Ep #7: Pleasantville: A Bucolic Setting with a Unique, Artsy Vibe

Welcome to Your Real Estate Connection in Westchester. A show for people looking to buy or sell homes in the Northern Westchester County area. Join local real estate expert Harriet Libov as she shares her professional advice on the local real estate market, connects you with knowledgeable community residents, and gives you helpful insights behind the home buying and selling process. Now, let’s dive into today’s episode.

Hi, and thanks for tuning in. Spring is on all of our minds with warmer days outside around the corner. Today is a tour of Pleasantville, New York, a real mix of urban and suburban living. It’s a walking town. If you remember back in episode four in our tour of Chappaqua, my guest Shane Dolce mentioned how all of these northern Westchester towns intermingle with different offerings. And her kids have enjoyed the creative classes in film education at the Jacob Burns Film Center.

Jacob Burns is a non-profit cultural art center dedicated to teaching, presenting the best of independent, documentary, and world cinema, and making film a vibrant part of the community. The media arts lab down the street from the Jacob Burns Theater in Pleasantville is the hub of their education initiatives. This state of the art facility is truly a laboratory where they pilot, implement, and develop programs to help educators and students of all ages succeed in the visually, digitally, and globally connected 21^st century.

The film center’s presence in the town since 2001 has really put the town on the map. The more laid back slightly artsier vibe in the 1.8 square mile village of Pleasantville has what many residents consider an ideal location, also smack in the center of the county.

This walkable village just 30 miles from Manhattan has a pretty shopping and dining corridor. The train station is right in the town center. So it should be no surprise that Janet Maslin, film critic from the New York Times, lives in town. As does Will Shortz, puzzle creator and editor from the New York Times. A different vibe than the towns of Armonk, Chappaqua, Katonah, and Bedford that we explored earlier together. Yet, a strong cultural center for every town in northern Westchester.

So today we will speak with Margo Amgott, who is the interim executive director at Jacob Burns. Who is currently providing transitional leadership to the organization, which is her specialty. She can share with us the history of Jacob Burns, and some new initiatives they are working on currently. Thanks for tuning in today. I truly appreciate your interest. Let’s settle in, learn about Pleasantville, and begin the conversation.

Welcome to your tour of Pleasantville. First, a bit of history. Around the year 1750, Pleasantville was referred to as Leggett’s Corner, according to Carsten Johnson, the village historian. In the early 1800s, it was known as Clark’s Corners because Henry Clark owned property encompassing two corners, which is now the old village.

The present name was chosen in the year 1828 by the village’s first postmaster, Henry Romer. Why Mr. Romer selected Pleasantville is uncertain. Maybe because he lived in Mount Pleasant. Mr. Johnson has been quoted as saying, “Or maybe because the view from his home was a pleasant one.” Either way, everyone will say it’s truly a very pleasant place to live.

Regarding the commute, the trip to Grand Central Terminal takes about 50 to 55 minutes on Metro-North Railroad’s Harlem line. The train station is in the center of town. So if you live within the Pleasantville school district in the walking part of town, it has a very urban feel. If you walk through town at 8:30 in the morning, it has a vibe right out of the 1950s where everyone is walking their kids to school. There is no school bussing in the Pleasantville school district. So the older homes in the village on smaller pieces of land are the most desirable, which is very different from other towns in northern Westchester.

There are bordering areas in the school district that are too far for a walk to school. But for the parents who live there and love where they live, they’re okay with driving their kids to school. As noted on niche.com, Pleasantville Union Free School District is a top rated public school district located in Pleasantville, New York. It has 1,682 students in grades K through 12 with a student teacher ratio of 12 to one. By the way, for all listeners considering the different towns in Westchester, niche.com is a great way to learn about all the skinny on the local school districts.

