Sharon Springs’ 1880s Pavilion Cottages will be restored and renovated as single-family homes in a project detailed to the Joint Planning Board Wednesday.
Nick Drummond, who lives in Ames and owned Botanie Floral + Gift on Main Street with his husband, Patrick Bakker for a couple of years, said he and a business partner have bought the five, attached Pavilion Cottages from Michelle Curran with plans to restore them.
Mr. Drummond brought the very preliminary project to the JPB because of questions over the driveway and access.
The driveway to the cottages is a shared easement with Ms. Curran, who owns the Stone House there, he said.
“It’s the original driveway to the old [Pavilion] hotel,” he said, “and we’d really like to keep it because of the fabulous old trees. It’s a nice approach to the property.”
But they’d also like a secondary entrance if possible, Mr. Drummond said, asking if they’d be allowed to also access the property from Adler Avenue, now essentially an overgrown, dead end, right of way off Route 10.
JPB chair Ray Parsons said that would be up to DOT, which could have concerns because of where it sits on the hill.
Single-family homes are an allowed use at the Pavilion Cottages site, Mr. Parsons said, but because they’ve been vacant so long, the project will require a special use permit.
It will also need to go to the County Planning Commission.
According to the Sharon Historical Society’s “A Touch of Nostalgia,” the Pavilion Hotel and Cottages “stood in the center of a fifty-acre plot and commanded a view extending to the hills around Lake George, eighty miles distant in a direct line.
“During the hey-day of the late-1800s, the Pavilion Hotel expanded, nearly doubling the size of its front wing and adding three buildings of private suites, complete with marble fireplaces.
“For 103 years [it] was the most famous landmark of Sharon Springs,” with accommodations for 500 guests.
The Pavilion Hotel was demolished in 1941.
The real estate listing for the cottages calls them the “sole vestige of the Pavilion Hotel, with five, 2,000 square-foot units, original marble fireplaces upstairs and down, 10 foot ceilings and original hardwood floors.”