HEARD ON THE RIVER

An equestrian superstar, Fashion Farms in Buckingham Township, is being readied for sale for $8.25 million. The fifty-seven-acre farm was headquarters of the Fashion Farms Standardbred breeding operation since 1984, producing harness racing champions such as Tagliabue and Broadway Hall.

Its founders, Jules and Arlene Siegel, are enshrined in the Harness Racing Hall of Fame. Arlene Siegel died in 2010, and Jules, at 98, retired last year, selling his stable of legacy racehorses, yearlings, and breeding stock last November. Now he will sell the farm that produced them.

“The whole property is designed around horses,” says listing agent Angie Haug of Kurfiss Sotheby’s International Realty. The property includes multiple horse barns, fenced paddocks, pastures, a stallion barn, and a plethora of additional buildings and agriculture infrastructure, all move-in ready. “The community has driven by this beautiful property for years,” Haug says, “often unaware of the rich legacy of Fashion Farms.”

At the center of the property sits a stone farmhouse, built in 1940 and expanded over time. Its 6,700 square feet include six bedrooms, five bathrooms, living and entertaining areas, a chef’s kitchen, and a “wellness suite” with gym, sauna, and steam room. “It’s a beautiful setting,” Haug says, “surrounded by conserved land with long-distance views.”

Unencumbered by conservation easements, the property has potential as a family compound. “Properties that allow multi-generational living are in high demand,” Haug says. “And this property fits the bill.”

New Hope Lodge, a local landmark on West Bridge Street in Solebury and one of the last New Hope LGBTQ gathering spots, is under new ownership. According to the Philadelphia Business Journal, “The group behind Fishtown’s Michelin-recognized Hotel Anna & Bel have partnered to buy the 28-room New Hope Lodge.” The Journal reports the group, which includes Foyer Hospitality, paid more than $3.8 million for the property.

Andrew Benioff, founder and managing partner of Llenrock Realty Partners, wrote on LinkedIn in March: “In partnership with the team at Foyer Hospitality, I am very excited to announce the acquisition of the New Hope Lodge in New Hope, PA.” The motel, Benioff wrote, “will be transformed into something really special!”

Laura Sachs, owner of The Cub Room, the popular LGBTQ hangout at New Hope Lodge, says she’s spoken to the owners and has a five-year lease. “They’re very nice people,” she says. “They’re making it a boutique hotel. They’re renovating all the rooms. It’s going to be quite the oasis from what it sounds like.”

Hopewell, which mourned the loss of its hometown theater in 2024, will soon have two entertainment venues.

Already open is the new Hopewell Valley Stage, a Hopewell Valley Arts Council project that took up residence in the former Hopewell Theater space on Greenwood Avenue in February. Under the leadership of Executive Director Carol Lipson, programming began in April and will include concerts, theater productions, film screenings, art workshops, and community talks. “I’ve been trying to do this for years,” says an exhilarated Lipson.

A Betty Wold Johnson Foundation grant and a revised theater liquor license bill, signed by former New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy last August, helped move the project forward. Watch for events Saturdays and Sundays through the month of June.

Around the corner, in the former Brothers Moon Restaurant on West Broad Street, plans are under way for the resurrection of Hopewell Theater. The new venue will be “a casually elegant, intimate club setting” says co-founder Sara Scully, who, with partner Mitchel Skolnick, is seeking a liquor license and a change-in-use variance from restaurant to dine-in theater, after which renovations will begin. “We are aiming for a late ’26, early ’27 opening,” Scully says.

A new chapter begins at Bucks County Playhouse in June with the arrival of BT McNicholl, the new producing artistic director at the theater in New Hope.

McNicholl brings directing, producing, writing, and administrative experience from Broadway, regional, and international productions, including twelve Broadway shows, three Tony Award winners, and collaborations with the likes of Mike Nichols, James Lapine, Jerry Zaks, and Stephen Sondheim.

Wrapping a ten-year run as producing artistic director at La Mirada Theatre in Los Angeles County, McNicholl says he looks forward to returning to his roots in the East. (He grew up in Connecticut.) “Robyn, Josh, and Alex, with their combined talents, created something very special in the rebirth of this storied playhouse,” McNicholl says, referring to the departure of Robyn Goodman, Josh Fiedler, and Alex Fraser, who led the Playhouse for thirteen years. “We won’t be making a left turn into Ibsen and Strindberg. I plan to continue what they began.”

The River Towns’ newest farmers market launched in Lambertville in May. According to its website, the Lambertville Farmers Market is meant to “build community, increase access to locally sourced food, and support local farmers and small businesses.”

The market will be open from 9 a.m. to noon on Sundays through October 25 in the parking lot of the Lambertville Free Public Library. Vendors from the River Towns and beyond will offer bread, produce, dairy, meats, jams, honey, flowers, pickles, coffee, mushrooms, and more. Over the past year, Mayor Andrew Nowick and a group of Lambertville residents collaborated to conceive and organize the market. A GoFundMe campaign raised over $10,000, more than double the goal, to fund the market’s opening.