But back to Pleasantville. For the residents that live here, food is something they love to talk about. In Pleasantville, the restaurant scene is very alive. The Pleasantville diner is a definite go to for everyone. But for a small village of just 7,000, Pleasantville has remarkably strong dining options. A few of my newer favorites, Vela Kitchen, which is perfect when catching a movie at Jacob Burns. Bistro 146 for seafood, Southern Kitchen for southern food, Mediterraneo for Italian, Mission Taqueria for Mexican, and Dai for its sushi, soups, and charming atmosphere. If somebody builds a good restaurant here in Pleasantville, it has a great chance of success.

Regarding real estate, most homes start in the $600,000 range, but you can find some for less. Generally, it goes up to $1.2 million. Later this year, I’m listing a renovated home on nice acreage with a pool that will list for $1.4 million. That falls in the drive to school category. That’s really the high mark in Pleasantville for price. As compared with other neighboring towns, the lack of super luxurious homes keeps the residents who move here more down to earth. For the most part, their home is where they live and not a dream come true. Right now it’s a seller’s market in Pleasantville with lack of inventory and high demand as it is everywhere else.

The village bookstore, the popular weekly farmer’s market, the Westchester Table Tennis Center, and of course Jacob Burns Film Center as really unique to Pleasantville. The town has an annual music festival which has become quite popular. The Rockefeller Preserve, which is a jewel for all towns in northern Westchester, is right near by for hiking and enjoying the most bucolic setting. It’s Stone Barns Agricultural Center really speaks to the culture of this vibrant community.

Opperman’s Pond is the perfect spot for family ice skating or a game of hockey. Pull up, put your skates on, and go. There’s no line, no fee, no rentals. So bring your own. In the summer, the Village Pool in Nannahagan Park offers great recreation to its residents.

In the past episodes, I’ve spoken to local residents. Today rather than speak to someone that lives in Pleasantville, I thought we would mix it up and speak to Margo Amgott, the interim executive director at the Jacob Burns Center. Margo has an extensive background in running non-profits, has an MPA for NYU’s Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, and a BA from Barnard College.

She was born and bred in New York City. She and her family are currently living in Westport, Connecticut, about 45 minutes from Pleasantville. Let’s explore why Jacob Burns initially chose to set up shop in Pleasantville, and how they have found their place in this thriving cultural community.

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Harriet: Welcome Margo. Thanks so much for joining me today. I want to introduce myself to you a little bit. The reason you are on this podcast is because I’m a fan of Jacob Burns, and I have missed going to the movies there during this past year. I have lived in the neighboring town of Armonk for 32 years. I moved from New York City. I came and found multiplexes, which was much different when I first came here.

I remember the excitement and the buzz when Jacob Burns came to Pleasantville. It was the first of its kind in Westchester, and it’s been a model for other playhouses that have sprouted up in the area. Jacob Burns has taken the education piece so much further with the media arts lab through the years.

On my podcast tour of Chappaqua in episode four, a local resident mentioned how one of her children had loved the offerings in film education. So that’s the tie in for me. That I covered northern Westchester. Even though someone may hear this and want to move to Pleasantville and Pleasantville only, they should understand that these are all neighboring towns that have culture and bring a lot to each other. You can live in Armonk and go to Chappaqua for the best of Chappaqua and Pleasantville for the best of Pleasantville. And it enhances your life.

Yeah. So that’s kind of where we are, and where I was going with this. Margo, I see from your bio that you’re the interim director. When did you assume that position, and how long do you think you will be at Jacob Burns?

Margo: Well, first thank you for that lovely introduction to the Burns and to me. I’m really excited about having this conversation because it’s about a couple of things that are very near and dear to my heart. So thank you for this moment.

I started in September. I had done a little bit of work over the summer with the board of the Burns because they had initially asked me to step in in early spring. We all know what happened in early spring. So we mutually decided to pivot away from one another because I felt that I couldn’t really be the kind of interim executive director that they needed having never seen the place in operation, and with all the chaos that the early months of the pandemic introduced into our lives. And, of course, as you know and as you mentioned, the theater closed in early March and has stayed closed since.

So I began in earnest as interim executive director in September. The prior executive director left, and boards do many different things when there’s a vacancy. Sometimes a board member steps in. Sometimes they just leave it and try to do a search. Sometimes there’s an obvious person who’s the next up to have that role. In this situation, there wasn’t an obvious next up. So the board had a conversation and undertook to find an interim.

