Steve Thurston (2021)
This is the final tourist season for Capri Village owners, Linda and John Famosi. They are under contract to close on the property's sale in September.
Capri Village in Bolton is under contract to be sold, and if all goes according to plan, the property at 3926 Lake Shore Drive, will be redeveloped with homes and townhomes on the lake side of the road and one cottage on the mountain side of the road. The space will move from 62 rental units down to 15 individually owned units, according to zoning documents, approved at the March 2021 meeting.
The proposed sale is for $5.5 million for nearly 8 acres, and the plans are making their way through the Town of Bolton, having been to the Zoning Board of Appeals with a scheduled stop at the Planning Board later this summer. Closing is set for September.
David Massaroni is listed on zoning documents as the purchaser. He was represented by attorney John Lapper of Glens Falls and Studio A architecture of Saratoga Springs.
For the first time in their 22 year ownership, Linda and John Famosi stayed closed on Memorial Day and had a party, but they are open for the rest of the season, and Linda said it is looking to be strong.
“It’s going to be a very emotional year,” she said in an interview today.
She and John said they are ready to retire and spend more time with their grown children and grandchildren.
“We just got to the point where we really started thinking about retirement,” John said.
However, he also said the pressure is on “Community Cottages” such as Capri Village, which they pronounce "CaPREE", not "CAPri." It’s an economic force too strong to simply be ignored, he said.
The buildings need work, and the type of vacationer has changed.
Although they have many returning customers, Linda said, vacationers now want to leave home but have all the comforts of home while away. The cottage style building is not very conducive to that, and retrofitting may be difficult. Having been built before zoning laws would have prevented some of their creation, fixing them properly could cause legal headaches. (One or two buildings are actually over the neighbor’s property lines, while others are built right up to the line, the zoning documents say. Neither situation would be allowed under current law.)
“One way or another, the property needed to go to the next level,” John said, but they were not ready to make that commitment themselves.
The question in the zoning meeting was one that pitted serious upgrades to a property versus land that is supposed to have only 5.75 units. The zoning board ultimately approved 15 units since it is significantly lower than the current number, and the new units will be set back properly and have new wastewater and stormwater systems in place.
The Famosis had the property up for sale in 2019, and let that lapse, but their agent came back in March of 2020 as COVID began to shut down everything. The agent and the Famosis saw the pandemic in much the same way as they saw the aftermath of 9/11: people from downstate would be looking to move to the country, to invest up here. It was time to try again.
“At one point, we had four offers,” Linda said.
John said they planned to do nothing for a while and get used to the idea that their days are their own. Linda said it will be a huge adjustment to go from "giving your summers away" to guests, to having summers all to themselves.
“It’s a lifestyle,” John said. His family has run vacation businesses in the area since the 1963. “It’s not just walking away from a business.”