Durst lists 1,946 acres for sale in Pine Plains and Milan, N.Y.

Once part of Thomas Carvel’s ill-fated Sports City development, the property has been the subject of debates for decades.
Patrick Grego/New Pine Plains Herald
Once part of Thomas Carvel’s ill-fated Sports City development, the property has been the subject of debates for decades.
This story was originally published in The New Pine Plains Herald.
In a move that could reshape the future of Pine Plains and its surrounding communities, The Durst Organization has listed its expansive property for $36 million. Put on the market on Oct. 14, the former Carvel estate spans 1,490 acres in Pine Plains and 456 acres in Milan, and has long been at the center of debates over land use and preservation.
“We have decided to list the property for sale as we are currently focused on our New York City portfolio, specifically the development of Halletts Point in Astoria, Queens,” Alexander Durst, principal and chief development officer at The Durst Organization, told the Herald. “Another property owner may be able to realize the full potential of this remarkable property. The Durst family has a longstanding appreciation for the Hudson Valley and we will continue to be a part of the community.”
The Durst Organization is one of the oldest family-run commercial and residential real estate companies in New York state. Established in 1915, its portfolio includes the New York City properties of One World Trade Center and The Bank of America Tower.
The company owns approximately 2,633 acres of land in Pine Plains, representing about 13% of the town’s total acreage, according to Dutchess County tax records.
The Dursts initially purchased the 1,900-acre core of the listed property from the estate of the late ice cream magnate Thomas Carvel, in 2002 for $7.78 million.
After the initial acquisition, The Durst Organization expanded its holdings in Pine Plains, purchasing an additional 711 acres between 2015 and 2019 for nearly $6 million. The property is owned by two limited liability companies: 1133 Taconic LLC and Stissing Mountain Properties LLC.
In the late 1960s, Thomas Carvel launched an ambitious development known as the All-American Sports City after acquiring several parcels of farmland in Pine Plains. His vision included a golf course, clubhouse, lake and 500 homes. While the lake, golf course, clubhouse and 16 homes were built, the broader project stalled and remained incomplete at the time of Carvel’s death in 1990. In the decades that followed, the property’s infrastructure — including roads, water, and wastewater systems — fell into disrepair due to neglect, ultimately leaving it in a deteriorated state by the time it was sold.
While the listed property encompasses the original Carvel property, it does not include 685 additional acres in Pine Plains that remain under Durst ownership. Separately, in early October, the company listed another property, featuring a historic 19th-century farmhouse on 65 acres at 115-133 Mount Ross Road, for $599,000.
The company touts the Carvel property as a “sanctuary offering endless possibilities,” with potential uses including a family compound, corporate retreat, or winery. The listing highlights the property’s views of the Catskills and Stissing Mountain, as well as its remaining structures — following the demolition of several houses and barns over the years — which include four single-family homes, a two-family residence, and an office and warehouse facility.
Over the past two decades, The Durst Organization has put forward three development proposals for the Carvel property and its expanded holdings. While each plan was scaled back in response to public concerns, the company worked to incorporate community feedback and adjust its vision accordingly. The final plan, submitted in 2020, envisioned a 2,700-acre “eco resort” including open space, farmland, outdoor recreation areas, and 237 residential lots in Pine Plains, along with 51 lots in Milan. While the project received preliminary approval from the Pine Plains Zoning Board, it went no further.
The first proposal, in 2003 was for a 951-unit residential development centered around Lake Carvel and prompted Pine Plains to impose a moratorium on development and, eventually, to implement zoning laws for the first time.
The new zoning code, passed in October 2009, included some of the strictest regulations in Dutchess County, limiting building sizes and preventing large-scale commercial projects. The Dursts returned in 2011 with a revised plan for 591 units, in compliance with the new zoning code, but in the face of public opposition, and the stock market collapse of 2011, that proposal lay dormant for nearly seven years.
In the first half of 2018, The Durst Organization tried to revive the project, hosting two public meetings at the Pine Plains Community Center to receive feedback from residents. In June 2018, the company presented a new proposal, a “conservation subdivision,” that included plans to restore the golf course Carvel had built in the 1960s and construct 281 homes, placed in small clusters, around a central “recreation-oriented resort.”
In April 2020, The Durst Organization submitted pre-sketch plans for the conservation subdivision to the Planning Board. This stage focused on determining the maximum number of residential lots permitted under Pine Plains zoning laws, with the Dursts proposing 223 lots.