They interviewed a bunch of people, and it was a very interesting process with a lot of board involvement. I was chosen. As I said, we then put a pause on it until September. I expect that I’ll be with the organization another three or four months. It depends really on how the search goes. We’ve started search for a permanent person, but it takes time to get the right person.

Harriet: Right. Okay. Understood. So we have future buyers from New York City listening. I also see in your bio that you were born and bred in New York City, and now live in Westport, Connecticut. Also a very culturally rich artistic community. Westport is a very hot town right now since the pandemic. Did you move recently, or have you been there for a while?

Margo: Great question, and the answer is both. We’ve owned this house for several years, but it was a weekend house. We really used it for a vacation here and a weekend there. It’s a very small house, but we love it. Last March we came up thinking we were going to be here for our daughter’s senior year of high school spring break for two weeks and then go back to the city. Guess what? We never left.

Harriet: Are you near the beach? Are you near Compo?

Margo: Close enough. Close enough. We’re a five minute drive.

Harriet: Nice.

Margo: We really have been very happy here. For me, the joy is I get to go back and forth to Pleasantville, which I really love. I’ve contrasted the two towns that, as you have said, have some real similarities.

Harriet: Right. Okay, so back to Jacob Burns. This question has two parts. Why originally was Pleasantville chosen as the original location as a home for Jacob Burns? How much has the location in Pleasantville contributed to its success?

Margo: Great questions. My understanding of the history of why Pleasantville was that the founder of the organization, Steve and Lisa Apkon, the founders lived in Pleasantville. They had been watching for a long time this theater, the Rome Theater, that had not been used as a theater in a long time. Had had, I think, commercial tenants in it. They were watching this beautiful old building not be used for its real purpose. They were both film buffs and really quite expert in film exposition. Steve in particular wanted to see if he could make a go of an arthouse in Westchester.

As you said, it was a land of a lot of multiplexes in those days. As a friend of mine said to me when I once lived in Westchester, there isn’t a lot of crusty bread in Westchester. By which she meant the wonderful cultural things that people needed if they were going to move up from the city weren’t yet here. Steve had a vision for that. As he saw the Rome Theater go on the market, he said, “Let’s try to turn it back into a movie theater. Let’s bring it back to its original purpose.” That’s exactly what he and a small group of founders and founding board members did.

Harriet: Okay. So that kind of answers why Pleasantville. Because he lived in the community, and he knew it was right for…

Margo: He knew this building was so beautiful and so right to be restored to it’s best and highest purpose. What’s the relationship between Pleasantville and the Jacob Burns? Has Pleasantville itself been an ingredient in the success of the theater? I would say yes, indeed in a big way. What a wonderful and supportive community.

As you would guess since you live nearby but not right in the center of, we get our guests and our participants from all over. They drive up from the Upper West Side to see movies. They come over the bridge from Nyack and the other Rockland County towns. And all over Connecticut, Fairfield County where I live, and all over Westchester. It’s remarkable.

Harriet: It’s smack in the middle of Westchester. So in some ways, that makes a lot of sense. They have such interesting programming. Do you find that in the media arts lab it’s more local people participating?

Margo: Certainly for the kids programs it has been more local. Though I’ll come to that in a second. I see great adventure for a broader reach because we have some evidence that a broader reach is truly available to us. As a little bit of a pandemic silver lining, it’s hard to imagine there’s anything positive to come out of this time. But I truly think it has helped the Burns position itself in a wonderful place that will bring some of this work to a broader audience.

Pleasantville has been tremendously supportive. The mayor of Pleasantville himself and his team, we’ve been doing some interesting plumbing work in the theater since it’s been closed. The town building inspector and his team come running over when we have a question. The restaurants love it when we’re open. The bookstore. There’s so much in Pleasantville. We draw people in, and then the other businesses do well. The businesses draw people in, and then they walk by and see the Burns and they’re like, “Huh. That’s a cool looking place. What happens in there?”

