LeVie Barn gets a reprieve from developer

Thursday, February 6, 2014 - 15:43

Photo by Dietrich Gehring

The LeVie Barn, which many New Scotland residents wish to see preserved may get a chance at a new home. Country Club Estates is willing to delay construction on Lot 18--where the barn currently stands--to allow research to be done on if, and how, the barn can be deconstructed and moved to a new location.

NEW SCOTLAND — The developer that plans to build houses on land where a huge late 19th-Century barn stands has given the barn a reprieve.

Daniel Hershberg, representing Country Club Partners, LLC at Tuesday’s planning board meeting, said the company will need the barn for at least the next 12 months as a maintenance building for the golf course.

“There’s no rush to demolish that barn,” Hershberg said.

Many town residents are passionate about preserving what they call the LeVie barn as it was recently owned by the LeVie family, which ran a popular farm stand next to it on Route 85A.

New Scotland Town Board member Daniel Mackay has been heading the movement to save the LeVie barn, built in 1898. Mackay, some other board members, and a few town residents got to visit the site in December.

Hershberg stated that County Club is willing to arrange for site access to the barn so Mackay can start gathering information to see how plausible it is to move the structure.

Another visit would allow Mackay to bring people who could help estimate the time and cost for deconstructing the barn to allow it to be moved to a different location.

“The expertise I’m looking to get on site is on post-and-beam construction and moving those kinds of structures,” Mackay told The Enterprise yesterday.

He also hopes to get the barn listed on the National Register of Historic Places to help secure possible federal funding for the project.

The timeline is long, and Mackay said he’d like to end 2014 with a grant in hand.

Planning board member Thomas Hart described the project as “well worth the effort.”

“There’s a certain window here to try to get something done,” Mackay said at Tuesday’s meeting.

Hershberg said Country Club Estates is willing to give Mackay that window by delaying construction on the area near Lot 18, where the barn stands, while proceeding with all other areas of the subdivision. The planning board would make its approval of development plans contingent on leaving Lot 18 alone until absolutely necessary.

Overall, Country Club Estates plans to build a dozen upscale homes near the golf course.

“I was very pleased with not only what the planning board was willing to support,” said Mackay yesterday, “but what Hershberg and Country Club were proposing also.”

“We have been given both a challenge,” he said, “and an opportunity.”

 

 

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