Valley Vines : Out of the house and into the warehouse for small-business owner | New Jewish Community Center in Rockland County

Valley Vines

Out of the house and into the warehouse for small-business owner

Eileen Piasecki-Couch, owner of Pine Island Head & Spice Co.

After 15 years, Eileen Piasecki-Couch has finally gotten out of the kitchen. “It’s about time,” says the owner of Pine Island Herb & Spice Company, who finally moved her business out of her home and into the former A&P warehouse in downtown Pine Island.

Her new 1,500-square-foot office-warehouse space is just the right fit for the products she has in mind. “There are just some things you can’t do from home, and now I don’t have all the distractions,” says Piasecki-Couch. “I’ll be able to work on expanding my product line to include pastas and soup mixes. I’m experimenting with new spices, too.”

“Local businesses have really helped me become successful,” she continued. “Adams Fairacre Farms and our local orchards Soon’s, Pennings and Ochs have been regularly selling my products. We just got a new order from Rogowski, and that’s great news.” Piasecki-Couch will participate in Bethel Woods’ harvest festival, which begins late August and runs through October.

Breaking the barrier into the larger retail chains has been “difficult, that’s the best way to describe it,” says Couch. “They have national brands they would be asking to compete with us, and most don’t want to go there … so we’re grateful to our Hudson Valley community merchants and to people who shop locally.”

Piasecki-Couch eventually hopes to have a small storefront where she can showcase her wares. “I’ll have to wait until my accountant lets me know what shape I’m in at the end of the year,” she laughed. Until then, you’ll find Pine Island Herb & Spice on local shelves or on the Web at www.pineislandherb.com.

New Jewish Community Center in Rockland County

Allan Eisenkraft, former president of the Westchester County Board of Realtors and baseball collector, pitches his pet project.

After meeting for 31 years at his house, Allan Eisenkraft and the board of the Jewish Community Center figured it was time to find a place where the organization could house all its many community services under one roof.

Eisenkraft spent most of his commercial real estate career in downtown Yonkers, the fourth-largest city in the state and biggest in Westchester County, turning the former Alexander Smith carpet mills into what became the Nepperhan Business Center. The 150,000-square-foot office complex was later joined by Nepperhan Plaza, another Eisenkraft project built across the street. He sold off the properties in 2005 and turned his attention closer to home.

The former 15-acre Champion Paper property in West Nyack was sitting on the market, and Eisenkraft helped broker the deal to buy the property. For the past two years, construction to retrofit the 135,000-square-foot building into what Eisenkraft predicts will be “the biggest Jewish Community Center in the Hudson Valley maybe the entire U.S.!” has been ongoing.

The new center is scheduled to open in December, complete with dozens of multipurpose rooms designed to serve “all members from cradle to grave,” declared the enthusiastic Eisenkraft. Plans to add an indoor lap pool as well as a handicapped-accessible pool are in the works for 2008. “We want to be able to offer every conceivable service to our members,” says the Realtor-developer and community advocate.

These days, you’ll find Eisenkraft in the construction trailer outside the future center on West Nyack Road, recruiting new members on a daily basis. “So far, we’ve signed up more than 1,200 families and we expect to double that number before we officially open.” While he’s still active in the Westchester commercial real estate market (“Yonkers, the sleeping giant, is finally waking up!”), he’s more apt to pull out pictures of grandchildren and envisions them enjoying the new center.

Eisenkraft, who once aspired to be a journalist and is an avid baseball collector, is now pitching to his Rockland community to join the new center or to become a sponsor preferably both.

Stageworks presents Nixon-era comedy

Actress Annette Miller plays the talkative wife of Richard Nixon's Attorney General John Mitchell.

Shades of Watergate! Just as members of Congress are circulating a resolution to censure President Bush, Stageworks Hudson presents “Martha Mitchell Calling.” The former attorney general’s wife’s famous late-night phone calls were tabloid fodder during the 1970s. Back then, it was no laughing matter to a nation torn by Richard Nixon’s resignation from the presidency, but this production focuses on Mitchell’s madcap mischief. The play runs through Sept. 9. Visit www.stageworkshudson.org for times, tickets and other information. Bring along your “Princess” telephone for an extra dash of nostalgia!

New businesses come on board in the Valley:

Gator Done Lawn Care alligators chomping on the fescue?

Road to Success Defensive Driving sure beats Road to Perdition Offensive Driving!

Kitchen Heroes the ones who stick around to do the dishes.

Beck’s Blessed Massage Therapy We suspect no amount of clever marketing will make shoulder rubs a sacrament.

Rough Terrain Sports For off-road aficionados, this must be the place!

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