By Jill Nagy
An old house in Glens Falls, “too pretty to just sit there,” will soon get a new lease on life with four apartments and a restaurant, said John Carr, owner of the Adirondack Brewery in Lake George and one of the three partners developing the project.
The McEchron House, at 68 Ridge St., was built in the 1880s as a private residence but since the 1930s, has housed city offices or stood vacant.
“It’s a beautiful building on a nice lot and it’s kind of a shame to see it sit empty,” said Carr. The other partners in the venture are accountant Mike Laney and Ron Newell, who is also the Glens Falls city attorney.
Carr envisions as a place where “you can get a hamburger on Tuesday night and celebrate your 50th wedding anniversary on Saturday night.” It is expected to seat 100 to 125 people. The city Planning Board has approved the renovation plans and the developers have said they will the historic nature of the building will be preserved.
“It’s just a demolition site right now,” Carr said, with contractors ripping out old plaster and, generally, gutting the building–but with the intention of saving as much of the existing woodwork and panelling as possible.
As for the outside of the building, “We hope it will look the same” when the work is done as it has since it was built.
The Adirondack Brewery will remain a separate business. Carr said he has no interest, at the moment, in operating a second establishment. “We are busy enough up there,” he said, referring to the brewery.
A variety of contractors will do the work on the building with Shale Miller of Warrensburg responsible for much of the design work.
They will try to strike a balance between preserving as much of the building’s historical integrity as possible and including environmentally-friendly features like good insulation and energy-efficient furnaces, Carr said.
But there are “no plans for massive solar arrays or anything like that,” he noted. The structure was built in 1891 and is a two-and-a half story, asymmetrical stone-and-frame residence.
It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1984.