New owners: No concrete plans for former Hadley farm stand
Published: 01-30-2025 7:26 PM |
HADLEY — A former farm stand and ice cream parlor at 10 Rocky Hill Road, with 1.4 acres of farmland and a parking lot to accommodate 15 vehicles, was sold for $179,000 at a foreclosure auction Thursday morning.
But the new owners of the property, Victoria and Tahir Sheikh, who run Zephyr Rugs in Northampton and live directly behind the property at 12 Rocky Hill Road, say they don’t have precise plans, other than improving the appearance of what has been an abandoned site in recent decades.
“We will definitely clean it up,” said Victoria Sheikh, after the winning bid was made. “The building is a lot to take down.”
Tahir Sheikh added that the hope is make things better for the neighborhood. “We will do something,” he said.
Inside the farm stand on a cold, sunny day, with snow still covering the parking lot, the auction was staged by Aaron Posnik & Co. of West Springfield on behalf of attorney Jonathan R. Goldsmith of Goldsmith, Katz & Argenio of Springfield. Goldsmith is the attorney for Farm Credit East, ACA, which was holding a $248,585 mortgage for the property and issued the foreclosure notice on Nov. 15.
Auctioneer Corey Fisher read the legal advertisement and provided other pertinent details, including the 5% buyer’s premium, $723 in property taxes owed to the town for the quarterly bill in February and a $285 water charge, and then spent less than five minutes conducting the auction. The winning bid was reached with participation of just three bidders, though about 30 people attended, including residents who live nearby and farmers.
Fisher started the bids at $150,000 and reached $175,000, before final bids were in $1,000 increments until reaching the $179,000 price.
“Don’t lose it for $1,000,” Fisher said to another bidder, but that person wouldn’t go up to $180,000.
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The foreclosure sales price is only about 60% of the $300,000 that Shannon M. Rice Nichols and Kathleen M. Rice bought the property for in April 2021 from the Gnatek family.
The property has had a contentious history. The farm stand was built in 1983 by the Gnateks and has been largely shuttered since 1991, three years after the Zoning Board of Appeals allowed ice cream to be sold there. That came after contentious Town Meeting votes, including one where residents rejected the sale of ice cream at the site and another that rezoned the property for business uses, which was overturned on a technicality by the state attorney general.
That contentious history continued in 2019, when Rice-Nichols announced plans to run her The Farmer and The Cheese business from the location, with milk and cheese produced from her Kerry and milking Devon cattle and a commercial flock of goats, with a business partner intending to open a small breakfast and lunch cafe. Those plans, though, led to objections from neighbors, including a letter sent to Town Hall contending several violations of town zoning with that use of the property.
In the summer of 2022, Rice-Nichols leased the site to a woman who ran a farm stand selling local produce known as The Divine Vine, or La Vina Divine.
Even more than 40 years after the 2,445-square-foot main building was constructed, it remains in good condition, with no cracks in the concrete floor and the walls appearing to be solid. The building has an office, a kitchen and two restrooms, and is on public water with a private septic system.
Because it is zoned agricultural residential, the only business that could be on site, without an agricultural exemption under state law where 25% of the products are grown in Hadley, is a home occupation. That, though, would require a home be on the property.
A landscaping business approached the Planning Board in the fall of 2023, when the property was initially on the real estate market. The owners were informed, though, that since no residence exists on site, having the business considered a home occupation wouldn’t be possible.