A non-profit group’s plans for an historic Hudson Valley Civil War estate are inspiring debate over preservation laws. The 434-acre property in question, known as Montgomery Place, was sold to Historic Hudson Valley for “a bargain” price, the New York Times reported, in the mid-1980s, when the owners couldn’t afford to care for it any longer. The former owners said that they sold off the property to that particular organization because they believed it would be protected from developers. Now, with state officials saying that the estate is violating its financing package agreement by not remaining open at least 12 days a year, the fate of the historic spot is up in the air. Waddell Stillman, the head of Historic Hudson Valley, who joined the group in 1992 after the purchase of the property, said that his group is in over its head. “We didn’t have the money to buy it, we didn’t have the money to maintain it, and we way underestimated how much it would take to restore it,” Stillman said.

The state has lent its support to an initiative to build more docks
along the Hudson River, between New York City and Lake Champlain. The
project, for which the state has already granted $750,000, is meant to
address the issue of poor water access, a problem that Clay Hiles,
executive director of the Hudson River Foundation, says has
long plagued the waterfront. “There’s been a recognition of the irony
that the city of New York and the whole Hudson Valley has this
spectacular waterfront and very little access,” Hiles said. The
development is a part of the year-long quadricentennial celebration of
Henry Hudson’s discovery of the waterway. Upwards of 40 different
locations have been identified as possible dock sites, as different
towns along the river are vying for their portion of the funds. New
York City-based non-profit advocacy group Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance has requested
funds for two docks in Inwood and Brooklyn’s Bay Ridge neighborhood.

It may have Manhattan’s highest natural point (265 feet, in Bennett Park), but Washington Heights did not see the steep peaks in activity and prices that so many Manhattan neighborhoods experienced in the past few years.

As a result, the neighborhood — which stretches from the Hudson to the East rivers and from 155th to Dyckman streets — has avoided the complete and utter cratering that many other Manhattan neighborhoods have seen in the last couple months.

This month, as part of a monthly feature looking at what kinds of deals are closing in different neighborhoods, The Real Deal found that Washington Heights saw a 76 percent drop in closings in the past year. While that may seem steep, pricing held up far better than other, more upscale areas.
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