TO find Gary Planken on most summer
weekends in Ellenville, N.Y., you need to look up. When the wind is right, he
will probably be strapped to a hang glider, banking off the breeze some 3,000
feet above Ellenville, a rural village that sits a bit under 100 miles
northwest of Manhattan.
From that height, Ellenville’s
dozens of former bungalow colonies, now given over to rot and termites, can
seem insignificant, said Mr. Planken, a filmmaker from Long Beach, N.Y. But
during their mid-20th-century heyday, those colonies drew thousands of
vacationers every summer.
What still stands out, though, is
what attracted many of those visitors in the first place: nature, lots of it,
fanned out lushly between the Shawangunk Ridge and the Catskills, and still
abundant, despite the occasional weed-choked ruins nearby.
“The landscape is just endless
treetops and rivers and lakes,” Mr. Planken said. “It’s spectacular.”
Those trees also provide privacy
for his house, a 600-square-foot former one-room schoolhouse built in the
1930s, which cost $24,000 in 2001, though it lacked heat, plumbing and
appliances.
Mr. Planken, who shares it with his
wife, Macarena, and their daughter, Nicole, admits the quarters can seem tight
— the master bed is a pull-out couch — but compared with the tent they
camped in for years in the field that doubles as the hang-gliding landing
site, their house is downright capacious.
Plus, he said, “we didn’t want
anything big, because my wife didn’t want to clean, and I didn’t want to
do too much work.”
Second-home owners for years staked
their claims on the fringes of Ellenville, which is ringed by hills. But
recent weekend arrivals are venturing closer to downtown, which in the last
few years has cleaned itself up, though there are still some problems. Couples
now stroll on blocks where, according to the local police, crack dealers
menaced passers-by a decade ago.
It’s understandable, then, that
one of the first improvements Tachi Taylor made to his house — a
1,900-square-foot 1958 contemporary with three bedrooms and two and a half
baths on almost an acre of land in the town’s Westwood neighborhood — was
to rip out the security system.
Mr. Taylor, who lives in the
Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan, works in the word-processing
department of a law firm and runs a tailoring business on the side. In March
2006, he paid $197,500 for the house, though it needed a top-to-bottom
scrubbing.
“It was like ‘Sanford and
Son,’ with rooms piled to the ceiling with junk,” said Mr. Taylor, who
lives with his partner, Harry Rodriguez. “But underneath there was a great
house dying to get out.”
Its open layout and large rear
windows also complement their collection of midcentury Danish furniture, he
said. But in a region dominated by 18th-century farmhouses, finding something
with modern contours wasn’t easy, he added.
In New Paltz, or Accord, where they
have friends, “everything was either too close to the road or too dark,”
Mr. Taylor said. “This feels like a city house in the country.”
The
Scene
Buying lumber, paint or wine is
usually the reason Mr. Taylor heads to Ellenville’s tiny downtown, which is
spaced along two parallel main streets, Center and Canal.
Occasionally, though, he will eat
dinner at Aroma Thyme Bistro, a four-year-old restaurant that real estate
agents, village officials and longtime residents say has been a spark for
revitalization in Ellenville. Fifty people filled the dining room on a recent
Saturday night, listening to a man pluck a modernized washtub bass while they
ordered from a diverse menu that included vegan options like wheatgrass shots
($4) and seitan cutlets ($16).
Another business that attracts
residents to Ellenville’s sidewalks after dark is the Shadowland Theater,
but only during the warmer months because it isn’t heated. The theater, a
restored 148-seat Art Deco movie hall, began staging plays in the 1980s. It
has been under new management for the last three years, and now regularly
sells out.
A Mexican restaurant and a pizza
parlor opened nearby last spring, joining a recent clothing shop and a
florist. And a Sunday afternoon farmer’s market started up in a Center
Street parking lot last month.
Brightening other blocks is a task
for Ellenville’s burgeoning artistic community, which this weekend starts
its second “10x10x10” festival, which will install paintings and
sculptures in empty store windows for a six-week run.
Pros
The ingredients for a village-wide
revival, similar to what has happened over the last decade in upstate
communities like Hudson and Rosendale, seem to be in place: low-slung
19th-century storefronts, walkable blocks, manageable traffic and a core of
dedicated pioneers.
