Crews from eight neighboring communities battled a four acre brush fire that started at 348 Verbank Road in Millbrook Sunday, Nov. 10. The fire started as a result of a homeowner starting a fire that quickly overtook nearby fields.
MILLBROOK — Volunteers from eight nearby departments assisted Millbrook firefighters in fighting a four acre brush fire on Verbank Road in Millbrook around noon Sunday, Nov. 10.
Volunteers representing Union Vale, Pleasant Valley, Dover, East Clinton, LaGrange, Amenia, West Clinton and Beekman assisted Millbrook volunteers in battling the blaze at 348 Verbank Road.
Millbrook Fire Chief Dominic Boscardin said a homeowner igniting a fire started the blaze that grew to four acres at its largest. At 4 p.m. responders had managed to get control of the fire and shrink it to under two acres.
Boscardin expected to be packed up by sundown.
The state Department of Environmental Conservation gave Dutchess County a high fire danger rating in late October. Towns and villages across the county, including Millbrook, have issued burn bans in response to the dangerously dry conditions. While these bans are in place it is forbidden to start a fire or do anything which could cause a fire to start. “All outdoor burning of yard waste, household paper products, bonfires, campfires, warming fires, outdoor fireplaces, chimneys, and cooking fires within said jurisdiction is prohibited,” according to Millbrook’s state of emergency declaration.
In addition to restricting outside burning, Dutchess County Executive Sue Serino also issued a statement with additional fire-starters to be mindful of. Cigarette butts should be carefully extinguished. Fireplace and woodstove ashes should not be discarded on the ground or in receptacles near your house. It’s also best to avoid parking over dry leaves and monitor power equipment for sparks and hot mufflers.
Eastern Dutchess County Fire and Rescue announced Saturday, Nov. 9, that New York State Parks and Recreation Firefighter Daniel Vasquez died fighting a fire in Orange County, New York. The Greenwood Lake fire has spread to over three square miles as firefighters struggle to contain the blaze.
Nathan Miller
The former Roe-Jan Center School on Route 22 in north Copake was abandoned in 1999. Developers are proposing turning the building into a resort and spa.
COPAKE — The long-abandoned Roe-Jan Center School could soon be transformed into a large hotel and wellness resort.
Engineer Alan Didio of Chatham and architect Paul Bennett of New York City are currently before Copake’s Zoning Board of Appeals with a proposal to turn the 41-acre site into a hotel and resort. The plans include a 97-room hotel in the former school building, 31 standalone lodges and cabins containing an additional 77 guest rooms, three restaurants, two bars, a spa, Pilates and yoga studios, a gym, saunas and steam rooms, a farm store with on-site greenhouses, retail shops including a bakery and an ice cream shop, two swimming pools, two hot tubs, a pickleball court, and a tennis court.
The school building was abandoned in 1999 when the Taconic Hills Central School District consolidated operations into a Craryville, New York, campus. It is currently owned by Markland Columbia LLC, which purchased the property for $500,000 in 2014.
The proposal calls for renovating the existing buildings on the property, with additions to the former school to accommodate hotel rooms, dining areas, and many of the resort’s amenities, including the spa, gym, bars, and retail space.
New construction will stretch around the outside edge of the property that sits along the west side of Route 22 between Copake and Hillsdale. Drawings show a planned road running around the perimeter of the property providing access to 15 lodges with between three and five bedrooms. Walking paths will lead to 16 additional smaller lodges, with one to two bedrooms each, planned to line a new retention pond that is to be located in the southern portion of the property.
All together, the lodge buildings will total more than 64,000 square feet of new building footprint on the property. That’s in addition to the 97-room, 82,000-square-foot hotel that is planned to occupy the abandoned school and an addition to the building.
The proposal is still in its early stages, having first been introduced to Copake’s Zoning Board of Appeals at that board’s May 28 meeting. The proposal is currently undergoing a public hearing at the Zoning Board of Appeals, which began on Thursday, July 23, at Copake Town Hall.
Gina White, who operates Mandala Yoga & Arts in a building just south of the abandoned school, said she’s waiting to watch the development move through regulatory processes before forming an opinion on the project.
Generally, though, White thinks the plans are likely to be positive for the area. “It’s a resort town,” she said.
Joseph Brennan
George Bistransin points out a headstone marking the final resting place of Ephraim Paine in the Old Amenia Burying Ground.
