An article about Albany's Pine Hills neighborhood...
Pine Hills: A slice of small town life in the center of Albany
Three stained-glass windows were the selling point for Ben and Brittany Brunjes when they bought their first home in the Pine Hills neighborhood last year.
As alumni of Albany colleges, the Brunjeses were familiar with the neighborhood. When they went house hunting, they wanted something close to Ben’s work. He manages the database at the University at Albany Foundation.
The character of a three-bedroom, one-and-a-half bath house on Quail Street in Pine Hills sold them.
“I didn’t realize it until we started house hunting, but I kept getting drawn to houses with stained-glass windows,” said Brittany Brunjes, 29, who works in human resources at PepsiCo. in Latham. “We have three in our home, so we love them. It’s probably my favorite part of the house.”
The two met at a party while Brittany was a student at the College of Saint Rose and Ben was studying at UAlbany. Brittany had come to Albany from growing up in Poughkeepsie; Ben moved from Warwick in Orange County. They stayed after graduating because Ben got a job and Brittany started graduate school at Saint Rose, and they got married last year. Albany is close enough that they can easily visit family.
Ben and Brittany Brunjes typify the young people who buy a starter home in the Pine Hills neighborhood of Albany, said their real estate agent, Patrick Bergeron of Albany Realty Group. The neighborhood attracts people of all ages and income levels, from college students, to mid-career professionals, to retirees.
“It’s kind of a dynamic area because of the fact that it’s a cross between the city living as well as the suburban,” Bergeron said. “There’s still a lot of community and neighbors.”
The Pine Hills neighborhood of Albany is between South Manning Boulevard, Washington Park, Washington Avenue and New Scotland Avenue. It has a mix of single-family homes, two-family houses and apartment complexes.
The center of the neighborhood is a stretch of Madison Avenue with restaurants, retail, a movie theater, a library and a police station, landscaped throughout with flowers fitting the season.
The College of Saint Rose is one block down Madison, and UAlbany’s uptown and downtown campuses bookend the neighborhood. During the academic year, the sidewalks are filled with students wearing backpacks.
Doug Schenk, a real estate agent for RE/MAX, frequently sells homes in the neighborhood.
“It’s close to highways, it’s close to the colleges, the SUNY campus, it’s close to restaurants and taverns and parks and bus lines over there,” Schenk said. “They like the fact that they’re in the city of Albany, they’re close to everything, yet they have yards and a little bit of space between themselves and their neighbors.”
Houses typically sell for around $160,000 to $225,000, Schenk said.
The Brunjeses bought their home, which is 1,800 square feet, for $178,000 — a good deal, Ben Brunjes said.
“The house was affordable and the taxes comparatively were affordable,” Ben Brunjes said.
Pine Hills is also cheaper than the homes in Dutchess and Orange counties, where Ben and Brittany are from. Not many of Brittany Brunjes’ friends have purchased houses.
“A couple of my friends downstate, one of them did actually purchase a home, but she purchased it from a family member. It was like the grandmother was ready to downsize,” Brittany Brunjes said. “Otherwise, I know a lot of people who are looking to leave Dutchess County because it’s not affordable.”
Ben Brunjes, 28, agreed.
“My parents are close enough to New York City where houses are more expensive than here for sure so this is a better feel,” he said.
Their three-story house was built in 1912. It has a big basement, a big attic and a sizable backyard where the Brunjeses have planted flowers.
Another couple who has lived in the neighborhood for more than four decades, Virginia Hammer and her husband first moved to Albany from Boston. The first neighborhood they rented in, which Hammer didn’t name, didn’t meet their expectations.
“We thought Albany, because you know, it had the state capital and it had members of universities and colleges, that it would be a really vibrant college town,” Hammer said. “It was a nice neighborhood but it just didn’t seem to have any kind of life in it.”
That’s when they found Pine Hills. Now, they’ve lived in the same home for 42 years.
“It was like, ‘Whoa, this is a really great place because it has the convenience of city living but it’s like living in a small town,’” Hammer said.“You can walk around, you can ride your bike, you can take the bus.”
She worked for the state, and her husband worked for UAlbany and then Russell Sage College. They liked the options for places to live within the neighborhood.
“We really liked the diversity in the housing stock. You could find all different kinds of houses depending on where in Pine Hills,” Hammer said.
When she and her husband first moved into their home, it was a two-family.
“It was great for us because we were able to afford to live there, pay the rent, my husband was going to school,” Hammer said. “Later on, as we had a family, we decided to convert the house into a single family.”
Hammer loves to talk about the neighborhood, enough that she serves as president of the Pine Hills Neighborhood Association.
The variety in homes is a big draw for homebuyers in the area, real estate agent Bergeron said.
“It’s got the old charm,” Bergeron said. “There’s a lot of Victorians and really neat homes with a lot of character.”
Another attraction for Hammer — the diversity that comes with city living. Many ethnic and racial backgrounds are represented. A refugee and immigrant support agency is located on West Lawrence Street.
“We didn’t really like the homogeneity of suburbs and we wanted to live amongst people of all different ages and nationalities,” Hammer said. “Just the kinds of things that people look for in cities.”
Over the years, she’s observed people continue to choose Pine Hills. She says people in their mid-20s come to her neighborhood association meetings, interested in getting involved. Investments in the neighborhood are encouraging, like ongoing renovations at the historic Madison Theater and at Tierra Farm coffee shop, both on Madison Avenue near South Main Street.
Parking, too, is a selling point for Pine Hills. Ben and Brittany Brunjes said one of the perks of their house is that they have a driveway.
That’s an incentive over other neighborhoods in the city of Albany, where off-street parking might be more rare, Bergeron said.
“People oftentimes would have off-street parking,” Bergeron said. “You don’t have that when you’re in Center Square, where in Pine Hills, it’s more or less most homes that have that amenity.”
The Brunjeses plan to stay in their home for the time being, but one thing may eventually cause them to move. If they have children, they may move somewhere with a bigger yard in a suburban school district, instead of sending their kids to Albany city schools.
“The general Capital Region has a lot of good choices for schools, so if we have kids, we might look at other school districts,” Ben Brunjes said.
For now, though, Pine Hills is their home.
“We love taking our dog for walks around the block, scoping out the different stuff and just the character,” Brittany Brunjes said. “I love to walk around and look at the other houses and see some of the features. You don’t see houses like that anymore.”
Source:
https://www.bizjournals.com/albany/n...-new-york.html
There is more in the article, but will leave it there...
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Definitely didn’t mean it as an accusation in a negative sense!