So it is a wonderful town of interesting, curious, smart people. Unbeknownst to us, the house right next to our campus was just rented to two filmmakers. We had an ice cream truck in our backyard for an ice cream social when the weather was still good so that all of our staff and some board members could come together and be together outside eating ice cream. The neighbors walked over and introduced themselves, and we gave them an ice cream too. So there is an artistic community here, and a community that really supports the kind of work we do and has been just a delightful audience for who we are.

Harriet: Are the founders that you mentioned still involved?

Margo: Absolutely. Absolutely. We still have…Janet Maslin is our president. She was one of the founding board members. Steve and Lisa Apkon are each in their own way quite involved. There are a number of staff who started when the doors opened. Brian Ackerman, our founding film programming director, Judy Exton, our development director. Each been there for 20 years. So it’s kind of amazing what a draw this place has on the neighbors, on the board, on founding staff members. It’s quite lovely.

Harriet: So how has the Jacob Burns Center thrived during the pandemic with all the movie theaters dark? How do you expect attendance and programming might change post-pandemic?

Margo: I’m so glad you’re asking that question, particularly the attendance piece because we don’t know. We don’t know. Here’s what we have to go on. What we have is some surveys that we’ve done over the summer of people who’ve been frequent guests and of members. The enthusiasm for being asked when will you come back? What would make you come back? The participation rate in the survey was pretty phenomenal. People wanted to tell us what they thought.

You know, we asked what do we need to change about what we’re doing? There were some comments that we’ve attended to, but by in large what they said was—and we’ve followed up on some of this with both a members Zoom meeting and a doners Zoom meeting where we had a lot of people talking to us, listening to us, and so on about that. That once we had done the work we needed to do, which we did early in the summer, to make the place as safe as it could possibly be.

So we implemented every recommendation that the state made for safe indoor gatherings. We did them at the very top level we could do. We took every suggestion and implemented it from the way people flow through the theater. If you were to walk by, you would see that we have a brand spanking new external box office so people don’t need to queue up inside. They can queue up outside. We have a whole new sort of wayfinding within the theater to make it easy for people to get safely to seats. We have an entirely new sanitizing process with airflow and the way we sanitize the seats.

So what people said in these surveys was, “Well, if you’re doing all of that, we’ll come back when there’s the vaccine.” Mind you, this was people saying it when the vaccine wasn’t here. It was still just a gleam in our eye.

Harriet: So we’re getting closer.

Margo: So I think we’re getting closer. Right now, it’s not legal to be open. The governor requires that we do it when we are below 2% positivity rate, and we’re not there in Westchester county. We’re in Pleasantville. But rates are getting better. The vaccine is coming online. So I think people will be back. We don’t know. The other thing that is sort of exciting is we decided early on that what we needed to do was be able to do things virtually, as virtually as we could. Push out as much content and as many events with people talking about film and the films themselves as we possibly could.

So one of our most successful events every year is the Jewish Film Festival. The JFF, as we call it, went virtual this year, went digital. We sold a festival pass, sort of the way you do it if you go to Sundance. You bought a pass, and you could see as many movies as you wanted. There were 12 films. You could see one or 12 or this one twice or anything you wanted to do for one price. We sold more tickets than we ever thought we would. We got more positive feedback.

So now we have this really robust digital channel. I’ll say more about that in a minute because we’re about to, actually tomorrow, launch something really fantastic to enhance that experience too. We think we will continue to do work digitally and virtually. We think that we will be able to…If you want to come to the movies and sit with your friends and your neighbors and see a movie or see an event, you’ll be able to do that at some point in the not too distant future. If you want to do it at home in your pjs, we want you to be able to do that too.

So we’re not going to turn our back on our virtual work once we can reopen the doors in the physical world. We’re going to offer both. That is really exciting to us about the future. To be able to give it to you however you want to receive it.

Harriet: Right. Okay. So what’s happening tomorrow?

