Frequently Asked Questions

Basic Overview

  • Hudson Highlands Fjord Trail, Inc. is a subsidiary of Scenic Hudson that was created in 2020 for the sole purpose of building and operating the Fjord Trail. Ned Sullivan, the president of Scenic Hudson, has stated that the purpose of the Fjord Trail is to create a major tourist attraction that will be “the epicenter of tourism in the Hudson Valley” and have “national prominence.”

  • To date, Hudson Highlands Fjord Trail has been funded principally by the Shelby Cullom Davis Charitable Fund—which is the private foundation of billionaire Chris Davis, who is also the board chair of Hudson Highlands Fjord Trail.

    Hudson Highlands Fjord Trail has also received funding from New York State. For example, Hudson Highlands Fjord Trail received $20 million from New York State to build the Breakneck Connector and Bridge and $456,000 to replace the roof, woodwork, flashing, and gutters at Dutchess Manor (p. 6).

  • Deadlines are a moving target for Hudson Highlands Fjord Trail and the Fjord Trail is currently years behind schedule. Remember when construction of the Breakneck Connector and Bridge was supposed to begin in 2022? Remember when it was supposed to begin in 2023? Remember when it was supposed to be completed in 2025? Remember when the entire Fjord Trail was supposed to be completed in 2031? The boardwalk alone has a construction timeline of at least six years. So much for deadlines.

    The first draft master plan for the Fjord Trail was released in 2015. In 2016, Hudson Highlands Fjord Trail submitted a Draft Generic Environmental Impact Statement, which was rejected on the basis of the harm that proposed construction would have likely caused the environment. A second draft master plan was released in 2020. In December 2024, Hudson Highlands Fjord Trail submitted a new Draft Generic Environmental Impact Statement, which is currently under review by New York State.

    All this time, instead of chasing grandiose plans of a boardwalk in the Hudson River, we could have been taking meaningful steps to improve pedestrian safety and manage over-tourism throughout the Hudson Highlands. Philipstown approved plans to improve the tunnel at Breakneck Ridge in 2007 (which, for their part, the New York State Department of Transportation undertook last autumn, albeit independently from the Fjord Trail) and completed site plan drawings for a sidewalk extension along Fair Street in 2014.

    Bear this history in mind as Hudson Highlands Fjord Trail continues to churn out a never ending stream of renderings and marketing materials that push completion dates further and further into an ever-receding horizon of deadlines.

  • The public comment period for the Draft Generic Environmental Impact Statement for the proposed Fjord Trail project opened on December 4, 2024 and closed on March 4, 2025. Comments submitted by the public are currently being reviewed by New York State and Hudson Highlands Fjord Trail. Under New York State law, all relevant questions and comments must be reviewed and responded to. We expect comments to be responded to by late summer 2025.

    For more information about the environmental planning and review process, read Protect the Highland’s review of the SEQR process.

Overtourism

  • Hudson Highlands Fjord Trail projects that the Fjord Trail and surrounding trails will attract a low estimate of 746,100 annual visitors, a mid-estimate of 877,700 annual visitors, and a high estimate of 1,009,400 annual visitors (DGEIS Appendix III/IV.L-8, 14).

    Although the Fjord Trail is projected to open to the public in 2031, Hudson Highlands Fjord Trail has elected to only estimate and count visitation beginning in 2033. Hudson Highlands Fjord Trail took this position in the Draft Generic Environmental Impact Statement, reasoning that “the first year of a new facility opening tends to draw a larger crowd due to the novelty and curiosity of a new leisure destination, the remainder of 2031 and all of 2032 would be considered a surge year, with higher than normal visitation” (DGEIS Appendix III/IV.L-8, 6). In other words, Hudson Highlands Fjord Trail has decided to not even bother estimating or counting visitation during the first two years that the Fjord Trail is open. This is a reckless coverup of the true burden of overtourism that local communities will be forced to shoulder following the opening of the Fjord Trail. Hudson Highlands Fjord Trail should be required to publish all visitation projections and counts.