By June 2020, the Planning Board had unanimously endorsed the pre-sketch plan, which designated more than 50% of the land — about 1,397 acres — as open space. The designated areas included wetlands, steep slopes and buffer zones around water bodies. This approval allowed The Durst Organization to proceed with developing a formal subdivision plan, which would undergo a full environmental review before any final decisions were made.
However, after the property was listed Monday afternoon, Oct. 14, it seems as though the back and forth has come to an end — for now.
“The Pine Plains countryside is an oasis in the Hudson Valley,” Durst said. “With 1,946 acres of land in an ideal location and unmatched natural beauty, the property offers the opportunity to create something special.”
As for what kind of buyer would purchase a property of this size? “It’s going to range,” said listing agent Larry Havens. “I don’t want to set any limitations on that.”
SHARON — Sharon Dennis Rosen, 83, died on Aug. 8, 2025, in New York City.
Born and raised in Sharon, Connecticut, she grew up on her parents’ farm and attended Sharon Center School and Housatonic Valley Regional High School. She went on to study at Skidmore College before moving to New York City, where she married Dr. Harvey Rosen and together they raised two children.
Sharon’s lifelong love of learning and the arts shaped both her work and her passions. For decades, she served as a tour guide at the American Museum of Natural History and the Asia Society, sharing her knowledge and enthusiasm with countless visitors. She also delighted in traveling widely, immersing herself in other cultures, and especially treasured time spent visiting her daughter and grandsons in Europe and Africa.
She was also deeply connected to her hometown, where in retirement she spent half her time and had many friends. She served as President of the Sharon East Side Cemetery until the time of her death, where generations of her family are buried and where she will also be laid to rest.
She is survived by her husband, Harvey; her children, Jennifer and Marc; and four beloved grandchildren.
Claire and Garland Jeffreys in the film “The King of In Between.”
There is a scene in “The King of In Between,” a documentary about musician Garland Jeffreys, that shows his name as the answer to a question on the TV show “Jeopardy!”
“This moment was the film in a nutshell,” said Claire Jeffreys, the film’s producer and director, and Garland’s wife of 40 years. “Nobody knows the answer,” she continued. “So, you’re cool enough to be a Jeopardy question, but you’re still obscure enough that not one of the contestants even had a glimmer of the answer.”
Garland Jeffreys never quite became a household name, but he carved out a singular place in American music by refusing to fit neatly into any category. A biracial New Yorker blending rock, reggae, soul and R&B, he used genre fusion as a kind of rebellion — against industry pigeonholes, racial boundaries and the musical status quo. Albums like “Ghost Writer” (1977) captured the tension of a post–civil rights America, while songs like “Wild in the Streets” made him an underground prophet of urban unrest. He moved alongside artists like Lou Reed and Bruce Springsteen but always in his own lane — part poet, part agitator, part bridge between cultures.
“I think what I tried to do with the film, wittingly or unwittingly, was just to show that we all have these lives and they don’t often meet our dreams of what we think we’re entitled to, we’re talented enough to get or whatever,” said Claire. “We all have these goals, but we’re sort of stymied. Often, it’s partly circumstance and luck, but it’s also very often something that we’re doing or not doing that’s impeding us.”
This is not the typical rock-and-roll redemption story. There are no smashed guitars, no heroic overdoses, no dramatic comeback tour. What we get instead is something quieter and more intimate: hours of archival footage that Claire spent years sorting through. The sheer effort behind the film is palpable — so much so that, as she admitted with a laugh, it cured her of any future ambitions in filmmaking.
“What I learned with this project was A, I’m never doing it again. It was just so hard. And B, you know, you can do anything if you collaborate with people that know what they’re doing.”
Claire worked with the editing team of Evan M. Johnson and Ben Sozanski and a slew of talented producers, and ended up with a truthful portrayal — a beautiful living document for Garland’s legions of fans and, perhaps most importantly, for the couple’s daughter, Savannah.
“She’s been in the audience with me maybe three or four times,” said Claire. “The last time, I could tell that she was beginning to feel very proud of the effort that went into it and also of being a part of it.”
Savannah pursued a career in music for a while herself but has changed tracks and become a video producer.
“I think she couldn’t quite see music happening for herself,” said Claire. “She was like, ‘I don’t know if I want to struggle the way I saw my dad struggling and I’m going to get a job with a salary.’”
