(Living In ...)
Back in 1996, Michael Cioffi and his fellow kindergartners took an apple-picking field trip to Stuart’s Fruit Farm, in Somers, New York. Little did he know that 22 years later, he and his wife, Emily Cioffi, would purchase their first house together just a half-mile from the farm.
The Cioffis — he is 28, she 27 — work as electrical engineers at Indian Point Energy Center, in Buchanan. Shortly after their engagement, they started house hunting in nearby towns.
“We wanted a home in a good school district that had plenty of space to build a family,” Emily Cioffi said.
Their two-year search led them to Somers, a 33-square-mile town in Westchester County that borders Putnam County to the north. Last April, the Cioffis closed on a 2,331-square-foot, four-bedroom colonial, built in 1967 on 0.93 acres. In a highest-and-best competition with two other bidders, they paid $560,000, $10,000 over the asking price. While it was the house that lured them, the reputation of Somers’ schools clinched the decision.
Those schools were also the reason Amanda Casabona-Cohen and Lawrence Cohen moved to Somers in early 2015 with their two sons, now ages 12 and 14. Cohen, 48, is the creative director at a Manhattan law firm; Casabona-Cohen, 47, is a preschool teacher and the owner of Little People’s of Somers, a local preschool that she bought in June.
She grew up in Somers and returned in 2005, when her children were babies, after the couple sold their Upper East Side apartment and bought a house. But that house, in the northeast corner of the town, was zoned for schools in North Salem, about 10 miles east, and as her sons got older, Casabona-Cohen felt the pull of the larger Somers school district.
“We thought it had more to offer our boys, from sports programs to academic support to a wonderful, strong sense of community,” she said.
So they sold the first house and bought another a mile away, across the district line. They paid $760,000 for the 2,765-square-foot, four-bedroom, 2009 colonial, on 0.96 acres.
“We fit in here,” Casabona-Cohen said. “This is home.”
Roughly 22,000 people call Somers home. The town is predominantly residential, dotted with developments bearing names like The Preserve, Green Briar and Twin Knolls. It sits almost entirely within the Croton Watershed, whose reservoirs provide a portion of New York City’s drinking water.
“That limits development,” said Somers’ supervisor, Rick Morrissey, “and what development there is has to be more environmentally conscious.”
Still, development proceeds, with several housing subdivisions under construction. Until recently, PepsiCo and IBM occupied large properties in town (PepsiCo vacated in 2016, IBM in 2017). Currently, commercial tenants are filling PepsiCo’s former offices, and a proposal is under consideration for a STEAM boarding school in the erstwhile, I.M. Pei-designed IBM buildings.
Yet much of Somers retains an unspoiled character, with rolling hills, lakes, the sprawling Amawalk Reservoir and 1,000 acres of protected land.
“We are very proud of our open space,” Morrissey said.
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What You’ll Find
Somers is more densely populated to the north, where modest homes cluster around small lakes to form the once summer-only, now year-round enclaves of Lake Shenorock, Lake Lincolndale, Lake Purdys and Deans Pond. Farther south, properties tend to be more expansive.
Morrissey said that Somers has 5,203 single-family homes and 90 multifamily homes. There are 2,600 condominiums, all in the 1,100-acre Heritage Hills complex; another 66 town homes are set to open this summer in the new Somers Crossing.
As for rentals, there are 37 buildings with 387 apartments, including 235 affordable units, most designated for seniors.
“We are meeting the housing needs of the whole spectrum,” Morrissey said.
What You’ll Pay
Pricewise, there is also a spectrum. “We have homes from $200,000 up to $2 million,” said Joan Mancini, an associate broker and co-owner of Mancini Realty.
That range attracts diverse buyers, among them “young families and first-time homebuyers, empty-nesters wanting to downsize and people looking for bigger homes and larger lots,” Mancini said.
Linda Crispinelli, an associate broker with Houlihan Lawrence, said that Somers’ high-end market has softened during the past year, due in part to rising interest rates and uncertainty about new property-tax laws: “Homes listed at $800,000 and above are experiencing fewer showings and longer days on the market.”
In contrast, she said, “Inventory is moving in the $500,000 to $600,000 range, with some sellers seeing multiple offers.”
