Frost on the ground as I start this, but later today they say it will be in the mid-70’s;
welcome to upstate NY in the glorious greening month of May. Up here, we say you
can hit the heat in your car in the morning and need the A/C by mid-afternoon. The spring drought we suffered for awhile, with patchy hay-colored grass on yards and fields for an unusually dry April, is over. The lushness of an Irish countryside has returned. Farmers aren’t as worried, which is good up here, because here’s a little-known fact: for all the talk of Tourism and Manufacturing–both booming in our area– the largest industry in Saratoga County, for several years running, is… agriculture.
Even as someone who has lived around here for 35 years, that statistic surprises me.
(That stat will probably not last, however, as the famed GlobalFoundries silicon wafer factory is now partially operational, and once it’s fully functioning, its numbers may dwarf the dollars generated by apples/corn/potatoes and hay.) But if you drive around east of Saratoga especially you begin to see how much open land there is devoted to farming. Both north and south of Rte. 29– in the towns of Northumberland, Saratoga ( theTownship, not the City thereof), Stillwater, Moreau, and parts of Wilton– there are miles and miles of planted ground, safe from developers’ clutches, with RIGHT TO FARM signs posted all about. There are dairy farms with hundreds of acres planted to hay and corn; there are apple orchards, berry farms, and a myriad of local produce stands that will be opening soon, on virtually every back road in the area. On the west side of the great Hudson River Valley, and on the other side too, in Washington County just east of us, the soil is legendary in its richness.
Even the aboriginal Mohawks knew that, even though their men reportedly preferred to hunt and fish, and subscribed to the Paleo diet, leaving the cultivation of crops to the women. Around here now, it’s mostly a man’s sport, and we hope the farming community continues to thrive in Saratoga County, for the health of the culture as a whole. I am not a tractor-driving guy myself, but I admire the fact that there are still men of the earth that choose that lifestyle, which I have to remind myself when I’m stuck behind a large-wheeled John Deere on the backroads (or Route 29 itself) as I wend my daily way in pursuit of real estate adventure, and occasionally, business. But I digress, as I majored in Digression. You will get a lot of that here.
The rustic country views from Halfmoon to Moreau on the eastern half of Saratoga notwithstanding, the contrast is pretty vivid as you get back into town from the east.
Route 29 (east/west road) from Schuylerville to the City of Saratoga Springs runs in a 10 mile stretch, first used by Phillip Schuyler to guide George Washington to our healing waters, after the Revolution, a different route than the first white man, Sir William Johnson, took when he was taken there by Iroquois natives a decade or so earlier. If you follow Route 29 through Saratoga (dogleg down the heart of Broadway, turn right onto Washington Street, proceed west) you would end up, about 30 miles later, in Johnstown, named after the gentleman above, as referenced on my my first post on this blog. Saratoga, then and now, pulled people in from all directions, and that was way before the NORTHWAY (known to visitors as I-87) was our primary source of influx. Route 9 (north and south) itself, the original highway through the area we live in, was a section of ancient Indian trails from Albany to Lake George. Saratoga is a crossroads, then and now, on the grid formed by Route 9 and Route 29 (check an old-fashioned road map sometime, in lieu of MapQuest or GPS, and get the big picture). The magical curative springs, which predated all roads and paths, “just happened” to be where these well-worn routes converge.
The point is, if you’re coming in from the east, as Schuyler and Washington did,
instead of a low flat, somewhat swampy, but heavily forested plain as they encountered, you will now pass a Stewarts shop (they are ubiquitous, literally, up here, like 7-11’s are elsewhere), and then go under the Northway bridge, and you are on Lake Avenue, though there is NO LAKE in sight, and won’t be. You will pass through a residential neighborhood and then see the Catholic Church (St. Clement’s)
on your right as the Eastside Rec fields are on your left. Now if you glance up, you begin to see a skyline that wasn’t really there before.
It’s not exactly a skyscraper, because Saratoga has always had an ordinance that prevents anything higher than 6 stories from being built within the city limits. Until Sonny Bonacio came along, no one was even trying to build that high, in the recent era, with the single exception of Robert Israel, a local guy who must be credit with creation of the first downtown condominium complex, on Railroad Place. But the
blockwide monolith you can now see from almost a mile awy, out Lake Avenue, is
the $38 million dollar project by Bonacio Construction, which is nearing completion for this summer. There is a purportedly very cool “new-urban” Price Chopper on the ground floor, facing Division Street, just recently opened with little fanfare. There are 124 downtown apartments for “new urban dwellers” on the five upper floors…
NOT built as condos, but purely rental units. This, and the new parking building across Woodlawn Avenue that is just underway, are the most obvious and major new improvements to Saratoga’s intown landscape. Sonny’s project is somewhat modestly named Market Square, and it will be a huge boon to the city, in that it replaces the far inferior but affectionately-dubbed “ghetto-Chopper” but improves upon it, instead of removing it altogether. Many townfolk feared that, with two much fancier stores of its own on the outskirts, Neil Golub would not keep a much-needed grocery-store presence in the heart of town, but he did, and we thank him for that.
So that’s this Saturday blog for now, the son is rising nicely and the frost is gone, turned to dew. I am due to get back to my other work, and then take my wife and whichever kids might want to hang with us, to the Albany Tulip Festival this afternoon, another fine upstate tradition, dating back to the Dutch, but featuring better music than they ever had back then. See you next time.
Copyright Wayne Perras, May 12, 2012
PS– I have blogs planned on Dave Matthews Band coming to Saratoga, and other musical nuggets on the Saratoga scene, but I had to set the foundation of my riff on the city’s history and status before I proceed back to the present tense…stay tuned.