Margo: Tomorrow we are launching our own little platform. Thank you. That was such a beautiful lead. Currently the way we do it is the films that we show, they’re all listed on our website. We send out blast emails listing everything we’ve got going on. But we show them on the distributors, the film distributors websites. Which means that you, an avid film watcher, would need to then register on each of these sites and have credentials and a login and a password and send money over to each of these sites, which is challenging.

I don’t know about you, but I have trouble with my passwords. I have a lot of them. I don’t really want to be able to watch five different films on five different nights and have to have five different ways of getting on to a site. This would be our site. It says Jacob Burns on it. We didn’t invent it. We are using a site that has been tested and tried by other colleagues who think it is really the best one out there, but we have customized it for the Burns experience.

You would be able to register for that. Any movie you want to see that we’re offering, you can pull down through that. It would be all about your Burns experience, you and us, without having to go off wandering around to somebody else’s website. We think this will be so beneficial for people. We also can sort of control it better. We can control the pricing. We can control the look and feel of it. We can send messages. We can offer discounts. We can treat our members really specially. We do have a wonderful group of members who have stuck with us during these tough times. We want to have them have special access to everything we do.

So that platform, it’s a company called Eventive. That launches tomorrow, and we’re very excited.

Harriet: Will you send me the link when we’re done? We can post the link when this airs?

Margo: Yep, will do.

Harriet: Okay, that would be great.

Margo: The next thing up for us will be our Romanian Film Festival. After that, our Arab Film Festival. Both passes through this process would be able to do and see whatever you want with events and films and so on. Then we hope in the fall–

Harriet: What about Oscar worthy films?

Margo: I must say that we continue to do the hot films. So we are offering the new Viggo Mortensen film Falling. You should watch it. It’s really quite compelling. We’ve got a couple of really hot things coming up. Not everything is being offered virtual. So there is sometimes a bit of a lag as the distributors and the studios send things out. Sometimes they’re holding out for being able to have in-person screenings.

In some parts of the country, movie theaters are open. Not a lot of people are going, but they are open. In Connecticut where I live, they’re open. No one’s going. They’re screening to two or three people. But we’re very excited about having a spot.

So when you asked about award winners, one of the things the Burns does is to provide artist support for a group of young developing filmmakers. A whole group of our filmmakers are having their films screened in the most prestigious festivals, and they’re starting to be announced for potential awards. Not Oscar yet, but we’ll get there. It’s really nice to see that these young filmmakers who we have championed and supported and worked with and helped really make their way in the world in a very positive way.

Harriet: So as a true New Yorker who has recently become a Westport resident, what do you think it is about the vibe in Pleasantville that sets it apart from other neighboring towns?

Margo: The first thing I’ll say. In all of my exploration, and I walk around the town a lot, I want to know where I am. I want to get the feel and the vibe for it. Just as you asked this question. People are singularly friendly.

Harriet: Yes.

Margo: Everyone is wearing a mask. People pushing strollers with little kids. The little kids have a mask. I have not seen—I said this to Peter, the mayor of Pleasantville. I have not seen anyone not wearing a mask. Connecticut is a lot more loose. New York City is looser than Pleasantville. Pleasantville is really buttoned up.

Harriet: It’s respectful.

Margo: It’s deeply respectful. Then there are the little special businesses in Pleasantville. I happen to think The Black Cow, which was my first introduction. When I came up for my interview, took the train. The train is so approximate for everything in the town, and so approximate for the Burns right. It’s right there. I got off the train. I was early. I went. I looked around. I saw Starbucks, and I thought eh. I have Starbucks where I come from. I don’t need Starbucks. What’s local here?

I started sticking my nose. I found The Black Cow, and I had the most wonderful cup of coffee. I won’t admit what I ate right before the interview, but it was delicious. Since then, I have loved doing that. I have a good friend who’s an architect who lives way further deeper into Connecticut that I do. He comes to get his eyeglasses from the little eyeglass store right on the corner right next to the Burns because they have an unusual and beautifully curated set of eyeglasses that he can’t find anywhere in Connecticut or in the city. Imagine that in Pleasantville.