“They took care of us. Let’s take care of them.” According to New Hope resident Matthew Egner, that was the feeling shared by a group of Triumph Brewery regulars when they learned the popular New Hope restaurant had abruptly shut its doors in March. Concern for the staff, many of whom the group knew and appreciated, led to the idea of a GoFundMe campaign. “We thought, ‘Let’s give everyone a final tip,’” says Egner, who set up the fund. More than fifty donors contributed over $5,000, providing about $170 to more than thirty Triumph employees. A final tip—and a good deed done.

Bob Lonsdale has been teaching yoga and Pilates for more than two decades, most recently in his own studio, Hometown Yoga in Lambertville. With a move to an expanded, light-bathed space on North Union Street, Lonsdale has added Lagree training to his roster of yoga, Pilates, and barre classes.

Lagree is practiced on a Pilates-like machine called a Megaformer. Hometown Yoga has eight Megaformers and six Level 1 Certified Lagree trainers, including Lonsdale. “Lagree is based on strength training and is inspired by resistance-based equipment,” Lonsdale says. very, very different” from Pilates.

Don’t let the stickers, greeting cards, and notepads fool you. Bucks Bespokery, the new stationery and gift shop in Peddler’s Village, is a pen lover’s paradise. “This is a dream come true,” says owner Heatherjo Goroschko of Furlong.

A pen collector herself, Goroschko worked at Gillette when it owned the pen makers Parker, Paper Mate, and Waterman.

She loves helping customers find just the right nib, flow, and ink from her inventory of Pelikan, Waterman, Sailor, Kolo, Graf von Faber-Castell and other pen makers. Her shop offers more than 500 ink selections. The Peddler’s Village location is her second Bucks Bespokery shop; she still maintains her first in Easton’s Belleville Market. “You’d have to travel to New York City, Baltimore, D.C. to find the breadth of brands and price points I carry,” she says.

“And I have customers who will travel hours.”

“I love the circular fashion concept,” says Monika Suli, co-owner with Lisa Pappas of MonaLisa Designer Consignment in Lambertville, which opened in December. Located in A Touch of the Past antiques, MonaLisa specializes in high-end, luxury, and couture treasures from the likes of Gucci, Chanel, Christian Dior, Valentino, Louis Vuitton, St. John, Ferragamo, and Prada. “We curate for sustainability,” Suli says. “Pre-loved becomes re-loved.”

With many coveted vintage items, including clothing, handbags, shoes, and jewelry, their inventory represents the crème de la crème of fashion, gently worn, some with the tags still on, all in pristine condition. “These pieces have a history,” Suli says. “Where has this suit been? Paris? Italy? Why not give it another life or two.”

The Inn at Barley Sheaf Farm is in the midst of a rebranding effort highlighting its history as the onetime home of the esteemed Broadway playwright and satirist George S. Kaufman.

Mark and Deena Frank, who owned the celebrated Holicong inn for more than a decade, quietly sold the business in 2024 to Gwen Allen and Lo Soukhavong, partners in hospitality businesses in Florida and Georgia. Longtime colleagues Teresa and Ahmad Elsayed today run the inn’s daily operations. “The way it came together,” Allen says, “was like destiny.”

The new owners’ first order of business was to “build up” the restaurant, Allen says, starting with a name change to Kaufman’s at the Inn. George Kaufman bought the farm in 1936 and lived there with his wife, Beatrice, for seventeen years. The Kaufmans were known to entertain guests at Barley Sheaf, and Broadway colleagues Moss Hart and Oscar Hammerstein, who lived nearby, were regular visitors.

Allen and company then purchased a liquor license and hired a new executive chef, Greg Vassos, who’s worked at such celebrated restaurants as French Laundry, in California’s Napa Valley, and El Bulli, in Spain. “His food is a fusion of Japanese, American, and French cuisine,” Allen says. “He’s really a very rare talent.”

Lambertville artist Gwenn Seemel was invited by Mural Arts Philadelphia, one of three sponsoring organizations, to participate in the “52 Weeks of Firsts” event celebrating Philadelphia’s many historic firsts. Twenty-five artists received four-feet-tall sculptures of the number 1 along with “firsts” assignments to be depicted as public works of art. Seemel created three, commemorating the First Continental Congress, the Philadelphia Zoo, and John Fitch’s steamboat, including “a nod to our little slice of idyll,” says Seemel, referring to a view of the Delaware from the New Hope–Lambertville Bridge.

Linda Salley, the president and executive director of the African American Museum of Bucks County, died in May, just one month before the opening of the museum she had worked so hard to establish over the last twelve years of her life.

A retired educator, Salley was considered the museum’s north star. Since the museum’s founding in 2014, she devoted herself to transforming the dilapidated Boone Farm property in Langhorne, Pennsylvania, into a museum committed to preserving and presenting Bucks County’s African American history.

“These are very difficult shoes to fill,” says Diane M. Ellis-Marseglia, chair of the Bucks County Commissioners. “I know that this is Linda’s legacy, and so we all have a responsibility to do her proud.”