The film doesn’t just track the arc of an underappreciated musician, however. The music, always playing, is the soundtrack of a life — of a man navigating racial, musical and personal boundaries while balancing marriage, parenthood, aging, addiction andrecovery. Garland and Claire speak plainly about getting sober in the film, a life choice that gave them both clarity and shows Claire as a co-conspirator in his survival.
“I did some work early on with a director,” said Claire. “He wanted the final cut, and I didn’t feel like I could do that — not because I wanted so much to control the story, but I didn’t want the story to be about Alzheimer’s.”
Diagnosed in 2017, Garland, now 81, is in the late stages of the disease. Claire serves as his primary caregiver. The film quietly acknowledges his diagnosis, but it doesn’t dwell — a restraint that feels intentional. Garland spent a career refusing to be reduced: not to one sound, one race or one scene. And so the documentary grants him that same dignity in aging. His memory may be slipping, but the film resists easy sentimentality. Instead, it shows what remains — his humor, his voice, his marriage, the echo of a life lived on the edges of fame and at the center of his own convictions.
The Moviehouse in Millerton will be screening “The King of In Between” on Sept. 20 at 7 p.m. Peter Aaron, arts editor of Chronogram Magazine will conduct a talkback and Q&A with Claire Jeffreys after the film. Purchase tickets at themoviehouse.net.
The Haystack Book Festival, a program of the Norfolk Hub, brings renowned writers and thinkers to Norfolk for conversation. Celebrating its fifth season this fall, the festival will gather 18 writers for discussions at the Norfolk Library on Sept. 20 and Oct. 3 through 5.
Jerome A. Cohen, author of the memoir “Eastward, Westward: A Lifein Law.”Haystack Book Festival
For example, “Never Take the Rule of Law for Granted: China and the Dissident,” will be held Saturday, Sept. 20, at 4 p.m. at the Norfolk Library. It brings together Jerome A. Cohen, author of “Eastward, Westward: A Life in Law,” and Mark Clifford, author of “The Troublemaker: How Jimmy Lai Became a Billionaire, Hong King’s Greatest Dissident, and China’s Most Feared Critic” in dialogue with journalist Richard Hornik to discuss the rule of law and China.
The Council on Foreign Relations stated, “Few Americans have done more than Jerome A. Cohen to advance the rule of law in East Asia. He established the study of Chinese law in the United States. An advocate for human rights, Cohen has been a scholar, teacher, lawyer, and activist for sixty years.”
Cohen, a professor at New York University School of Law and director of its U.S.-Asia Law Institute, revealed his long view on China: “We are now witnessing another extreme in the pendulum’s swing toward repression. Xi Jinping is likely to outlive me but ‘no life lives forever.’ There will eventually be another profound reaction to the current totalitarian era.”
Mark Clifford, author of “The Troublemaker: How Jimmy Lai Became a Billionaire, Hong Kong’s Greatest Dissident, and China’s Most Feared Critic.”Haystack Book Festival
In “The Troublemaker,” Clifford chronicles Lai’s life from child refugee to pro-democracy billionaire to his current imprisonment by the Chinese Communist Party. Clifford is president of the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation, a Walter Bagehot Fellow at Columbia University, and holds a PhD in history from the University of Hong Kong. He was the former editor-in-chief of the South China Morning Post and The Standard (Hong Kong and Seoul).
Journalist Richard Hornik, adjunct senior fellow at the East-West Center in Honolulu.Haystack Book Festival
Richard Hornik, adjunct senior fellow at the East-West Center, will moderate the discussion. Hornik is the former executive editor of AsiaWeek, news service director of Time magazine, and former Time bureau chief in Warsaw, Boston, Beijing and Hong Kong.
Betsy Lerner, author of “Shred Sisters,” is giving the 2025 Brendan Gill lecture at the Haystack Book Festival.Haystack Book Festival
The Brendan Gill Lecture is a highlight of the festival honoring longtime Norfolk resident Brendan Gill, who died in1997. Gill wrote for The New Yorker magazine for fifty years. Betsy Lerner, New York Times-recognized author of “Shred Sisters,” will deliver this year’s lecture on Friday, Oct. 3, at 6 p.m. at the Norfolk Library.
Visit haystackbookfestival.org to register. Admission is free.