Waynesword—March into April ‘07
The Downtown Scene…on an Off-Day
On a Saturday in early March I’m driving down Broadway in Saratoga Springs with my son and his friend to drop them off at the new Y to play some hoop. The temperature is finally above freezing but the skies are grey and the crusty snow banks are slowly beginning to diminish. The traffic is double-stacked and backed up on both sides of the downtown boulevard that defines the town. Miles wonders out loud why there is so much going on downtown on such a day as this. I tell him we don’t always see it out where we live, but downtown is like this almost every day, and especially on the weekends: people-density begets more people. People want to see what’s going on along and around Broadway, so now even more people are gawking at more people. You don’t see this in too many upstate cities, at least not at this time of year.
Miles says, “It doesn’t even look that good around here right now…”referring to the grimy glaciers that are slowly melting on each side of the main street, and the dreary cloud-cover overhead. I tell him that doesn’t matter—it’s still more interesting than anywhere else around. It’s like I tell my real estate clients who are looking at property around here in March & early April, before spring has truly bloomed—“If you like it now, you’re gonna learn to love it later…” which is really a lyric I copped from a great forgotten Robby Robertson tune (Somewhere Down the Crazy River…c. 1987) that I vaguely remembered from my college radio d.j. days, which persisted for a decade and a half after my actual college career was over. (Later that day I would have Miles download that song from i-Tunes—a wonder of the modern internet world when you can call up a past musical memory and hear it instantly as soon as you get back to the computer, without having to rummage through a beat-up collection of old vinyl to find it.)
The point is—Saratoga has an appeal these days which supersedes the visual—the inner vitality comes through even on in dingy pre-spring weather, unlike most any other upstate town of note. You don’t need to wait for a gorgeous day in June when summer is announced by virtue of The Dave Matthews Band is coming to town to impress visitors. The Race Track doesn’t have to be open for hordes of tourists to be pouring down Routes 9 & 50 to sample the center of town. The bounteous flowers on lampposts, streetlights, and Park entrances are not even close to being planted yet, and people are still enamored with what our small upstate city has to offer.
People have to understand how much this new version of Saratoga has changed in my 30 or so years of living around here—when I first showed up after college I was informed it was strictly a seasonal town—don’t expect to find work here once the horses are gone… I once briefly worked for a restaurateur who ruefully claimed “You could fire cannon down the middle of Broadway in January and not hit anybody…” Not the case anymore—Saratoga has become a year-round gathering place. Conventions, Skidmore College functions, the Racino, the Hats Off Festivals, the Victorian Streetwalk, year-round Downtown Shopping, and the Nightlife afforded by Saratoga’s 100+ bars, clubs, and eateries has guaranteed that people will pretty much be milling about any day or night of the year.
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How Does Saratoga’s Popularity Affect the Current Real Estate Market?
First thing to understand is that NOT every car creeping along Broadway equates to a real estate buyer, nor does every well-heeled pedestrian. There are always a lot of people milling about who already live here, or are just visiting, are just looking, and not really shopping. Activity on Broadway does not directly equate with real estate activity at any given moment. To tell the truth, a lot of people simply come to Saratoga for food and beverage, entertainment and excitement, or POTENTIAL ROMANCE, just like in the old days when it was the most killer resort in the country in the late 1800’s, and when “seeking amour” was the primary occupation of visitors to our watering hole. As a whole, local realtors are obviously rooting for those visitors to fall in love here—either with the place itself, or someone who wants to establish roots for their family in the place, or retire here. Not everyone is looking to invest here, but eventually, when they realize what a hip little town it is, they might. Recent examples:
*Recently-retired NFL Football Coach Bill Parcells may have factored in the peaceful life in Saratoga Springs in his decision not to resume his role as head man of the Dallas Cowboys. His future neighbors say he has been genial, friendly, and low-key as his home was under construction here, in contrast to his gruff and sometimes irascible sports-coach persona. Without aiming for fanfare he has attracted some media publicity while building a John Witt home near Saratoga Lake, close to the Saratoga National Golf Course and the world famous Saratoga Race Track, both of which he loves. He will be a welcome addition to the local scene, apparently starting this year.
*The third-largest home in America was recently completed under the direction of another local builder-of-note, Sonny Bonacio. At over 60,000 sq. ft. of interior area—an acre and a half!--this mammoth mansion is purportedly exceeded in square footage only by those of Bill Gates and Shaquille O’Neill. The owner of this mondo-project was able to afford such a monumental domicile by virtue of selling his holding company—AYCO—to Goldman-Sachs for a multi-billion dollar sum. Is it a coincidence that AYCO had recently established their upstate headquarters in a grand project on Broadway, across from Congress Park, on the site of the legendary Grand Union Hotel (once the world’s largest)? Is it true that the rich get richer in Saratoga? Try your luck here and find out.