Data from the Hudson Gateway Multiple Listing Service showed that on Dec. 21, there were 76 single-family homes on the market. They ranged from a one-bedroom, 1,266-square-foot ranch, built in 1965 on 4.99 acres, for $274,900, to a five-bedroom, 5,286-square-foot colonial, built in 2000 on 1.7 acres, for $1,545,000. There were 37 condominiums for sale, ranging from a one-bedroom for $255,000 to a three-bedroom for $939,000, and there were 14 rentals, priced from $1,950 to $3,250 a month.
The median sales price for single-family homes during the 12-month period ending Dec. 21 was $527,000, down from $552,500 the previous 12 months. For condominiums, the median sales price was $410,000, unchanged from the previous 12 months. The median rental was $2,650, also unchanged from the previous year.
The Vibe
Morrissey described Somers as a close-knit community “with a small-town feel.” Residents enjoy summertime block parties, well-attended high school football games, Veterans and Memorial Day parades and the annual Celebrate Somers festival. They gather at the 82-acre Reis Park, one of six town parks and site of ballfields, tennis courts, nature trails and the Somers Library.
Other recreational options are Alfred B. DelBello Muscoot Farm, a working restoration of a farm dating to the late 19th century; Lasdon Park and Arboretum; and the 654-acre Angle Fly Preserve, with a 10-mile hiking trail network. Ice fishing is permitted on the reservoir, as are row-boating and fishing in warmer weather. And there’s Michael Cioffi’s kindergarten haunt, Stuart’s Fruit Farm, family-owned since 1828.
Somers, which lacks a central downtown area, concentrates its commerce in two main shopping hubs: Towne Centre at Somers, where a new DeCicco & Sons supermarket is scheduled to open this winter, and Somers Commons, with a Stop and Shop, HomeGoods and other chains. Dining choices include Le Fontane Ristorante, Burger Barn and, seasonally, King Kone, a soft-serve landmark.
The Schools
Almost all of Somers is served by the Somers Central School District, with some families in the northwestern corner zoned for the Lakeland Central School District, and a few in the northeastern corner zoned for the North Salem Central School District. The 2,953 students in the Somers school district, all Somers residents, attend Primrose Elementary for kindergarten through second grade, Somers Intermediate for grades three through five, Somers Middle for grades six through eight, and Somers High School.
Amanda Bergen, a district spokeswoman, said that of the fourth-graders who took the 2018 state assessments, 53 percent were proficient in English and 66 percent were proficient in math; statewide equivalents were 41 percent and 43 percent.
The high school, a 2018 National Blue Ribbon School, offers the International Baccalaureate Diploma Program. (In 2020, the middle school is slated to introduce the International Baccalaureate Middle Years Program.) Mean SAT scores for the 2018 graduating class were 613 in English and 610 in math; statewide equivalents were 563 and 574.
The Commute
Commuters to nearby cities like White Plains, New York, and Danbury, Connecticut, have easy access to Interstate 684. Commuters to Manhattan, about 45 miles southwest, can drive a few miles east to catch Metro-North Railroad’s Harlem line at Katonah, Goldens Bridge, Purdys or Croton Falls. Rush-hour trains to and from Grand Central Terminal take between 58 and 84 minutes. Monthly fare from Goldens Bridge and Katonah is $369; from Croton Falls and Purdys it is $422.
The History
Early in the 1800s, Hachaliah Bailey, a Somers farmer and drover, purchased an elephant, purportedly to help in his fields. But he quickly realized he had acquired a more lucrative attraction: a fantastical creature people would pay money to see. He called her Old Bet.
Old Bet’s arrival marked the start of the traveling menagerie business, as Bailey and his neighbors toured the region with monkeys, giraffes and other exotic animals. Somers became the epicenter of an emerging national industry, a precursor to circus animal acts. (James Anthony Bailey, who was adopted into the family years later, would launch the Barnum & Bailey Circus, with P.T. Barnum, in 1881.)
In 1816, Old Bet was killed by a disgruntled farmer in Maine. Nine years later, Bailey built the Elephant Hotel in her honor. There, in 1835, a group of menagerie owners formed the Zoological Institute to consolidate their interests. Today, the brick building houses Somers’ town hall; it was named a National Historic Landmark in 2005. Outside, a sculpture of Old Bet perches atop an obelisk, a replica of the monument Bailey erected for her.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.