Cultivating Hudson: Enter the Tastemakers Hudson, Curated Robert Wright for The New York Times HUDSON, N.Y. - Ann Marie Gardner has a buzzword for the "urban-rural confluence" she sees fueling this town's most recent boomlet as a cultural hub. "Rurbanism," as she describes it, is when urban expats bring their cultural touchstones and appetites with them when they move to a place like Hudson. "It's the borderless and simple, tasteful aesthetic of merging the rural with the urban," she said, like muck boots with dresses. It's a design-savvy life, but a real one. Rurbanism is also the paradigm for her year-old magazine, the culturally pitch-perfect and archly designed Modern Farmer, with its articles on architected sheepshearing shacks in Tasmania, its goat cams and its young editorial staff, many of whom moved here from San Francisco. Modern Farmer's offices are part of a new wave of businesses on Warren Street - including art galleries, music spaces, design and housewares stores, and restaurants - which mark this moment in Hudson's ongoing regeneration, reflecting the taste and sensibilities of its new residents, a cross section of the members of the creative classes from Manhattan, Brooklyn, San Francisco and several European countries. There's Alexandra Dewez, 40, a French lighting designer and artist who has lived, variously, in Manhattan; Middleburg, Va.; and, most recently, London. She arrived in Hudson last year to open a home goods store, Harvey's Counter, which she named after a beloved horse. Ms. Dewez, who has had her share of hard knocks (a serious car accident, a divorce), sees Hudson as a salubrious and supportive next life chapter. She has her eye on a building she aims to turn into Harvey's B&B, or what she described as a "curated" - you hear that word a lot here - bed-and-breakfast that will reflect her eclectic aesthetic, showcasing furniture, objects and artwork that guests will be able to buy. Andrew Arrick, 44, and Michael Hofemann, 49, moved here full-time last year as well, selling their loft in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and opening Finch, an artfully conceived and expansive home store that mixes flea-market finds and farm tables, contemporary European furniture, John Derian ceramics and vintage modern pieces with work by local artists, art books and candles, unguents and jewelry. Mr. Arrick had worked in fashion and Mr. Hofemann as a marketing executive; they had been weekenders here for years. Like those of so many of their new retail neighbors, their store is a second and, they hope, vital career: They wanted to work for themselves while they were still young enough to make a go of it, Mr. Arrick said. "Hudson is evolving," he added. It's always on the verge of something, but now it does seem like there's a lot of momentum being built. There's this great urban vibe you don't find in other rural towns. "Life, Curated," is Finch's subtitle, but it could be a descriptor for the new Warren Street. In a sleek shop window across the street labeled House, there's a tractor seat affixed to the base of a vintage office chair below a mask by Donald Baechler. Is it a gallery? Another home-design store? It turns out to be the real estate firm of James Male, who is also a landscape designer. His storefront, he said, reflects his business model and the interests of his clientele, who aren't coming to Hudson "just for the farmers" market and the mountain views," he said. They come because it's a small American city, still a little rough around the edges, that they hope to make a life in. It was a year ago, too, that Chuck Rosenthal, 51, left his graphic design business in San Francisco and bought a building on the 700 block here. With its plywood furniture (designed by Mr. Rosenthal), its sculptural cookware and elegant package designs, his store, Valley Variety, recalls Design Research, the "70s-era department store in Harvard Square that introduced Americans to Marimekko, Hans Wegner and European cookware. Mr. Rosenthal is living above the store, on the third floor. On the second floor, he is creating a highly designed rental apartment to tempt the aesthetically minded tourists he hopes his shop will draw. "It's maybe the last big career chapter of my life," he said. I didn't want to be working in a client-driven profession anymore. And I wanted that small-town life. He toured a lot of Hudson Valley towns, he said, before settling on this one, which had the density he craved: "A lot of other towns are only a few blocks long, and I like the mix of people here. It reminds me of San Francisco. From his store, which has been open since October, you can see the old Hudson Tennis Center, the future home of the Marina Abramovic Institute, where the performance artist hopes to school cultural tourists in her durational ways starting in 2016. Her plans, said Christopher Coleman, a Manhattan designer with a house in nearby Taghkanic, spurred him to open a shop here last month, renovating what was once a liquor store into a slick, white box - another, yes, "highly curated" design shop. "I felt like it was my last chance to get in before the town explodes," he said. What some are referring to as "the Marina effect" may be ephemeral, said Kathy Duffy, the managing associate broker in Gary DiMauro Real Estate's Hudson office, but it's an example of the sort of creative capital that has been pouring in over the last few years. Basilica Hudson is a thriving cultural venue in a former glue factory on Hudson's waterfront that opened three years ago. Three years ago, Melissa Auf der Maur, 41, once a bassist for Hole and Smashing Pumpkins, and her husband, Tony Stone, an artist and filmmaker, bought and rehabbed a former glue factory, turning it into the thriving cultural venue known as Basilica Hudson. Reviewing Basilica's annual arts festival last fall, Ben Ratliff of The New York Times described Hudson as a place "where taste has become serious sport." That year, 2011, Etsy, the online crafts emporium, took over two floors of an atmospheric 19th-century mill building for its customer-care staff of 42, which continues to grow. On a recent afternoon, young Etsy-ers clapped when