* Perhaps most intriguing and little-known is a rumor (?) from the internet mill—reputedly from the singer-songwriter’s own website—concerning the fact that the leader of one of SPAC’s most amazing performers of all time—Dave Matthews of DMB fame—is looking for property in our area. If this is true—AND IF YOU’RE READING THIS, DAVE!— you should be working with me as you’re buyer agent up here, as there is NO Realtor around these parts who could be a bigger fan than I am. I first noticed your bootlegs in about 1991 in a house I was showing—I always scope out music collections as I scan the interiors—and the tenant in that place was already a fanatic follower since your bar-band days in Charlottesville, VA., he told me. Within a year after that we were playing UNDER THE TABLE & DREAMING non-stop as we fixed up our rough little starter home. My wife and I have been attending your concerts at SPAC on a virtually yearly basis since ’96 and ’97—even when she was five months pregnant with my daughter the second time we saw your band play here. Each of my three kids has been listening to your music since gestation, and now my 15 yr old son has interspersed his i-POD rotation so that your tunes comprise every-other song in a nonstop segue of hip-hop, rap, vintage rocks & R-&-B mixed with liberal doses of DMB. You were the first white musician (other than Eminem) he would listen to, though he’s lightened up in that regard a bit lately. I devoted as July’s Waynesword to an account of your June concerts here last year, which I described as guaranteed ecstatic experiences… we hope to experience many years more of those.
A PLACE FOR THE MUSICAL HEYDAY TO RETURN TO…
*And, if you and any of your band-members were to be residing in our midst, I’m trying to resurrect a musical venue that would be worthy of you on a local-jamming basis. Back in 1983 a friend of mine ran a successful but short-lived operation called The Tin Shoppe, an exquisite 2-story brownstone hub of a club in a key downtown location. He booked acts from Betty Carter to McCoy Tyner to funky punk acts like The Tom-Tom Club to avant guitarist James Blood Ulmer. He booked the Black Sheep playing ska & reggae that had 250 people doing the boogaloo in a human chain till 4 a.m. I once read fiery poetry there to the backbeat of Bow White’s congas, Carl Landa’s Yamaha, and George Mastrangelo’s horn…the place was special, and there’s nothing like it now. I wrote a long-winded celebration of those Saratoga bohemian days the following year in a magazine called The High Rock Review—also long-forgotten (though I have plenty left).
To tell you the truth, the only thing that was better about Saratoga back then than now was the fact that we had a club like that in those days. There is a glaring need for a place with big-time musical entertainment down in the core of downtown, and this place is waiting for such a revival. The building is now vacant and for sale, which is why I’m telling you this. In fact, I went by it the other day in a nostalgic moment and realized how forlorn and under-used the site was—when the current (or previous) owners the position of the stage and the bar area around, they precluded LIVE MUSIC, which is what it was best designed-for. Saratoga doesn’t necessarily need another bar/restaurant/or pub… but a serious music CLUB would be a boon and an embellishment to an already burgeoning scene. For further information onbringing The Tin Shop back to life…CALL ME for details, especially if you have about $2 mill or so to invest in the best part of our city to make it happen.
If you want to know the address of this historic icon of a commercially listed building, use the mperras@nycap.rr.com address for a quick response—it’s a friendly competitor’s listing, or else I’d provide pictures…let me represent your interests in purchasing it and I’ll provide the stories that go with it…)
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BUT THAT’S THE HIGH-END STUFF…WHAT ABOUT THE MIDDLE-CLASS PART OF THE MARKET, WAYNE…?
If I was just writing this website as a puff-piece for any of the local newspapers, or as a shill for a local Chamber of Commerce, I’d be telling you thatdemand here is still high and Sellers are all getting top-dollar for their properties. But I’m not that kind of Realtor—I’m duty-bound to tell you the truth, and the truth is that there is a relative glut of listings here, from starter-homes under $200K up to the million-dollar range. And many of them are over-priced, just ask any agent about someone’s listing other than their own. This is no different than almost any other real estate market right now, in early 2007.
It’s amazing to me how many people can’t see this—Sellers who feel they are immune to the economic indicators of the day, and the reality that there are rarely anymore bidding wars like back in the heady days of ’03 and ’04. Potential home sellers continue to price their homes as if double-digit appreciation is still a fact, when the National Association of Realtors is pointing out that median prices have fallen for 6 months straight. The delusions of many relatively new agents, and even those of some experienced agents who should know better, are being foisted upon property owners who are given false impressions of what the market will bear.
There are some specific delusions I’d like to address here. First off, when I show property in neighboring Counties—Washington or Rensselaer or Fulton or Warren or even Albany County—the listings often suggest that these places are “only 20 minutes to Saratoga!” This always begs the question—How fast are you driving to get there, and is there any traffic?? I live about 9 miles from Saratoga, and am within the confines of the ‘Toga school district, and it takes me 15 minutes to go to town, no matter how fast I drive. So when people from 20 miles or more away say they can get there almost as fast, I’m wondering how they figure.