Then there’s the cheese shop. Then there’s the bookstore. Then there are all of these sorts of artisanal craft and product stores that are so wonderful. I way long ago lived in Briarcliff, and I used to come to Pleasantville for the farmer’s market.

Harriet: It’s a wonderful farmer’s market. Okay. So will you send me all of your favorite links? I would love that.

Margo: I certainly will.

Harriet: We can post that.

Margo: The one thing I didn’t touch on which I would love to just say a thing about is as we’ve done all this virtual work on our films, we’ve also gone virtual on our educational offerings. I’m really thrilled about that. The end of March we’ll be launching camp virtually. A small group of students because there’s a limit to what you can do virtually, but we have just sent out classroom to screening room.

We are working, I mentioned earlier that I think there’s a broader audience for us now. Silver lining in the pandemic. We’re working with a school in New Mexico and a school in California and bringing this work and our teachers to them. So under resourced schools nationally can really begin to sort of get a flavor for what we’re doing classroom to screening room. Image, sound, and story launch is next. Then we have developed the beginnings of a film library.

All of this is offered without cost this year. It will always be without cost to under resourced schools. But this year we’re charging for none of our educational offerings because we just wanted to get stuff out there. We’re trying new things. We want to see what the appetite is for doing some of this stuff differently.

We’re providing in image, sound, and story, a variable curriculum where teachers can pick from lots of different age groups. We’ve got it sequestered, but they can blend it. If their class goes in a certain direction, they can access more interesting content, more sophisticated content, different types of content. Then they’ll have this film library, which is sort of culturally relevant and available so that they can pull down short films and use them in the classroom as they wish. Again, without any charge.

So the education stuff is just blossoming in this really lovely way this year. As we look back on what we learned and gained in the pandemic, how to work a little bit differently. How to make things low cost, no cost, and really accessible. Accessible, sort of developmentally accessible for the children. It’s a huge focus for us. It’s been thrilling for our education staff.

Harriet: Well, thank you for all of that. I’m going to be posting my own links, but I can’t wait to see yours. Because you may be sending me some new haunts that I don’t know about. I appreciate so much that you were here today. Any parting words for us?

Margo: Thank you for bringing light to our organization. Thank you bringing light to this wonderful town. Actually, that reminds me. Yes, well another piece. Sort of critically aware that we occupy a big footprint right in the middle of town, and the theater building’s been dark. We wanted to bring light to that. So we worked with our staff and a group of donors, and we raised the money to light the building differently than it’s ever been lit before.

In late February, we will turn the lights on for the first time. We will have a couple of months because we’ve had to rent various pieces to do this. Some of it will be permanent. We have re-lamped our movie marquees because that had burned out. We have now got it lit in sustainable LED lighting. We also have the ability to wash the building in color. The rest of the building will have a special light show because we believe that part of our mission is to bring light to things. Bring light to subjects and light the building literally.

Harriet: I love that. I can’t wait to see.

Margo: So in late February, come by at dusk or in the darkest part of night and see what we’ve lit.

Harriet: I promise I will.

Margo: Because I think it will be beautiful and meaningful. Thank you.

Harriet: Thank you Margo. Thank you for joining me. So appreciate it.

Margo: My pleasure Harriet. Thank you. Take care.

Harriet: Bye.

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So here’s the takeaway. You like an urban feel. You like older charming houses. And you would like to find a place that has a true walking town, some culture, community, and a good foodie scene. Pleasantville may be your town. It’s right in the center of the county and has its own train station with a good commute to Grand Central. It has a very unique vibe. Feel free to reach out to me with any questions and learn more about it.

We have toured some northern Westchester towns together. If there are towns or nuances of these towns that you want to learn more about that I have not covered in previous podcasts, I hope you will reach out to me with your questions or just to clarify.

Episode eight, we’ll talk about the buying process. Episode nine will be about the selling process. When I say process, I’m talking about homebuying. A buyer will be a better buyer if they look at it from the seller’s point of view and vice versa. So please take the time to listen to both episodes. Until then, have a great day and thanks for listening.  

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