  • Yes, the Fjord Trail is expected to attract up to 1,009,400 visitors annually to the Fjord Trail area (DGEIS Appendix III/IV.L-8, 14) and 75 percent of visitors are projected to arrive by car (DGEIS Chapter III.L-18).

    Concerningly, to date Hudson Highlands Fjord Trail not published any research examining how additional visitation would change traffic patterns on Route 9D between Cold Spring and the Notch trailhead, which is the area of roadway where Hudson Highlands Fjord Trail is proposing to build new parking lots for the Fjord Trail.

    Similarly, the traffic study that Hudson Highlands Fjord Trail completed for Cold Spring examined only three intersections: the traffic light on Route 9D, the intersection of Main Street and Fair Street, and the intersection of Fair Street and Route 9D. Hudson Highlands Fjord Trail failed to study how construction of the Fjord Trail would change traffic patterns and parking behaviors throughout the rest of Cold Spring, including the lower village, which is an extremely constrained geography. Hudson Highlands Fjord Trail envisions that the lower village will serve as the gateway to the Fjord Trail, yet they ignore that the neighborhood is constrained by the river on one side and the Metro-North train tracks on the other side, and has only one road of ingress/egress.

  • Once the Fjord Trail is built, Hudson Highlands Fjord Trail plans to make use of 1,798 parking spaces throughout the Fjord Trail corridor. Of this total, Hudson Highlands Fjord Trail plans to use 148 municipal parking spaces in the Village of Cold Spring, 200 parking spaces at the Cold Spring Metro-North train station, 30 municipal parking spaces in the City of Beacon, 631 parking spaces at the Metro-North parking lot in Beacon, 789 parking spaces at parking lots operated by Hudson Highlands Fjord Trail and Scenic Hudson (DGEIS “Appendix III/IV.L-6: Parking Supply Table”). Hudson Highlands Fjord Trail plans to charge visitors to park at lots operated by Hudson Highlands Fjord Trail and Scenic Hudson. Municipal parking in Cold Spring and Beacon would be subject to local parking restrictions set by the municipalities—in other words, either free or subject to a meter—and the Metro-North lots would provide free parking on weekends.

    To this end, Hudson Highlands Fjord Trail envisions that on weekends, when parking is free, the Metro-North parking lot in Beacon will serve as the “no-cost parking option for any visitors who are unwilling to pay the daily fee at Hudson Highlands Fjord Trail’s parking lots,” with the same principle also applying to the Metro-North parking lot in Cold Spring.

  • Hudson Highlands Fjord Trail has extensively publicized their intentions to implement paid parking throughout the Fjord Trail corridor, and the land within Hudson Highlands State Park Preserve provides the most lucrative opportunity for Hudson Highlands Fjord Trail to generate revenue from parking fees. Hudson Highlands Fjord Trail will be able to develop public state parkland through an operating agreement they executed with New York State in 2021.

    Hudson Highlands Fjord Trail anticipates that, once the Fjord Trail is fully open in 2033, Hudson Highlands Fjord Trail will implement a demand-based parking fee structure, charging between $10 per car under the lowest price tier at non-peak hours and up to $35 per car under the highest price-tier during peak hours at parking lots operated by Hudson Highlands Fjord Trail (“Request for Proposals: Parking Lot and Shuttle System Operation,” Exhibit E).

  • Paid parking at parking lots operated by Hudson Highlands Fjord Trail will incentivize drivers to seek out free parking and reduced fee parking on municipal streets, municipal parking lots, and the Metro-North parking lot in Cold Spring. The Fjord Trail will lead to more cars and more traffic in Cold Spring as drivers congregate in the lower village and circle village streets for coveted free parking spaces near Dockside, which is the planned southern entrance to the Fjord Trail.

  • The Draft Generic Environmental Impact Statement states that construction of the Fjord Trail would lead to more visitation in Cold Spring, not less, and states that Cold Spring would serve as a release valve for visitors in the event of overcrowding on the Fjord Trail, ignoring overcrowding that already exists in Cold Spring, especially on Peak Days.