People selling property in the hinterlands all seem to want to take advantage of Saratoga’s fame and popularity, without realizing that if people like Saratoga so much, they are probably going to find plenty of real estate for sale a lot closer to it than “the next County over.” They will also refuse to pay Saratoga prices to live in rural Washington County—where things seem to be priced as if they were “right off I-87” instead of half-an-hour away. If these Sellers knew how many properties in Saratoga itself have been languishing on the market since last summer, perhaps they would be more realistic about what people will pay to be in a rustic setting, at a distance. The perceived prosperity does not extend in all directions, even in the best of markets.
Industrial Delusions du Jour of Real Estate Sellers & Agents
The other basis for Pricing Delusion is that an incoming “chip-fab” plant for micro-processing company AMD (Advanced Molecular Devices) will already be the panacea for all real estate Sellers within a 40 miles radius of Malta, NY, just south of Saratoga Springs.
I have seen fact sheets on properties all over my coverage area use the tag-line “EASY COMMUTE TO THE NEW AMD PLANT” when indeed there is certainly no such place yet, nor will there be for anywhere from 4-6 years, if ever. I’m not even going to get into a discussion here of whether it’s a good idea for the State to subsidize a new industry to the tune of a million dollars in tax breaks for each of the “potential” 1500 “new jobs” which will be theoretically created when the plant gets built. I’m not going to discuss whether the Saratoga County Supervisors plan for a $67 Million dollar boondoggle for a Hudson River water supply line should be built over the course of 28 miles to help service this chip-fab plant’s potential thirst for fresh water. Let’s not even get into an argument whether there needs to be a newly-engineered BY-PASS through the Ballston Creek wetlands area for Northway Exit 11 traffic to swing around the village of Round Lake. It may all happen SOMEDAY, whether I believe in it or not, and whether or not there is actually a NEED for another chip-fab plant by the time it is built and operational another half-dozen years from now. But the point is,
IT’S NOT THERE YET! THEY HAVE NOT EVEN BROKEN GROUND.
THERE ARE CERTAINLY NO PEOPLE LINED UP TO WORK THERE YET.
How can you base an inflated real estate price TODAY on your current home on some eventuality which may occur TWO, FOUR, OR SIX YEARS DOWN THE ROAD? The local population is not that naïve. And if you are trying to convince incoming out-of-towners that this plant is a sure thing—JUST NOT THERE YET—do you think they’re going to pay more than your house is worth NOW on that hunch??
I actually had this argument with another agent from a large group-think Realty company… with a straight-face he was telling me why he had priced a certain piece of land so high— “Y’know the value of that land is going WAY UP when the chip-fab plant comes in!!” he tells me.
“O, please…How long have you been in the business?” I ask him.
About four years, he said. One of the many who plowed in when the market was hot. His company had catch-phrases they groomed their recruits to use.
“Well this is my 20th year, man…and since I live about 2-3 miles away from that land you’re talking about, I can tell you that there’s not one foot of ground anywhere in Greenfield that has become any more valuable than it already was because of some Chip-Plant in Malta where there hasn’t even been a shovel stuck in the ground yet. No one out here is holding their breath for it to happen, far as I can tell.”
He didn’t like being corrected by a local skeptic, but I had experience on him, so I made my point. Whether people perceive me as right or wrong, I express myself, and they know what I’m thinking.
I’ve always been an anomaly as a real estate agent—I am not necessarily always in favor of development, I believe in Green principles, and even though I am in favor of a steady population increase in our area, I do not care to see Saratoga County overrun like the next Boulder or Aspen, Colorado. I especially do not want to see the core of the County begin to look like Gary, Indiana. There are plenty of forward-looking industries I’d love to see establish themselves here in the 21st Century, and some of them already have, but I’m not sure a silicon-chip plant
is the best big option there is. Given that the parent company in question has
had some heavily-publicized financial downturns on a grand scale of late, larger forces may be at work in the marketplace which preclude such a massive plant from being built here.
Still, there are plenty of other reasons for people to flock here to visit, and choose to live here—first and foremost: HEALTHY, CLEAN, & SCENIC ENVIRONS. To that end, perhaps the current-day fact sheets should read:
“Everywhere within 20 minutes of here is a nice place to live.”
And on that note I’ll return to my real estate work, and the coming AAU hoop season, and all the other pleasures that spring in these parts has to offer—
and I’ll drop another Waynesword in May. See ya!!
P.S>-- Dave M—if you’re still reading this, and you buy your dream home getaway through me this year in the Saratoga area, I can name next year’s column.
“ANTS Marching into April…” by way of thanks.
Copyright Wayne Perras 2007