Athens, N.Y.: A ‘Perfect Combination of Old and New’ on the Hudson

Abstract

As a country music artist, Chely Wright traveled the world, but only one place really felt like home - Athens, N.Y., which she discovered about six years ago after playing at Club Helsinki in nearby Hudson. "We wanted the charm of a historic neighborhood, but I also told my agent, 'I want a brand-new build.' He said, 'You're never going to find a new build in Athens,'" said Ms. Wright, 51, who is now the chief diversity officer for Unispace, a commercial design firm based in Boston, and the mother of 9-year-old twin boys. "It's almost as though time stood still in Athens," said James Male, the owner of House Hudson Valley Realty, who helped Ms. Wright find her home. "It's a small, sleepy village almost right out of a movie set. It used to be everyone wanted to be near Hudson. Now it's so popular, people want to avoid Hudson. That's led to the movement of people going across the bridge to Athens." Amy Bennett, who lives in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, was so taken with Athens that earlier this year she bought three 19th-century brick buildings there, as well as a Victorian Airbnb and 58 adjoining acres on Route 385, which she rented to an organic farm. She's now on the board of the Athens Cultural Center, a nonprofit started in 2004 in an 1870s building that had been vacant for about a year. "My real estate agent insisted we go look at this small hotel in Athens - which, of course, we'd never heard of," said Ms. Ballinger, who lives in Mount Kisco, N.Y. "Athens is a perfect combination of old and new. You have people who have lived here for five or six generations, and you have a lot of newcomers who moved in even before Covid." Newcomers and old-timers alike congregate at the local coffee shop, the Athens Rooster, opened two years ago by Melissa Chmelar, a former New York City restaurateur, and her husband, Jonathan Griffith. In late September, Zillow showed 16 single-family homes for sale in Athens, from a three-bedroom Federal home in need of restoration, listed for $225,000, to a five-bedroom log home on 1.54 acres with lake frontage, listed for $1.4 million.