How Bucks County, Pennsylvania became a celebrity hotspot

It's hard to pinpoint exactly when things started to change, but it might start with the arrival of Yolanda Hadid in 2017.

Hadid, a former “Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” regular, bought a farm outside New Hope, Pennsylvania, to be closer to her daughters, models Gigi Hadid and Bella Hadid, who were living in New York City at the time. .

The 32-acre property, complete with a stone farmhouse, stables and landscaped gardens, became a family retreat, filling the Hadi family's social media feeds with idyllic images. It was filled with photos of Gigi wearing a two-piece swimsuit and posing with a bowl of freshly picked vegetables. Vegetables next to a patch of basil. Yolanda wears black boots, blue jeans, and a puffer vest, showing off her mountain of freshly cut lavender.

“We ride horses and we have a vegetable garden,” Yolanda told the Toronto Star in 2018, explaining her country life with her famous daughters, who have 140 million followers on Instagram. said.

The Hadid family's presence has drawn other notables to Bucks County, a wooded area known for its rolling hills and 12 covered bridges. In 2018, British pop singer Zayn Malik, who was dating Gigi, bought the farm there. “It's quiet,” he said in an interview with British Vogue. “There's no such thing as a human being.” People magazine broke the news that Gigi gave birth to the couple's daughter at their Bucks County home in 2020.

The following year, quiet Bucks County again received media attention when TMZ and Billboard reported on an altercation between Mr. Malik, Gigi, and Yolanda at one of the country houses. Malik, who faced four harassment charges, pleaded no contest and was sentenced to 360 days of probation. After this incident, he and Gigi broke up.

In 2023, actor/writer/director Bradley Cooper, who is widely reported to have succeeded Malik as Gigi's boyfriend, will own a 33-acre gentleman's farm near Yolanda's property. Purchased for $6.5 million. Leonardo DiCaprio, Justin and Hailey Bieber were then spotted locally. Julianne Moore and Sidney Sweeney were filming in Lambertville, New Jersey, just across the Delaware River from New Hope.

Suddenly, New Hope and its quaint neighboring towns became celebrity enclaves. While the census may have fewer celebrities per acre than the Hamptons, Malibu, or Aspen, the area's desirability index has been on the rise.

Located between Philadelphia and Manhattan, New Hope has long been a haven for wealthy part-time residents. The surrounding countryside has been compared to England's Cotswolds, and the area's artists and artisans add a bohemian touch to the rustic. But for the past few decades, weekend visitors have tended to be Philadelphia lawyers and business executives rather than supermodels, Hollywood actors and pop stars.

Michael Arenella, a musician and founder of the annual Jazz Age Lawn Party on Governors Island, bought a weekend home in Bucks County in 2014 while living in Brooklyn. Believing he had chosen a location well off the map, he began living there full-time two years later.

“Beacon is like Brooklyn 2.0,” said Arenella, 46, of the Hudson Valley, nicknamed “Bro No,” an abbreviation for Brooklyn North, because of its large population of former Brooklynites. He talked about the town. “I wanted to get away from New Yorkers. Bucks County is not that pretentious.”

But lately, Arenella has been seeing more New York license plates in and around New Hope. Beyond sightings of Gigi Hadid and Jacob Dylan, another famous transplant, there are other signs of change in the area.

The modest inn was renovated to attract new customers, and several luxury hotels sprung up, including the River House at Odets. River House at Odets has an average nightly rate of $560 on a Saturday in November, and a private rooftop club membership costs $1,250 annually.

Philadelphia magazine cited the hotel and its restaurant as the most prominent example of a “new New Hope.” Opened in 2020 by a group of investors that included DuPont executive chairman Ed Breen, the hotel was built on the site of Chez Odette, a restaurant and cabaret run by eccentric French actress and poet Odette Miltil. .

Along with Bucks County Playhouse, which opened in 1939 and featured stars such as Grace Kelly and Robert Redford, Odette's came to symbolize New Hope's bohemian culture. It was closed in 2007 after three consecutive floods hit the town, and the stone building that housed it was painstakingly relocated to another site, where it is now an empty lot.

Located just above the Delaware River in Stockton, New Jersey, population 494, the historic Stockton Inn recently reopened after a two-year renovation. The owners hired a James Beard Award winner to manage the property and its two restaurants. We also opened Stockton Market, a gourmet cafe selling Frankie's 457 olive oil and matcha made in-store. Nearby, another upscale restaurant, Northridge Restaurant, opened last month after spending three years renovating a weathered barn on the grounds of the Woolverton Inn.

Real estate values ​​are skyrocketing in the area, where the musty, low-ceilinged 19th-century mega-mansions are soaring. “Old farmhouses in Bucks County are now being blown up and expanded into real estate,” said Michael J., a real estate agent with Curfis Sotheby's International Realty who moved to Bucks County full time from Manhattan in 2000. Strickland said.

He added that part of the appeal is that “real estate values ​​are still available here, as opposed to the Hamptons.”

“We’re all from Brooklyn.”

Mira Nakajima has seen this change up close. She moved to New Hope in 1943 as a child. Her father, George Nakashima, is a woodworker and designer whose sculptural tables and chairs are on display at New York's Museum of Modern Art and are currently selling for thousands of dollars at auction.

Mira took over George Nakashima Woodworks after his death in 1990 and still operates the workshop complex he built on a tree-lined lot above town. Sitting at a walnut table built by her father, Mila, 82, recalled how the old New Hope was modest and artistic.

