SamPratt.com

Every third person I ran into this weekend in Hudson breathlessly told me the “hush-hush” rumor that Ian Schrager had bought the Warren Inn here. Striking me as dubious, the rumor (after some casual investigation) appears to be wholly untrue.

Instead, an existing Warren Street property owner who has explored hotel ideas here before is said to be in negotiations with the Inn’s owner.

But the 700 block does seem to be a hotbed of real estate activity lately... Just up the street, a buyer is said to be discussing purchase of the Ackerman's building, possibly for conversion to loftlike condos. Meanwhile, renovation of the former Keystone building from an antiques store to a farm-to-table restaurant appears (from what one can see by pressing noses against the glass) to be progressing rapidly.

By the way: It may be useful for readers to know that real estate transactions are entirely public information. Just go to the Columbia County Real Property Department, which is located on the second floor in the back of the D.M.V. building on the corner of 6th and Warren. The County maintains books of monthly transactions which anyone can inspect. They also post online, but only once a year, a summary of all sales within the County. The current file (click here) includes sales from July 2010 through June 2011. 

NOTE: The well-known Warren Inn sign, pictured above (thanks to Lisa Durfee’s Tainted Lady Lounge site) is one at which I raised an eyebrow way back in 1997, in my weekly column for The New York Post. I’ve heard it claimed that for a while, these official-looking historical markers were available to most anyone who paid the State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation (a/k/a OPRHP) a modest fee to defray the cost of production—back then about $100. In theory these were supposed to be carefully vetted by historians, but many typos, inaccuracies and frivolities seem to have slipped through...