Environmental conservation efforts,
too, are increasing, most notably to protect the Shawangunk Ridge, whose
forested flank dwarfs Ellenville’s tallest steeples. With much of the
ridge’s northern portions already owned by the state or by environmental
groups like the Nature Conservancy, the Shawangunk Ridge Coalition, which
formed in 2000, is focusing on acquiring land to the south, before developers
arrive.
Cons
New York’s governor has the power
to approve two Indian-run casinos for either Ulster or Sullivan County without
local approval under the terms of a 2001 state law. And, although nearby towns
like Saugerties and Woodstock have passed resolutions banning the casinos,
Ellenville’s village government is keeping its options open. Many weekenders
worry that casinos would put too many cars on Routes 17 and 209, the
region’s main roads.
The
Real Estate Market
That a vintage single-family
weekend home on a sizable lot close to New York City could be had for less
than a half-million dollars was hard for Ellen Archer to fathom at first.
Indeed, over a nine-month period,
most of the 85 homes available in upstate communities like Gardiner, Stone
Ridge and Kerhonkson were “new homes with plastic columns” on one acre,
she said.
Finally, in April 2006, Ms. Archer,
an actress who lives on the Upper West Side and does audio books and
voice-overs for television commercials, found a two-story cedar-shake
farmhouse. Built in 1920, it is 1,350 square feet and has three bedrooms and
one bathroom — all for $399,900. But the kicker was the 45 acres, mostly
woods, that came with it.
“It didn’t make any sense for
me to come all the way up here and be able to hear my neighbors’
conversations,” she said.
Her house, which technically sits
in Wawarsing, just outside Ellenville, is typical of those found along the
village’s edges.
In November 2006, for example, a
two-story Cape in Wawarsing’s Napanoch section, on five acres, sold for
$190,000, according to the Ulster County Multiple Listings Service. The house,
near the Rondout Reservoir, has two bedrooms and two baths and is 1,160 square
feet.
In comparison, village homes
generally date to the 19th century and are on tiny lots, like those along
Maple Avenue, whose shingles, Queen Annes and Greek Revivals are being
considered for historic-district status.
Yet across the board, prices
aren’t too different. In October 2006, a 2,130-square-foot house on Warren
Street, built in 1900, with seven bedrooms and two bathrooms, on about a fifth
of an acre, sold for $164,000, according to the same listings service.
Early this month, 100 Wawarsing
properties were for sale, priced between $95,000 and $635,000, with an average
price of $220,000, though a third of all the listings were between $200,000
and $300,000.
Renovations are usually in order,
though, as houses often reflect the tastes of 40 years ago, which is when many
owners moved in, said Felicia Raphael, of Coldwell Banker Currier and Lazier
Realty in Rhinebeck.
“They probably need an aesthetic
upgrade,” she said. “But, over all, people who live in houses for a long
time tend to take better care of them.”
VISITOR
INFORMATION
POPULATION
There are 3,926 people in the village of Ellenville, according to a 2006
estimate by the Census Bureau, and a total of 13,665 in the surrounding town
of Wawarsing, which includes the hamlets of Napanoch and Cragsmoor.
SIZE
Ellenville is 8.7 square miles, while Wawarsing is about 130 square miles,
according to the census.
WHO’S
BUYING Actors and cinematographes priced out of New Paltz and
Gardiner, N.Y.; couples who want modern midcentury country homes
GETTING
THERE From the George Washington Bridge, take the Palisades
Interstate Parkway north to Route 6, then west through Harriman State Park to
Route 17. At Exit 113, take Route 209 north for 12 miles to the village. Short
Line buses run from the Port Authority Bus Terminal in Manhattan to Canal
Street three times a day. The one-way fare is $29.05, and the trip takes two
to three hours.
WHILE
YOU’RE LOOKING The Nevele Grande Resort & Country Club (1 Nevele
Road, 800-647-6000; www.nevele.com) is a survivor of the Borscht Belt era, and
its 1,000-seat Stardust Room still plays host to comedians. It has two
swimming pools, tennis courts and an 18-hole golf course. Rooms start at $199
a night and include brunch and dinner. The Days Inn Wurtsboro (21 Perron
Drive; 845-888-2727; www.daysinn.com), off Route 209 in next-door Sullivan
County, has weekend rooms for $109 a night.