“A lot of landscape painters came because the landscape was so beautiful,” she said. “There was fishing going on in the river, and there were canals on both sides of the river, and it was quiet and peaceful.”

For many years, Nakajima Woodworks has held open houses on Saturdays. Mila said the grounds have recently become too crowded, so they are now offering guided tours by reservation.

“They're all from Brooklyn. When they come here, it smells like Brooklyn,” added Soumi Khan Amagas, Mira's daughter-in-law and the studio's sales manager. “So many young people are coming here.”

But you won't find Williamsburg on the Delaware. New Hope's commercial drag still has a hippie vibe, distinct from the increasingly sophisticated retail feel of the Brooklyn neighborhood, which is lined with Hermès and Chanel stores.

Flagship stores include Witch Shop Gypsy Heaven, Magicaba Teahouse, and Love Saves the Day, a vintage goods retailer formerly located in New York's East Village. Another store sells tie-dye rock T-shirts. These places, along with homely bars and affordable restaurants, attract out-of-town teens, twenty-somethings, and other day trippers, and the streets are crowded on weekends.

Larry Keller, New Hope's mayor for the past 27 years and an antiques dealer in the town, says the lack of high-end stores like those found in East Hampton is by design. Also, national chain stores are not very popular in this town. After Starbucks and Dunkin' moved in, the city council changed city planning laws to favor local businesses.

“We don't have the square footage,” Keller said, referring to the small store. “Where can Ralph Lauren set up a store and sell enough gear? These are boutiques.”

One of New Hope's shops was chosen by Gigi Hadid. Ditto Vintage on Brick Street. Last winter, Hadid stopped by and bought a Nahui Olin handbag, leather jacket and necklace.

Nearby Lambertville has several upscale stores. Albacher Gallery sells contemporary art and a variety of found objects. Ten Church offers vintage clothing. Lago Arts and Auction Center sells Nakajima's works and other design goods. Lambertville is also on the foodie map. Canal House Station, a converted 1870s train station serving American cuisine, has earned a Michelin star.

Back on the Pennsylvania side of the bridge, there are signs that New Hope is in the early stages of renovation. The building that houses Farley's Bookshop, which opened in 1967, has recently been renovated and transformed into a bright, modern space. A few doors down, a shabby indoor mini-mall had been transformed into a ferry market and food hall. A high-end eyewear store, “KITTO OPTICAL,'' has opened on the same block.

Katsutoshi Tenkasu, 21, a member of the Nakajima family who grew up in New Hope, joked, “The French fries served at restaurants have become truffle fries.''

Some of the town's buildings date back to colonial times, like the Logan Inn, circa 1727. But at the northern end of the residential area, beyond the historic preserve, Victorian homes overlooking the river have been bulldozed and replaced with modernist buildings befitting Bel Air. On an adjacent vacant lot, builders promise to build four luxury condominiums with terraces, elevators and private docks. The asking price for each unit is $3.5 million.

Berkshire Hathaway real estate agent Lorraine Eastman said riverbanks have been built to the point where parts of the Delaware River are no longer visible to passersby. Eastman lived in New Hope in the '80s, then moved to Los Angeles and returned seven years ago.

“I bartended with Big Sue, who was 6 feet 1 inch tall, wore size 13 motorcycle boots, smoked cigars, and sang jazz,” she said on South Main Street. I remember working at John and Peter's, a bar and rock club in the United States. We are still open. “I lived in a loft on Ferry Street, which is now the Nurture Spa. 'New Hope' was very artistic, very gritty, very bohemian. Those qualities were… There are still a few left, but things are changing.”

Eat, Pray, Spend

Like many picturesque small towns, New Hope appears to have been discovered by city dwellers who have gobbled up real estate during the pandemic, driving up real estate prices.

“People are always looking for places to go that are hidden away in fairytale little towns,” Eastman said. She recently put her renovated 1769 farmhouse on the market, complete with a 37-acre pool and “party” barn, for $4.5 million.

Celebrity residents aren't exactly new either. Paul Simon had a weekend home in Bucks County in the early '70s. Most recently, Eat, Pray, Love author Elizabeth Gilbert lived 26 miles north in Frenchtown, New Jersey.

But the presence of the Hadids and Mr. Cooper, who grew up outside Philadelphia, gave the area an allure and whetted the appetite of developers and entrepreneurs.

Another hospitality project is nearing completion in the hamlet of Carversville, Pennsylvania, a few miles from Yolanda Hadid's mansion.

Milan Lint and her husband, Mitch Berlin, who each have careers in finance in New York, are renovating the Carversville Inn, a circa 1813 stone building the couple purchased in 2020.

Standing in the midst of construction one morning last month, Mr. Lint, who has owned a weekend home with Mr. Berlin in Bucks County for 20 years, talked about his plans for the soon-to-open space.

Lindt said the new Carversville Inn will be a European-style boutique hotel with six rooms priced at around $500 a night. The 65-seat restaurant will feature a “French brasserie menu with Pastis and Balthazar-inspired offerings” and will feature some of Manhattan's heavyweights, Lindt added.

When asked why Mr. Lindt and Mr. Berlin chose Bucks County for their adventure rather than, say, the Hudson Valley, Mr. Lindt recalled memories of dull, rainy summers spent in the area.

“The Hudson Valley is very pocket-heavy and weather-dependent,” he says. “We have towns up and down the river here. You can spend a full weekend here in all four seasons of the year.”