AMENIA — When Amenia resident George Bistransin stumbled across a century-old newspaper account describing the arrest of a Revolutionary War spy in his hometown, he couldn’t stop thinking about it. That discovery inspired Amenia’s Spycatcher, an original historical play that will debut Aug. 21-23 at the Amenia Town Hall Theater as part of the nation’s 250th anniversary celebration.
The play tells the story of Ephraim Paine and his wife, Mary, who are buried today in the Old Amenia Burying Ground on Mygatt Road. Bistransin wrote, directed and produced the play, hoping to transport audiences back to the late 18th century through historically accurate language, characters and settings.
“It was my hope that when people enter that theater that they are back in the 18th Century,” Bistransin said. “No anachronisms, only old-fashioned language.”
The inspiration struck after Bistransin, 70, read an article from a 1900 edition of the Amenia Times recounting the arrest of a Revolutionary War spy.
History has shaped much of Bistransin’s life. Before writing Amenia’s Spycatcher, he translated plays by Roman playwright Plautus for schools.
Bistransin said the play has occupied months of his life and is the latest expression of his lifelong fascination with history.
He said he wants Amenia to understand Paine and the conflicts in his life. “I think it is an examination of relationships,” Bistransin said. “Romantic love versus familial love, duty, the sacrifice you have to make for other people.”
Paine fled Connecticut to avoid paying taxes to a state church and went to sea as a whaler to avoid debtor’s prison. Bistransin based much of his tale on the account offered by Paine’s descendant, Martha Bockee Flint, who wrote the article recounting the story of her great-great-great stepmother, who risked her life for colonial freedom.
The playwright also drew on the journal of the wife of a German general who fought for the British at Saratoga and passed through Amenia as a prisoner of war.
Bistransin described the play as his gift to the town. He spearheaded the production with the help of a $15,000 Dutchess County grant secured by Betsy Strauss and the Amenia Historical Society. Bistransin took on writing, directing, producing and casting the play largely by himself.
Bistransin acknowledged a few key helpers along the way. Anna Bonelli illustrated the posters that now advertise the show across town. Town Hall custodian John Nowak found the scenery and lighting from local resident David Palmieri. Town librarian Victoria Herow helped research the obscure historical figure.
Long before this play, Bistransin started his professional career as a park ranger in Boston overseeing burial grounds. After a stint teaching Latin, he founded Theater Ludicrum, where he learned from Roman drama how playwriting works.
Eventually he grew tired of city life and sought broader pastures, bringing him to Amenia in 2016. While working as a security guard at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, he remembers saying to himself, “I don’t want to die in a railroad apartment in Queens.”
He rode the train to the end of the line and found a place to raise goats like his sister did in Ohio. Since then, Bistransin has volunteered with the Amenia Historical Society. He also helps maintain the Old Amenia Burying Ground, where Paine and other Revolution-era Amenia residents are buried.
Bistransin jokes that he has been as stubborn as his billy goat, Ferdinand, in seeing the production through. He also knows that taking on nearly every aspect of the play leaves little room to blame anyone else if it falls short.
“An actor does a good job in a well-made play,” he said. “I made all the decisions. Not only am I comfortable with that, but I don’t want any interference. If it’s bad, it’s my fault.”
Despite the pressure, Bistransin said he feels fortunate to have had the opportunity to tell an overlooked chapter of Amenia’s history and hopes residents will come out to experience it. “I feel so lucky to have this opportunity,” he said.
Nathan Miller
MILLERTON — A local boarding school’s efforts to receive current formal approval for its buildings received support from neighbors and faculty of the institution at the first public hearing in the Planning Board approval process.
Olivet Academy, which took over the former Kildonan School campus in 2020, is seeking a special use permit, certificates of occupancy for all campus buildings, and approval of its existing septic systems to satisfy current state Department of Education requirements for private boarding schools.
Architect Ray Nelson, representing the school, told the Planning Board on Wednesday, July 22, that the state now requires schools to provide current certificates of occupancy for all campus buildings under the operating institution’s name. Because the campus predates modern permitting requirements, many of its buildings were never issued formal permits or certificates of occupancy.
The campus has operated as a school since it was built in 1940, first as the Barlow School and later as the Kildonan School from 1980 until the institution closed in 2019. Nelson said the current application is intended to formally document and legalize longstanding uses of the property rather than expand or substantially alter the campus.
Wednesday night’s meeting marked the first public hearing on the application, marking a step toward approval that will bring the historic school into formal legal compliance for the first time since its construction over 80 years ago.
Betsy Strauss, a longtime neighbor of the property, and her husband, Julian, spoke in support of the school and its efforts to obtain formal approval. She said Olivet has been a good neighbor and she’s delighted to live in a neighborhood surrounded by schools on both sides.
