Heard On the River

Two notable properties within the Phillips Mill Historic District in Solebury, each one rich in River Towns history, have changed hands, but their future uses remain uncertain.

 

Both properties were sold by Center Bridge resident Mark Worth to New Jersey restaurateurs Driola and Agron Kaloshi. The Colt House and the former Inn are neighboring buildings near the dramatic ninety-degree turn on River Road, about two miles north of New Hope and across the road from the eighteenth-century mill for which the district is named.

 

The combined price for the properties, $2,020,000, was $1.48 million under the original asking price. The sale was announced on Instagram by Maria Imle of RE/MAX Centre Realtors of Jamison: “Congratulations to our buyers, Driola & Agron Kaloshi, on the purchase of this incredible commercial property.” Kim Condo, a member of Imle’s team at RE/MAX, said the Inn sold for $920,000 and the Colt House for $1.1 million.

 

The Kaloshis are owners of La Pergola, an Italian restaurant in Millburn, New Jersey. At press time, they said they were not ready to disclose their future plans for the properties.

The New Hope Colony Foundation for the Arts is searching for a new president for its board of trustees following the resignation of Lawrence Booth. A New Hope resident, Booth had led the nonprofit, which is focused on re-establishing the Phillips’ Mill enclave as an artist colony, since 2023. His resignation took effect February 1.

 

“When I was asked to be a part of the NHCFA, it was evident that there was a need for assistance and I felt the mission was admirable,” Booth wrote in a resignation letter. “Therefore, I put my career ambitions on hold in order to help.” Booth teaches students who are challenged by behavioral or psychiatric disorders.

 

“I still strongly believe in the idea of keeping the art colony intact and creating an artist residency,” Booth wrote. “However, the NHCFA will require a great deal of assistance.”

 

Eleanor Miller, the group’s founding president and a resident of the Phillips Mill Historic District, has stepped back in to replace Booth. Miller says she is not looking to remain president for long. “We’re really looking for a good executive director,” she says. “We will be interviewing.”

 

Mira Nakashima Honored Mira Nakashima was recently awarded the prestigious Isamu Noguchi Award, named for the famed twentieth-century sculptor and designer. “This is the first award I can remember receiving from the Asian community,” says Nakashima, the furniture designer and architect and the president of George Nakashima Woodworkers, in Solebury. “It also has a connection with my father, who worked with Noguchi at the Knoll Studios in the 1940s.”

 

Amy Hau, director of the Isamu Noguchi Museum, in Long Island City, New York, said honoring Nakashima with the Noguchi Award carried deep meaning. “Her devotion to craftsmanship, harmony with nature, and the preservation of her family’s legacy mirrors so many of the values Noguchi held dear,” Hau says. “She reminds us how art can carry ideas across generations.”

“And after Frenchtown had gone to press, additional material turned up like travelers who’ve missed their train.” So writes Frenchtown’s Rick Epstein in the introduction to More Frenchtown, a sequel to his first volume, published in 2023. Ever the newspaperman (he spent twenty years with the Hunterdon County Democrat), Epstein loves to gather facts and spin a tale. “The first book tried to create a history,” he says. “This book is more, ‘This is interesting.’”

 

More Frenchtown is available at Frenchtown Bookshop and Frenchtown Home & Hardware.

The Lambertville lifestyle boutique Lambert + Hope has moved across Coryell Street into the former Finkles Hardware store. “We have exploded the store from what we were across the street,” says Chris Herncane, of Lambertville, who owns the shop with Suren Gopalakrishnan, a resident of Newtown Square, Pennsylvania.

 

With years of experience at wholesale brands such as Anthropologie and Soho House, the team curates a modern mercantile of housewares, tabletop, clothing, gifts, and their own dishware, textile, lighting, and furniture designs.

