Neighbors buy Riverview Farm parcels
By Brian Liberatore

 
The county-owned Riverview Farm complex in Loring Crossing was sold at auction Saturday.  The five parcels
that made up the former county poor farm netted the county about $113,000.  Above, Mel Manasse, of
Mel Manasse & Son Auctioneers, takes bids for one of the plots.

            LORING CROSSING – After nearly 170 years in the hands of Cortland County, the Riverview farm sold at auction Saturday in five parcels for a total of $113,000.
            Neighbors Charles and Cheri Sheridan and James and Patricia Clark each bought two combined parcels, for $39,000 and $25,000, respectively.  A fifth piece – an 86-acre wooded lot – went to Gutchess Timberlands Inc., a local logging company, for $49,000.  A handful of bids were offered for each parcel.
            The property was divided into five parcels for the auction.  After two rounds of bidding on the individual parcels, bidding commenced on combinations of the parcels.  All 119 acres were offered for a single bid, but no bids were received.
            “I’d hopes we’d get a little more,” said Legislator David Wern, R-Homer. “At least it goes on the tax rolls.”
            The entire property was assessed at $188,400.
            “If I’d won the lottery, I’d have bought it myself,” Wern said.
            Wern joined a group of about 40 prospective buyers and local residents in the main room of the dilapidated 9,000-square-foot Riverview farmhouse on Loring Crossing, about four miles northeast of Cortland.
            Sheridan owns and operates Sheridan’s Jewelry on Main Street.  He bought the farmhouse together with a complex of other buildings on two parcels totaling 24.5 acres.  Sheridan said he wanted to leave the property as agricultural.  On the future of the buildings, Sheridan said, “My grandchildren will make that decision.”
            Cheri Sheridan said she and her husband purchased the land in order to keep it “green.”  The Sheridans own a studio adjacent to the property they purchased at the auction and live on nearby Parks Road.
            Chuck Sheridan said he would continue to rent the two-story former asylum building to Good Hope, which uses a third of the 8,000-square-foot building as a transitional housing for troubled teens.  The building is adjacent to the farmhouse.
            “I’m pleased that a neighbor purchased the property,” said John A. Gaines IV, executive director of Goodhope. “I think that went as well as could be expected by anybody.”
            James Clark, who lives across East River Road from the Sheridans’ property, said he would also leave the 6.3 acres of property he bid on as agricultural.
            Clark is a former president of SUNY Cortland.
            Clark and Mike Ondrako, who lives around the corner on Ames Road, agreed to split the cost of the two parcels, paying$12,500 a piece.  Clark took the 3 acres adjacent to his home and Ondrako took the 3.4 acres closer to his home.
            “What pleased me is that the neighbors bought four of the five parcels and then the fifth parcel went to Gutchess,” Clark said.  “They (Gutchess) take care of the land very well.”
            Gutchess, 37, refused to comment or identify himself.  Gutchess Lumber owns the land adjacent to the property on the east.
            Gutchess Lumber paid $86,000 to the county last summer to cut lumber from 35 of the 86 acres purchased Saturday.
            Tim Sandstrom, who teaches environmental science at Onondaga-Cortland-Madison BOCES, operates a maple sugar bush on the property purchased by Gutchess.  Sandstrom taps trees every year with his class for the Central New York Maple Festival.
            Sandstrom said he expected Gutchess to buy the property. “I would have loved for the county to keep it open for green space,” Sandstrom said.  But he said he believed Gutchess would be good stewards of the property.
            “I’m hoping that the Maple Festival will make a request to Gutchess for us to be able to tap the trees so that my students can learn to tap and we can provide several gallons to the festival.”
            Mel Manasse of Mel Manasse & Son Auctioneers, hired by the county to sell the Riverview property, had  set a kerosene heater and rows of chairs in the room.
            The building which was put on the National Register of Historic Places in the 1980’s, had fallen into severe disrepair of what the auctioneer said was lead paint were pealing away form the tin walls in the main room.  The carpet was threadbare and torn.  The rest of the building, which will soon belong to the Sheridans, was a similar condition.
            In the basement, several brick support columns has fallen apart.
            However, the stone foundation appeared solid and state inspectors suggested the building was still structurally sound.
            Before the auction, Harley Gamel, Dan Lansdowne and John Lansdowne walked through the old almshouse remembering how it used to be. 
            “Boy, if you had the money, this place would be fun to fix up,” said Gamel, a retired city firefighter, who lives on East River Road.
            John Lansdowne of Truxton remembered stopping at the farm during the Great Depression to see family.  In the wintertime, Lansdowne said the only way to get there was on a horse-drawn sleigh.
            “This was probably the most efficiently run operation we’ve ever seen on our life,” Lansdowne said. “This place was beautiful back then.”
            The county purchased the farm in 1836 to comply with state legislation that required every county to establish an almshouse. The farm, named Riverview in the 1970’s, was believed to be the ideal way to “treat” the poor.  It gave them a home and a farming lifestyle to promote hard work and self-sufficiency.
            Lansdowne remembered how all the able-bodied men and women would do the farm chores, and keep the household running.  Although only men were sent to Riverview in the early years, women and children later lived there.  Some people lived their entire lives in the almshouse. .  They were buried in a cemetery on a 4.3-acre plot of land, which will remain in the county’s possession.
            “It was fair,” auctioneer Manasse said at the end of the auction.  “There were plenty of bidders.  It’s going to fold out pretty nice for the county.”

Above is part of the Riverview property on Loring Crossing.

[Cortland Standard, Local News – Monday, November 17, 2003]