Strauss’s property is bordered on the west by Olivet Academy and on the east by the Webutuck Central School District campus.
“It’s very nice to know that we’ve got people who are serious about their work and are good neighbors,” Strauss said.
Milo Tsukroff — a Pleasant Valley, New York, resident and math instructor at the school — said he has taught at the school for five years and loves the community.
He said Olivet students excel in and out of school, and that the presence of the boarding school and Webutuck’s campus in such close proximity qualifies that section of town around Morse Hill Road and Haight Road as a de facto education district.
“Graduates return to this school and tell us they’re college math classes are too easy because they learned math at Olivet,” Tsukroff said.
Planning Board members opted to keep the public hearing open pending approvals from outside agencies for outstanding issues such as approval of an existing septic system and building department certification. The next public hearing is scheduled for Wednesday, Aug. 12, at 7:35 p.m. at the North East Town Hall on Maple Avenue.
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Madi Long
Ariel Grald rides Adagio’s Nobility around the showjumping ring at the 41st annual Millbrook Horse Trials on Sunday, July 26. The Millbrook Horse Trials is an annual event that combines dressage, showjumping and cross-country.
Ariel Grald rides Adagio’s Nobility around the showjumping ring at the 41st annual Millbrook Horse Trials on Sunday, July 26. The Millbrook Horse Trials is an annual event that combines dressage, showjumping and cross-country.
Leila Hawken
AMENIA — Months of deliberation over the environmental impacts of a proposed workforce housing subdivision concluded Thursday, July 23, when Planning Board members voted to move the project forward to site plan approval.
The environmental impact analysis phase in connection with the Cascade Creek subdivision application was completed following the Planning Board’s unanimous vote for a “negative declaration” as part of the State Environmental Quality Review (SEQR) process.
The proposal, submitted by the Hudson River Housing of Poughkeepsie, calls for a 28-home workforce housing development on a 24.13-acre parcel between Cascade Road and Route 22. The developers also aim to preserve open space and environmentally sensitive land.
The negative declaration means the Planning Board found the proposed workforce housing development is not expected to have significant adverse environmental impacts, allowing the application to move forward to the site plan review stage without requiring a full Environmental Impact Statement.
That action allows the developer to proceed to the site plan phase of the application process where actual plans for the subdivision are submitted for consideration by the Planning Board. Public hearings will be included in that site plan process.
A significant issue within the SEQR process had been the board’s concern about the volume of water storage that would support firefighting efforts within the planned subdivision.
Attorney Alec Gladd, of Cuddy & Feder LLP out of Fishkill, New York, representing the developer, stated that the fire department is asking for water storage capacity data that could only be answered within the site plan phase. Currently, the developer is offering on-site fire suppression and home sprinklers in each housing unit.
“We have met the requirement for now,” Gladd said, noting that the SEQR analysis is an environmental review.
The issue of firefighting capacity can be raised again later in the process once the site can be tested for water availability, advised Planning Board attorney Cassandra Britton.
“Sprinklers are for evacuation of people from their homes, but you still need water to fight the fires,” said Planning Board Engineer John Andrews. Water storage to support home sprinklers is separate from water storage to fight fires.
Peter Deister, chairman of the local Board of Fire Commissioners, attended the meeting and expressed his concern about the issue of adequate water storage capability. The fire department has scheduled a second meeting with architect Richard Rennia, who designed the project, on Monday, Aug. 10.
Leila Hawken
AMENIA — A Sharon resident has offered to donate a 27-acre parcel valued at more than $1 million to the Town of Amenia, proposing that the land be permanently preserved as conservation property to protect the final unprotected section of Westerly Ridge.
Carol Flaton, owner of the property at 108 Westerly Ridge near the Connecticut border, presented the proposal to the Town Board during its regular meeting Thursday, July 23. She said she purchased the property less than a month ago with the intention of ensuring it would never be developed.
The 27-acre parcel has a value of $1,014,200.
“I don’t live in New York, I just want you people to have it and to protect the ridge line,” Flaton told the board. She said donating the property would be consistent with the town’s Master Plan, which envisions protecting the ridge line from future development.
“The whole ridge line will then be protected,” she said.
Town Supervisor Rosanna Hamm said the proposal would require review and approval from several parties before the town could accept the donation, including the Westerly Ridge Homeowners Association and Dutchess County conservation officials.
Flaton said she hopes the donation process can be completed by the end of the year.
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