Meredith Hyland’s story is a bit like a contemporary fairy tale. While working at Citibank in Paris, in 2008 she met Brahim Sadouni. Six months later they were married, spending their honeymoon in Provence. A yr later, they moved to Clinton, New Jersey, where Mrs. Hyland lived as a teen and thought of a house, buying a small house on essentially the most sought-after street in the town.
By 2013, the couple had opened Fourchette, a cheese and olive oil shop on Main Street. They expanded into bedding and homewares and purchased a downtown constructing to deal with their shop. In 2015, they sold their house and purchased three houses down, a four-bedroom house from the Nineteen Thirties. Soon after, they came upon that the girl they bought it from also lived of their previous house, 40 years earlier.
If you are wondering why anyone would depart the City of Lights and move to a 1.3-square-mile town in downtown New Jersey, it is sensible for this couple.
“Quite a lot of persons are on the lookout for any such lifestyle,” said Hyland, 44, who left banking in 2021 to concentrate on Fourchette, which now has a second store (and can soon have a 3rd). “Clinton is a small but elegant city where everyone seems to be fascinated about the nice things in life.”
Mr. Sadouni, 55, who grew up on a farm in Algeria, also adopted Clinton. She said: “He’s captivated with the people here and has a number of supporters. People bring their children to see the person with the cheese.
While Mrs. Hyland knew Clinton, many individuals first encounter this idyllic Hunterdon County town as tourists, visiting the eclectic shops on Main Street and the 2 Nineteenth-century mills which were converted into museums that sit opposite one another across the river. Some find yourself staying.
“People are moving here from everywhere in the country,” said Brian Glynn, 78, a Berkshire Hathaway agent who lives on the outskirts of the town. “It’s quaint, historic, and the persons are very friendly.”
Kierra and Anthony Grippa were living in Westchester County after they discovered Clinton after searching the web for “cute NJ towns” to search out a spot halfway to satisfy a Pennsylvania friend for lunch. “When we first arrived, I said, ‘I need to live here,’ never really considering we might find yourself here,” recalls Ms. Grippa, 41, a special education teacher in New York City who grew up in Southern California.
When Mr. Grippa, now 41, got a job on the Rutgers University Foundation in New Brunswick, NJ, two years ago, the couple began serious about buying their first home. They searched Westchester and Central New Jersey before bidding for a 1998 three-bedroom townhouse in Clinton with a finished basement. They closed in December, paying $405,000.
“It was obvious,” said Ms Grippa. “We got every part we were on the lookout for – an apartment in a stupendous area, not removed from my husband’s administrative center and still only an hour from the town. And we paid about half the value of the identical sort of house in Westchester.”
She wanted her family, including a 3-year-old and a 1-year-old, to experience the sense of community living in a small town and to have access to the character surrounding Clinton. “I like the concept of being somewhere within the suburbs and within the countryside. We go to the stands and visit the alpaca farm,” she said. “They’ll get a taste of art and culture, but after five or ten minutes’ drive, you will be on a farm or in nature.”
What will you discover
The town of Clinton is small and historic – to not be confused with the 34-mile suburban Clinton Township that surrounds it. It is positioned next to limestone cliffs and the Spruce Run Reservoir and is bisected by Interstate 78 and the South Branch Raritan River. The 175-acre Clinton Historic District, which was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1995, runs east–west along Main and Center Streets, and north–south along Leigh Street.
Two of the oldest buildings are Red Mill, an 1810 constructing in the middle of Red Mill Museum Village, considered one of the state’s most photographed locations, and Dunham’s Mill, an 1836 stone mill which now houses the Hunterdon Art Museum. Nearby is Clinton House, considered one of New Jersey’s oldest repeatedly operating restaurants.
Center Street rises up from the downtown shopping district, offering quite a few examples of Colonial, Federal, Italianate and Victorian architecture, although houses on this highly coveted street rarely come available on the market, Mr Glynn said: “When people get these places, I don’t need quit on them.”
Outside the historic center are residential neighborhoods with more modest mid-Twentieth-century homes and newer pocket-sized neighborhoods south of I-78. Halstead Place, a 35-unit apartment complex that opened in 2017, is near the town’s northern boundary. Another apartment complex, View 22, will open soon on the premises of the A. & P. supermarket at Stara Trasa 22, offering 120 apartments, including 24 within the reasonably priced category.