    The Draft Generic Environmental Impact Statement observes, “Development of the Fjord Trail is expected to increase visitation to the area, including to the downtowns of the City of Beacon and Village of Cold Spring” (DGEIS VI-9) and posits that “the Cold Spring waterfront to the south of Dockside Park as well as the Foundry Dock Park at the MNR Cold Spring train station along with Main Street in Cold Spring would provide visitors to the area opportunities for passive recreation, shopping and dining, and draw patrons away from Dockside Park should it become crowded. As such, user capacity is not expected to become an issue, and no significant adverse impacts are anticipated” (DGEIS Ch. IV.I-8). This is the opposite of what Hudson Highlands Fjord Trail advertised in the lead up to the release of the DGEIS and the opposite of mitigation.

Environmental Impacts

  • Hudson Highlands Fjord Trail expects that construction of the Fjord Trail would lead to 55.6 acres of habitat disturbance (DGEIS Chapter VI-7).

  • Hudson Highlands Fjord Trail expects that construction of the Fjord Trail would lead to “about 22 to 23 acres . . . of new impervious surface, which would include approximately 9 to 10 acres of crushed stone path with limited permeability . . . . This would result in a loss of pervious soil surface, vegetative cover, and habitat as a result of the proposed facilities, including the Main Trail, Meanders, Trail Banks, parking areas, and restroom buildings (DGEIS Chapter III-2–3).

  • According to Hudson Highlands Fjord Trail, building the Fjord Trail would result in 55.6 acres of habitat disturbance and would contribute to habitat loss, fragmentation, edging, and the destruction of previously isolated habitats. For example, eastern box turtles “would be affected by loss and alteration of habitat followed by extensive levels of recreational activity, as well as collection pressure by visitors” (DGEIS Chapter VII-4). New England cottontail would find themselves isolated and cut off from habitat, and forced to navigate an “inhospitable matrix of development and recreational activity” (DGEIS Chapter III.E-45).

    Doubling the size of the Washburn parking lot from 48 to 96 parking spaces would require clearing “approximately .6 acres of trees” (DGEIS Chapter IV.E-29) and destroy known breeding habitat for cerulean warbler, a New York State species of special concern. All told, building the Fjord Trail would result in 326 new parking spaces within and next to Hudson Highlands State Park Preserve.

    Building the boardwalk from Dockside Park to Breakneck Ridge would require driving 433 piles into the shoreline (some of which would be up to 120 feet deep) and cause over-water shading in the river, imperilling near-shore habitat for federally endangered shortnose and Atlantic sturgeon. In response to the DGEIS, Riverkeeper recently stated that the Fjord Trail should “avoid all in-water and overwater structures.”

    To learn more about environmental impacts and concerns, read the public comments that Riverkeeper and the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation submitted in response to the Draft Generic Environmental Impact Statement.

  • Little Stony Point would be one of the primary construction staging areas for construction of the Fjord Trail boardwalk. Hudson Highlands Fjord Trail plans to clearcut a 50-foot-wide access road along the north side of Little Stony Point for heavy construction machinery (DGEIS Figure II-2.C). All construction vehicles would access Little Stony Point from using the bridge that spans the Metro-North tracks. Construction would proceed annually for six years, which would cut off public access to the peninsula.


    Once construction is complete, Hudson Highlands Fjord Trail plans on building two restroom buildings (DGEIS S-2) each with 8–10 toilets (DGEIS S-39) on the peninsula itself and replacing current single-track trails with much wider carriage trails.

  • Hudson Highlands Fjord Trail has not calculated the amount of carbon emissions that would be generated by building the Fjord Trail, so the public should be skeptical whenever Hudson Highlands Fjord Trail tries to claim that the Fjord Trail will comply with the New York State Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, or would reduce greenhouse gas emissions. When he was asked recently how much carbon emissions would be generated by building the Fjord Trail, Hudson Highlands Fjord Trail’s CEO Peter Mullan stated, “We don’t have those calculations.”

  • In March 2025, Hudson Highlands Fjord Trail began cutting down trees between Route 9D and the Metro-North train tracks at Breakneck Ridge. This work encompasses the “Connector” portion of the Breakneck Connector and Bridge, which constitutes phase one of the proposed Fjord Trail.