visitors came through for a tour, and the office dogs barked a greeting. Whether or not the Marina effect is real, Ms. Duffy averred that the "market here is gangbusters. We've never had buildings on Warren Street for over a million before. Two years ago, they were maybe $400,000. Ten years ago, you couldn't give them away. As for the Warren Street rents, she added, last year's average was about $1,600 a month; now they are close to twice that, at about $2,800. Mr. Coleman is paying $2,300, a deal in New York City, but a jaw-dropper for the area. It was those property values that Drew Lang, a Manhattan architect, calculated into his high-end, design-forward development, Hudson Woods, in Kerhonkson, about an hour south of Hudson. The project, which one observer wryly called "a locally sourced, high-end Levittown for weekending New Yorkers," will have 26 modernist barns on about five acres each. The houses will have finishes, furniture and hardware by local artisans, and will feature all sorts of "upgrades," including beehives, vegetable gardens and orchards cared for by a property manager, as well as guesthouses, tree houses and pools. They are stunningly designed and competitively priced, by New York standards at least, in the high $600,000s. Mr. Lang is betting that "there is a density of creative people in the area," he said, who will appreciate his flourishes and amenities. Either directly creative people, like writers and artists, or people in other fields who are interested in things that are design-forward. Like people, of course, draw other like people. Sam Pratt, 45, a graphic designer and writer, and Laetitia Hussain, 37, an artist, are presumably part of that contingent, although they are unlikely to buy into Mr. Lang's development. They are living in high bohemian style in a studio on Warren Street, where Ms. Hussain, who has worked in a number of media, including furniture, likes to drag home felled tree limbs and other natural objects. Assemblages in the studio of Laetitia Hussain, a local artist who showed at Basilica Hudson last February, covering the floor with 1,000 white geometric forms. Scott Benedict Mr. Pratt has been in Hudson since 1998, and has seen the waves of boom and bust: the crack houses that were taken over by the vintage furniture stores, and then the antiques dealers, whose businesses sagged in the early 2000s. He has become a Hudson apologist, and his blog chronicles the antics of local politicians, star chefs and real estate developers. He is also a committed activist, having "lost seven years of my life," he said, to fighting a plan to start a coal-fired cement plant on the waterfront here. But Mr. Pratt and Ms. Hussain are representative of just one segment of the population here. The city's demographics tell a story of two or even three cities. With a population of just over 6,700, nearly unchanged since 2000, more than 25 percent of Hudson's residents are below the poverty line. Nearly 10 percent of its work force, however, is self-employed, as it is in San Francisco and Los Angeles. The national average, according to the 2010 census, is 6.5 percent. Small, one-man or one-woman businesses can be a boon to cities like Hudson, in that they revitalize once-derelict properties. But they don't directly help the job situation. Also, retail is precarious. One former Warren Street antiques dealer, Michiel van Dijk, now in his mid-40s, closed his Amsterdam Antiques store in 2002, when the business leaked away, and became a high-end contractor and real estate broker. Three years ago, he and his wife, Monique Heeremans, turned their 1850s Italianate house in nearby Tivoli, which once belonged to Saul Bellow and Bard College, into a boutique hotel called Ham House. It is impeccably restored and decorated, as it happens, with the leftover stock from their store: 19th-century Northern European and midcentury antiques. To survive here, he said, you have to be nimble: "We've lived through a couple of revivals." Marie Balle, 47, is the proprietor of Look Hudson, a three-year-old vintage and contemporary clothing store on Warren Street and a member of the Hudson Antiques Dealers Association, which includes all manner of retailers and has just over 60 members. "How do you spread regeneration north of Warren Street?" asked Ms. Balle, who is also the secretary of the local Democratic committee. How do you insure that regeneration doesn't lead to gentrification that kicks everybody out? These are complicated questions, and there are no easy answers. In the last decade, Mr. Pratt said, store owners like Ms. Balle "were making a huge leap right at the edge of their budgets. Now, you are seeing slicker operations. He added: "Warren Street is getting a little bit twee, and it seems like every store has a subtitle. Because it's a small town populated with a lot of people with taste, there is a lot of griping about gentrification. Hudson has a lot of social issues, but the alternative is going back to a lot of boarded-up storefronts. Also, as he pointed out, there is no group more self-consciously activist and devoted to giving back than the "Upper West Siders and East Villagers and Brooklynites" who are moving here. "They are almost painfully conscious about giving back and fitting in," he said. For her part, Ms. Auf der Maur of Basilica Hudson said she doesn't shop on Warren Street. But she approves of "the care people are putting into these stores," she said. They are not millionaires. They are taking a big risk. Coming here and investing is a wild card. It has to be people who are willing to take risks. That's why it's good for the young. She continued: "It's way too politically, culturally and economically conflicted here for this not to be dangerous for everyone. That said, there are a lot of socially conscious people putting a lot of time and energy into this place. With the moving comes a responsibility. And what of Ms. Abramovic? "She steps in and out of our factory like a dark angel," Ms. Auf der Maur said. And gives us her blessing. There is nothing wilder than the idea of a conceptual art center. It's a freaky wild card, just like the rest of Hudson, and I think it's got potential.