Homes and businesses near the Raritan River are within the flood zone and a few have been damaged in recent storms. Janice Kovach, mayor of Clinton and a longtime resident, said she is well aware of her city’s appeal to tourists and her role in maintaining that relationship while answering to voters. “We’re a community driven by museums and small businesses, and we wish to maintain them profitable,” said Ms. Kovach. “But our broader goal is to preserve what we have now – the charm and great thing about this place.”
What will you pay for
Few houses on this town of roughly 2,700 persons are available on the market at any given time. In the second week of March, there have been only 4: an 1870 three-bedroom Victorian for $450,000, a 1953 three-bedroom ranch for $495,000, a three-bedroom townhouse for $410,000, and a two-bedroom townhouse for $153,320 USD. . There were also two quarter-acre lots on the market, each for $170,000.
In 2022, 27 single-family homes sold for a mean price of $500,000, up 13.6 percent from 2021, when greater than 35 homes sold for a mean of $440,000, in keeping with New Jersey Realtors . Over the identical period, the typical price of townhouses increased 15.5 percent: 11 sold in 2022 for a median of $381,000 and 15 sold in 2021 for a median of $330,000.
In the second week of March, there have been three apartments on Halstead Place for rent, starting from $1,840 for a one-bedroom to $4,225 for a big two-bedroom.
Climate
The Main Street Bridge, a steel truss span in-built 1870 that seems more suitable for carriages than cars, leads straight into the colourful Clinton shopping district, where colourful and architecturally attractive buildings house quirky places like Karen’s Dollhouse Shop, Kilhaney’s Pickles, Charlie’s Bootery and Dawgs Design Hot Dog Shop.
On the corner is the favored hangout Citispot Tea & Coffee, where owner Mark Zhutianli brews exceptional coffees while working on the script for his next documentary concerning the city. “We have a number of very talented and artistic people here, and this documentary goals to focus on that,” said Zhutianli, 53, who moved to Clinton from New York 22 years ago.
Many of the town’s cultural events are held at its two museums, and the river draws crowds of athletes for the primary day of trout fishing in early April and the annual rubber duck races in early July.
schools
They are attended by students from kindergarten through eighth grade who live in Clinton or neighboring Glen Gardner Clinton Public School. For the 2020-21 school yr, 426 students enrolled in the college, of whom 71 percent identified as Caucasian, 18 percent as Hispanic, 6 percent as Asian, and 4 percent as Black.
For high schools, Clinton and Glen Gardner students can attend either North Hunterdon Regional High School in Annandale or Voorhees High School in Glen Gardner where they’re joined by others from 10 boroughs.
Both schools are highly rated and offer 23 Advanced Placement courses. In 2020-21 North Hunterdon had around 1,350 pupils; average SAT scores were 598 in reading and writing and 602 in math. In 2020-21, Voorhees High School had roughly 816 students; average SAT scores were 578 in reading and writing and 576 in math. (State averages were 578 in reading and writing and 576 in math.)
36,000 square feet polytechnic facility it’s currently being built at North Hunterdon Regional High School to expand vocational programs.
Private school options include Immaculate Conception School, an Annandale Catholic school for Kindergarten to Eighth grade students, and Hunterdon Preparatory School, an Annandale school offering individualized tuition for college kids in Years Seven to Twelve.
Commuting
Commuters can reach New York about 52 miles east via I-78 and the journey takes about 75 minutes. Most take the Trans-Bridge Lines bus on Center Street, which takes just over an hour to Port Authority in Manhattan and costs around $35 a technique or $495 for a 30-ride ticket.
New Jersey Transit offers train service to Annandale; the journey takes lower than two hours. Tickets cost $16.25 a technique or $463 for a monthly pass.
History
IN In October 1891, a fireplace raged for just a few days on st. Since the town didn’t have its own fire department, the mayor called the neighboring towns for help, consequently of which several firms and buildings were destroyed. Six months later, Clinton Steam Engine Company No. 1 was formed; lots of its 40 founding members were merchants who lost their businesses in the hearth. Its first act was the acquisition of a hand-drawn or horse-drawn steam locomotive, with water supplied by the river.
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