrea Shaut began lobbying the Common Council on the issue. That effort culminated Tuesday when the council voted 7-2 to authorize Noble to spend $1.2 million from the city’s reserve fund to carry out the plan. The project, expected to begin this spring and last about six weeks, includes both the removal of the canopies and restoration of building façades that have been covered for half a century by structures.

Noble has called the canopies an unfortunate vestige of Urban Renewal in Kingston and argued that they had deteriorated to a point where they posed a threat to public safety and could no longer be repaired. Noble told lawmakers that the only alternative to removal was to completely rebuild the canopies at a cost of $10 million. The demolition plan has received pushback from some Uptown residents and business owners who say the canopies provide convenient cover for shoppers during bad weather and give the Uptown Business District a unique flavor. Alderman Michael Tierney (D-Ward 2), who represents the Stockade District, was joined by Teryl Mickens (D-Ward 5) in opposing the resolution.

“I cannot vote for a resolution that destroys a seminal part of what makes Kingston Kingston,” said Tierney before the vote of Tuesday.

The demolition plan also faces opposition from William Gottlieb Realty, which controls six buildings in the Stockade District including five abutting the Pike Plan. The company, which has filed more than two dozen mostly unsuccessful lawsuits against the city since 2020, launched another effort to halt the demolition of the canopies earlier this month. The new lawsuit alleges that the council erred in designating the demolition a Type II action with no adverse impact under the State Environmental Quality Review Act.

Noble has said that he expects the action, like previous efforts by the company to derail removal of the canopies, to fail. Noble said last month that the city was moving ahead with the process of selecting a contractor for the project.