Fjord Trail South Boardwalk

  • The 25-foot-setback is a Metro-North requirement. This section of train track from Cold Spring to Beacon is the fastest section of train track in the United States outside of the Boston to Washington Acela corridor. Trains on this section of Metro-North track travel up to 80 miles per hour.

    Security fencing is necessary to keep people from trespassing into the right of way and animals—such as deer and geese, which are sometimes hit by trains—from striking people on the boardwalk.

  • Hudson Highlands Fjord Trail is planning to build the shoreline boardwalk between Dockside Park and Breakneck Ridge to be approximately 4-5 feet above the Metro-North train tracks. Additionally, the boardwalk itself will have security fencing that is between 8-12 feet tall on the side facing the Metro-North tracks and a 4-foot-tall railing on the side facing the river.

    Put simply, building the elevated boardwalk will split the viewshed. For people on the east side of the river, the boardwalk will block views of the river and mountains on the west side. For boaters in the river and people on the west side of the river, the boardwalk will block views of the eastern shoreline and views of the surrounding highlands. What is currently a shoreline textured with vegetation will be scarred by concrete and steel.

  • According to the Draft Generic Environmental Impact Statement for the Fjord Trail, building the elevated boardwalk from Dockside to Little Stony Point for the proposed Hudson Highlands Fjord Trail would require drilling and hammering 284 piles into the Hudson River shoreline. The boardwalk would be supported by a dual-pile construction, meaning that two piles would support each span.

    Each of the 142 spans would require 2 hours of rock breaking and drilling, plus 4 to 6 hours of hammering. That’s a total of 852 to 1,136 hours of rock breaking, drilling, and hammering using heavy machinery to install the required 284 piles. Noise levels would be as high as 90 dBA during pile installation.

    The piles (steel tubes) would be up to 120 feet long and delivered in 20-foot sections. Each new span would require two piles, two 2-foot thick concrete beams, and approximately twenty 12-foot long by 8-inch thick precast concrete planks. These materials and the equipment would be delivered by truck to the staging areas in Dockside (via the Lunn Terrace Bridge) and Little Stony Point (via the narrow bridge over the tracks by the Little Stony Point Visitor Center). Once hammered to their final depth, the piles would then be filled with concrete from a barge moored in the river.

    For more information, read Protect the Highland’s article about construction logistics for Fjord Trail South.

Public Funding and Taxpayer Dollars

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  • Yes, so far New York State has committed $20 million for the Breakneck Connector and Bridge portion of the Fjord Trail, and initial estimates are that the Breakneck Connector and Bridge (this is just the portion of the Fjord trail that encompasses new parking lots and maintenance buildings at Breakneck Ridge and a bridge across the Metro-North train tracks) will cost approximately $100 million to build.

    All told, the Fjord Trail is projected to cost hundreds of millions to dollars to build and millions of dollars per year to operate. New Yorker’s should expect more tax dollars to be earmarked for the Fjord Trail if the project is greenlit.

    For more information, read the article “How Scenic Hudson's Overblown 'Safety Crisis' Claims Got the Fjord Trail $20 Million in Taxpayer Funds” by Mark Stillman and Philip Weiss.

Local Governance and Management

  • The vast majority of the land on which the Fjord Trail South boardwalk (from Dockside to Breakneck Ridge) would be constructed is owned by Metro-North. Fjord Trail North (from Breakneck Ridge to Long Dock Park) would cross twelve private residential properties. Hudson Highlands Fjord Trail will be required to secure land use rights from all of these landowners either through easements, voluntary purchases, or eminent domain. (The DGEIS was supposed to discuss the issue of eminent domain, but it was omitted.) Additionally, the Fjord Trail would cross and in places develop with parking lots and maintenance buildings land within Hudson Highlands State Park Preserve (for example, at Little Stony Point and the Wasburn parking lot).

  • On May 2, 2023, Hudson Highlands Fjord Trail purchased 8 Hartsook Lane, a residential property that would be bisected by the Fjord Trail, for $1,400,000. On May 20, 2024 Hudson Highlands Fjord Trail transferred ownership of 8 Hartsook Lane to Pollepel Island View, LLC. On December 13, 2024, Pollepel Island View, LLC purchased the adjoining property at 2 Hartsook Lane.

