Comparing Suburbs: Montclair in New Jersey vs. Dobbs Ferry in New York

Comparing Suburbs: Montclair in New Jersey vs. Dobbs Ferry in New York

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Sometimes they walk with their close friends, the family across the street, with whom they started a progressive potluck dinner, where neighbors take turns holding monthly get-togethers of as many as 25 people to raise money for liberal causes. “I couldn’t think of a better group of people to fall in with up here,” Mr. Hershberg said.

Even with all the Rivertowns’ charms, however, some prospective buyers have questioned their vibrancy.

Alison Bernstein, founder of Suburban Jungle Realty, a company that helps those leaving New York find the right suburb, said there is a name brand associated with the Rivertowns, and nearly every couple leaving the city takes a look there. But some are surprised by how tiny the villages are, and how quiet their streets. They see a handful of restaurants in Irvington or Dobbs Ferry, spy a few mom-and-pop shops and wonder aloud if the place is too simple for their urbane tastes. “They’ll look at us and say, ‘This is it?’” Ms. Bernstein said.

That isn’t a problem in Montclair, where there are big-name retailers like Anthropologie, Lululemon, the Gap and Whole Foods. There is also an indie movie theater, as well as numerous coffeehouses and more than one well-stocked independent bookstore. And makeup guru and local resident Bobbi Brown is opening a 32-room boutique hotel, The George Inn, there this month.

Leslie Kunkin, an agent with West of Hudson Realty Group in upper Montclair who has lived in the area since 2000, said that clients choosing between the Rivertowns and Montclair tend to go with Montclair if they are not ready to let go of a city lifestyle. “Wherever you are in Montclair, there are always people walking,” Ms. Kunkin said.

Paul Molakides owns Boro6, a restaurant and wine bar on the main drag in Hastings-on-Hudson. While small town life isn’t for everyone, he loves that he runs into many of his patrons everywhere from the grocery store to the town pool.

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Tony Cenicola/The New York Times

Paul Molakides, who opened Boro6, a wine bar and restaurant in Hastings-in-Hudson, a year ago, admits that small-town life isn’t for everyone, but he hardly misses having a retail chain store nearby. Mr. Molakides, a protégé of Danny Meyer who trained at Eleven Madison Park, said he can’t go to the grocery store without bumping into a patron, a neighbor or a friend.

But for Mr. Molakides and his wife, Jennifer, there is no better place — for them, their two children or their restaurant. From the large picture windows across from the village’s hardware store, he can wave to friends strolling by on Warburton Avenue. “We all came up here with the same mentality: You can take us out of the city, but you can’t take the city out of us,” he said.

It is these new residents — with their vision and fresh energy, say local residents — that is beginning to change the look and feel of the Rivertowns. Dobbs Ferry is getting its first lifestyle boutique, At Land, where kombucha will be on tap alongside $300 wool sweaters. And while there is no movie theater in any of the villages, a new development in Dobbs Ferry along the Saw Mill Parkway, called Rivertowns Square, is catering to an upscale clientele with an iPic cinema, where “farm to glass” cocktails are served, and an 18,000-square-foot Brooklyn Market that is set to open this year.

Small-town life has its perks, residents say. Sonya Terjanian, an advertising copywriter and novelist who is working to designate a historic district in Dobbs Ferry, and her husband, Pierre, a curator of arms and armor at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, said they will often get a text from another parent saying their sixth grader is headed to the diner or to a friend’s house. Here, parents can give their children more freedom to roam because someone always has an eye on them. “I appreciate that,” Ms. Terjanian said.

But for buyers looking for something between small-town life and a large urban-suburban township like Montclair, there is a happy medium: SOMA, an area named for Maplewood and neighboring South Orange, which suffers only in that it is perhaps a bit too charming. The thriving row of local businesses along Maplewood Avenue includes a well-stocked bookstore, Words, a well-curated home store, Perch Home, and a movie theater where the name over the marquee — Maplewood — is spelled out in art deco letters. The biggest controversy: allowing a Starbucks in town.

Jen Simon, 40, a freelance writer, said she and her husband, Matthew Trokenheim, a 45-year-old lawyer, ruled out the Rivertowns quickly when they were living in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn. “They were expensive and felt too much like New England,” she said, adding that they settled on South Orange because “it was just so homey.” They loved Montclair, too, but they were scared off by the size and by the prospect of entering the township’s school lottery system for their two boys, who are now 8 and 5.

Ms. Simon and her husband bought a renovated house in 2014 across from the elementary school, where she has met many other liberal-minded mothers; groups of them boarded buses to attend the Women’s March last year. “What’s unique about living here,” she said, “is that everyone really wants to be here. They’re excited by social justice, and the people are just cool.”

Maplewood, N.J., is known for its rows of grand antique homes and side-walked streets.

Credit
Tony Cenicola/The New York Times

Residents say that living in Maplewood inspires a commitment to building community — in the hippest of ways, of course. Locals formed the Maplewood Artist Collective to unite artists and organize events, and two mothers started Maplewood Mercantile, a 2,500-square-foot space offering a selection of vintage home goods, children’s items and jewelry. And many people come together every summer for Maplewoodstock, a two-day outdoor music festival, while others mark their calendars for Rent Party, a live-music series that raises money to fight hunger.

David Leibowitz, who moved to Maplewood seven years ago, recently started a Meetup group to find other local parents who “still go to rock shows.” Within a day, there were 150 responses. Now he and a few previously unacquainted neighbors are forming a band.

Mr. Leibowitz, 46,who grew up on the Upper East Side, and his wife, Emily, 43, fell for the antique homes in Maplewood, but living there also made him appreciate that “it’s not a place where everyone is driving a BMW.”

Still, he is baffled that Maplewood has remained more affordable than parts of Westchester, including the Rivertowns. Mr. Leibowitz, who founded PicketFencer, a website that offers profiles of more than 600 suburbs within commuting distance of Manhattan, joked that it is the “Jersey stigma discount.” (According to his website, the average home value in Maplewood is $538,000, while in Hastings-on-Hudson it is $725,400.)

For some people leaving Manhattan, he said, moving to a New York suburb is easier to digest than trading their city identity for a Jersey one: “As amazing as it is here, some people just can’t do it.”

Mary Kate Burke, 41, who moved to a Tudor in Maplewood with her 15-month-old daughter, Maya, and her husband, Shardul Kothari, 46, six months ago, said she worked through her stereotypes of Jersey quickly. “We found this progressive little pocket where it was diverse and family-oriented,” she said.

They had been living in Washington Heights, and while the Rivertowns were only a few stops north, they seemed too posh for her family’s tastes. Plus, her husband was working in Hoboken. “That commute just didn’t make sense,” she said.

She appreciates the diversity of her new hometown, where it is common to spot rainbow flags hanging from residents’ front porches or to see two fathers pushing a stroller to town. “Nothing about Maplewood,” she said, “is cookie cutter.”

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