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(BETHEL) - In 1995, Janet Atria of Elmont, Long Island, purchased a 76-acre parcel of land on Route 17B, not far from the Woodstock site. She paid $143,800. On April 16 of this year, she sold it for $605,000. A tidy profit. Atria and more than a dozen other property owners near the Woodstock site are winners in New York's newest lottery. They made investments in rural property and hit the jackpot.
Alan Gerry, a Liberty businessman who is one of the 200 richest men in America, recently announced he had purchased the Woodstock 1969 concert site for about $1 million. He bought the site a year ago.
Since then, he quietly bought up properties near the site, and now says he owns more than 1,000 acres. He plans to build a performing arts center and other facilities that will turn Bethel into a yearround destination site. The deals made over the past year are just now making their way into county records. And what they show is that Gerry, in his effort to secure a large footprint, has been very generous with his offers.
Maurice and Estelle Landis of Boca Raton, Fla., owned a 14-acre undeveloped parcel at Hurd and West Shore roads, just opposite the site. A few years ago, it was worth $29,300. Last June, the couple made a deal with a company that has been purchasing property for Gerry. The sale, recorded this week in county records, brought the retired couple $178,000, six times the property's value.
Gerry's money may have come with a catch - a promise not to talk. That could be one of the ways Gerry kept the purchases quiet for so long. No one who sold any property to Gerry was willing to talk about it.
One woman was asked by a reporter if she was prohibited from talking. "I can't answer that," said Rose Cacciola of Rye Brook, who sold a large parcel of land on the corner of Route 17B and Hurd Road for $500,000 on March 25.
The sales have alarmed those who are still living near the site. Some are worried about what could be coming next door - a parking lot, a noisy concert hall, an amphitheater. Earl Lilley, who has lived on Hurd Road for 27 years, is surrounded on the east, west and south by property now owned by Gerry. However, he said he is not worried about Gerry's plans. "I've lived there all those years," he said, referring to the yearly pilgrimage of summer revelers, and the subsequent roadblocks installed by police or the town.
"I'm sure I could live through some more of it," he said. "Whatever 'it' is".
In the meantime, things aren't changing too fast around his neighborhood - this week, in a yearly ritual, a farmer plowed the field now owned by Gerry, in preparation for planting corn.
Gerry hasn't said how much money he's spent on property besides the site itself. Documents in the Sullivan County Clerk's office show his lawyers have spent well over $2 million on acquisitions.
Other sales include:
*A parcel on Perry Road sold by Fazljija Kukic of Queens on April 3 for $249,000.
*A 40-acre strip of land opposite Hurd Road on Route 17B that sold late April for $279,000.
*Numerous parcels and subdivisions on Perry Road that sold, in total, for $234,000.