    Scenic Hudson states in their 2024 Consolidated Financial Statements and Supplementary Information, "Pollepel Island View, LLC (‘Pollepel’), a New York Limited Liability Company, was formed on October 25, 2023 and organized with HHFT as its sole member. Pollepel is a disregarded entity of HHFT for federal and state tax purposes, therefore the activities of Pollepel are included in the HHFT column in the accompanying supplementary consolidating information."

    8 Hartsook Lane is currently being used as a short-term rental that is actively listed on Airbnb. The property has a five-night minimum and is listed at a base rate of $5,192.

    Both 2 Hartsook Lane and 8 Hartsook Lane would be bisected by the Fjord Trail. However, neither property is disclosed in the Draft Generic Environmental Impact Statement that Hudson Highlands Fjord Trail recently submitted to New York State. Separately, the DGEIS does disclose Hudson Highlands Fjord Trail’s current ownership of 14 Coris Lane (DGEIS Chapter III.B-3), a nearby residential property that Hudson Highlands Fjord Trail purchased on December 10, 2020 for $594,000, and is currently using for staff offices. Next door to 14 Coris Lane is Dutchess Manor, which Hudson Highlands Fjord Trail purchased for $2,750,000 in December 2020 and has extensively advertised will serve as their future headquarters.

    All this begs the question: How much residential property does Hudson Highlands Fjord Trail plan on purchasing along the proposed Fjord Trail corridor? Transparency is important for building public trust, and for the purposes of building that trust, Hudson Highlands Fjord Trail should disclose their land acquisition plans to the public.

  • The Draft Generic Environmental Impact Statement provides that Hudson Highlands Fjord Trail will rely on surrounding municipal police, fire, and ambulance services to respond to emergencies on the Fjord Trail. Whoever is closest—whether that’s Cold Spring, Fishkill, or the Putnam County Sheriff—will be obligated to respond first.

    To learn more about emergency services planning for the Fjord Trail and resource shortages facing local first responders, read the public comment that Protect the Highlands board member and Cold Spring Fire Department volunteer firefighter Mike Bowman submitted to New York State.

  • The Fjord Trail is a proposed public-private partnership between New York State and Hudson Highlands Fjord Trail, Inc., a subsidiary of Scenic Hudson. In 2021, Hudson Highlands Fjord Trail entered into an operating agreement that lays out management responsibilities with New York State Parks.

    To that end, remember that at the end of the day Hudson Highlands Fjord Trail is simply a nonprofit organization. Yes, they have a contractual relationship with New York State. But they are pursuing this venture as an untested partner with incomplete funding and minimal transparency. To date, Hudson Highlands Fjord Trail has shown no estimated construction, maintenance, or operating costs for the Fjord Trail. Nor have they published projected revenue streams. Nor do they have an endowment.

    In 2022, the most recent year for which their IRS Form 990 is available, Hudson Highlands Fjord Trail reported that 82 percent of their assets were tied up in restricted gifts, meaning the donor—i.e., Chris Davis—controls how the gift is used. In 2022, Hudson Highlands Fjord Trail spent $7,480,876 on operating expenses and ended the year with $43,801,342 in the bank. That’s nearly $7.5 million dollars of expenses in one year for direct salaries, legal fees, and consulting fees—and they haven’t even started building the Fjord Trail yet, which itself is going to cost hundreds of millions of dollars. This is an enormous amount of faith to put in one billionaire’s checkbook. What happens if Chris Davis stops funding the Fjord Trail or pulls the restricted gifts he made previously? What happens if Chris Davis blinks?

    Don’t lose sight of the fact that New York State is and always will be the backstop for the Fjord Trail. If Hudson Highlands Fjord Trail defaults or is unable to fulfill their obligations under the operating agreement, New York State will be forced to intervene and serve as the financial and operational backstop. At the end of the day, that means you, the taxpayer, will be the backstop.

    To learn more about governance, management, and funding concerns, read the public comment that Gretchen Dykstra submitted to New York State.