GUILDERLAND — Rose Hill, a stately old Federal-style home on Western Avenue dating from 1842, was recently rezoned at the current owners’ request, to help make it easier for them to sell. The house had been zoned R15, or single-family residential with a minimum lot area of 15,000 square feet, and is now BNRP, or business non-retail professional.

“We feel that BNRP would be a good and safe way for it to pass on to the next generation,” said Lynne Golonka at the planning board meeting on Dec. 14. Golonka has owned the property at 2259 Western Ave., with her husband, James, for 36 years.

“We just want to open up the possibility of a buyer,” she said.

The new zoning designation is, according to the town code, “intended to act as a transition area between residential and commercial districts.” Permitted uses include a family apartment, a family day-care home, and a group family day-care home. Uses requiring a special-use permit would include as an office or a medical office, an animal hospital, a funeral home, a not-for-profit organization, a religious institution, and an independent-living residential-care facility.

For decades in the mid-20th-Century, Rose Hill served as a doctor’s office and home.

Regardless of what new usage were proposed for the site, Supervisor Peter Barber told The Enterprise, “Any impact would be discussed and mitigated at the planning and zoning boards.”

She and her husband “are getting old,” said Lynne Golonka at a town board meeting on Dec. 20, and are finding it harder to care for the large property.

The rezoning request is in line with the town’s comprehensive plan, said Barber at the meeting. The properties on both sides are BNRP, he said.

On the property’s east border, Vollbrecht Estate Jewelry at 2213 Western Ave. is zoned BNRP, as is A Gracious Event on the west, at 2261. Just beyond A Gracious Event, and close to it, is a single-family home located at 2267 Western Ave.

Rose Hill is on both the national and the New York State registers of historic places, and was when the Golonkas bought the home 36 years ago, Mrs. Golonka told The Enterprise. The couple raised their six children there and ran a bed-and-breakfast inn and venue for parties and weddings on the site for about five years but found that “you really have to hustle,” said Lynne Golonka.

More than 10 years ago, the Golonkas put the house on the market for $1.2 million. That was an unrealistic price, says Lynne Golonka now, but they didn’t really want to sell it at that time anyway. They took it off the market for a time. About five years ago, it was back for sale, with a price tag of about $600,000. It is now listed at $439,000, which Lynne Golonka says the couple thinks is “where we should be.”

The six-bedroom house has 3,015 square feet and sits on 6.68 acres. It was featured in The Enterprise’s April 24, 2014 Home & Garden section online at altamontenterprise.com.

According to Albany County’s assessment rolls, the 6.68 acres of land are assessed at $461,700, while the house is assessed at just $92,300.

At the planning board meeting, Lynne Golonka quipped that the couple has had three different real-estate agents over the past five years, and that she had hoped that maybe someone would feel sorry for them.

Lynne Golonka has learned, from trying to sell the home that she and her husband have loved for many years, that no one wants to live on busy Western Avenue and that only a small number of people want to own a historical home, she said at the planning board meeting.  

The property would work well, she believes, as an architectural or law or other professional office, she said.

Is traffic a concern, depending upon who buys the property, The Enterprise asked Planning Board Chairman Stephen Feeney. He said that traffic is always a concern and that that is one issue that would have to be evaluated.

He was also asked if the property can potentially be torn down.

“You hope they [new owners] wouldn’t,” he said. “But if it’s private property, it can be torn down. There’s not a lot of protection for properties like that.”