Renée Olson, whose keen sense of humor infused every square inch of Sublime, her quirky Frenchtown gift shop, bid farewell to her loyal following in February. When she opened her doors in 2020, just as the pandemic had shut down much of the country, she figured on a five-year run. “It’s been six now,” she says. “I think it’s time to try something else.” The self-described “recovering librarian and magazine editor” had a vintage concept in mind that quickly evolved into “an oddball, laugh-out-loud approach to buying,” she explains, claiming a penchant for top-shelf puns, sarcasm, and the just plain unusual. To wit: As far as we can discern, Sublime is the only shop in River Towns history to display a pair of Jack Kerouac’s pants in its front window.

 

ICON Exits the Stage ICON, the New Hope–based arts and entertainment monthly, published its final issue in December, ending a thirty-four-year run. Distributed from Philadelphia to the Lehigh Valley, the magazine was known for covering the gamut of fine and performing arts in the region as well as its cover-story interviews with Oprah Winfrey, Meryl Streep, and Bradley Cooper. Each issue of ICON also contained a column by Solebury artist Robert Beck. “It was a very tough decision,” says Trina McKenna, the magazine’s publisher and founder. “It’s been my life for thirty-four years. I’m very proud of ICON, but now it’s time to move on."

By Landmark continues to make its mark on the River Towns dining scene. In January the New Jersey–based hospitality and development company opened Maddy Rose, a seafood and steak restaurant, in the building that formerly housed The Landing, a longtime riverfront favorite on North Main Street in New Hope. The new venture is named for the daughter of Frank and Jeanne Cretella, the founders and principals of By Landmark. Maddy Cretella is the company’s director of marketing and engagement.

 

Besides Maddy Rose, By Landmark owns the former Dubliner on the Delaware, the Logan Inn, the Mansion Inn, Anzu Social, and Hotel du Village, all in New Hope, and the Cascade Lodge in Kintnersville. The company acquired the former Dubliner for $1.8 million in September. No plans have been revealed for that site.

Stockton Inn owner Steve Grabowski and four of his golf buddies recently opened the Birds Nest Bar and Grille in Solebury, a family-friendly sports bar that, Grabowski says, “just happens to have three state-of-the-art Trackman golf simulators.”

 

Birds Nest sports five big-screen TVs for viewing from every angle, including Saturday morning English football (with a full English breakfast!). For golfers, tee-side dining is available while playing more than 400 courses offered on the simulators. At The Nest, lessons, leagues, tee-time reservations, and rental clubs make golfing a year-round breeze.

Cousins Anthony Adragna, former owner of Morrisville’s Cafe Antonio Bistro and Bar, and Frank Picone have reimagined the building that previously housed the New Hope Star Diner on Route 202 as an Italian restaurant they’ve named Cugini’s (Italian for—what else?—cousins). What’s on the menu? “Everything from a hamburger or New York strip and crab cake,” Adragna says, “to the full Italian-American menu, including pizza.”

 

Born in Sicily, Adragna speaks Italian food like the native he is (though he’s lived in Newtown for thirty-three years). Bread and pasta are made in-house from wheat imported from Italy. A March opening is targeted.

Chef Brian Held, a longtime fixture on the River Towns dining scene, has closed his latest Lambertville venture, Sisao.

 

Held helmed a handful of restaurants in Lambertville and Stockton over the past fifteen years, including Brian’s at the Grill in the canalside building that formerly housed Hamilton’s Grill Room (and now houses Revolution Woodfire Grille). Held’s wife and business partner, Judith Francois, says the chef is considering his next move. “He’s thinking maybe catering, private chef, cooking classes, food truck,” she says. “Something with no overhead.”

River Town gourmands were saddened by the December closing of the James Beard Award–nominated Canal House Station in Milford, New Jersey. The restaurant was the first for acclaimed chefs and authors of the Canal House Cooking series Christopher Hirsheimer and Melissa Hamilton, both former Saveur magazine editors. In a social media post, the business partners of twenty-three years said they planned to “return to our Canal House Cooking writing and publishing projects.” We look forward to their next chapter.