A year of adventures at New Park

It’s been just over a year since Sara Abernethy purchased the property of her dreams and launched a new business venture all on the same day. She’d been searching for a place to live with the option of a few vacation rental units, but nothing she imagined prepared her for what she found — New Park Event Venue and Suites on Taughannock Boulevard in Ithaca.

Working with local realtor Grace Petrisin, Abernethy saw countless properties and made several offers before New Park came on the market and onto her radar.

“Every deal that fell through brought me closer to finding this property,” Abernethy said. “My purchase of New Park was the culmination of several plans that all went sideways, but none were as grand as New Park. Once I saw it, I knew it had to be my next step.”

Abernethy’s New Park is a “boutique hotel and event center where every room is a work of art,” according to its website, newparkeventvenue.com. The property features two fire pits, winding gardens, a stone picnic area, event spaces, a dog park (yes, it’s dog friendly!) and a common room with a wood-burning fireplace called the Wish Room.

Upon entering the gate, visitors get the sense they are entering a whimsical hobbit village with magic hidden in every nook and cranny. There is the elephant mural made of stones and fossils from the lakeshore, the custom stained glass window of the Finger Lakes and a room key from the Cayuga Motel (formerly located on the site) hidden in a corner of kitchen stonework.

“It hasn’t been an easy year, but it has been a rewarding one,” Abernethy said on the anniversary of her closing. “There were lots of hiccups, but it was all worth it in the end.”

New Park’s social media page lists some of the noteworthy accomplishments of that first year, including renovating and redecorating the rooms, building a team to manage the property and putting New Park on the map as an event venue.

“I was nervous about hosting events at first,” Abernethy said. “I thought, ‘How am I going to have an event venue without a commercial kitchen?’”

Her worries proved to be unwarranted, as feedback from local caterers like Serendipity, Gola Osteria, Silo Food Truck and Northstar House has been overwhelmingly positive.

“I’ve found that caterers are very self-sufficient,” Abernethy said. “They’d prefer to use their own kitchens where they have all the equipment and ingredients they need. We have a large tent where they can drive up to off load and set up the food and drink stations. It’s worked really well for events.”

As it turns out, the lack of a kitchen or a food service license posed a bigger problem for the accommodations side of the business. Remaining open through the winter and maintaining a year-round staff was important to Abernethy, but it meant relying heavily on overnight guests.

“We wanted to give our guests a breakfast experience, but we couldn’t do justice to a breakfast buffet,” Abernethy said. “We knew that many of them were heading out for full days of hiking or wine tasting, college visits or site seeing. Granola bars and fruit just weren’t going to cut it.”

Abernathy and Accommodations Manager Rebecca Lees racked their brains to come up with an acceptable solution, but it wasn’t until Abernathy was on vacation herself that the answer presented itself and New Park’s new breakfast program was conceived.

“I can’t claim it as an original idea,” Abernethy said. “I was staying in a hotel in Miami, and they offered vouchers for the restaurant next door because the hotel’s kitchen was closed. I thought, ‘This is great! That’s all I need!’”

New Park is now partnering with four local restaurants — Falls Restaurant and Catering, Main Street Market and Creekside Cafe in Trumansburg and Sunset Grill in Ithaca — to provide made-to-order breakfast at each location.

“When a guest books a room through New Park’s website (newparkeventvenue.com), they will receive breakfast vouchers for each person and for each day of their stay,” Lees said. “The vouchers can be mixed and matched. In other words, guests can try a different restaurant every day, and they can order what they want from the menu.”

For example, a visiting tourist can go to Falls Restaurant on Wednesday before heading to Taughannock Falls, to Sunset Grill on Thursday before heading to Buttermilk Falls and Creekside Cafe on Friday before heading home.

“We are excited to offer our guests a more full-service experience and to partner with local restaurants in our community.” Abernethy said. “We
hand-selected a few locally owned businesses that we personally enjoy eating at. We also considered what days they’re open, ability to meet dietary restrictions and location.”

The breakfast voucher program is very new, so reviews are limited, but it seems to be going well.

“Guests really appreciate the option of a hot breakfast, and they like the flexibility offered by multiple locations,” Lees said. “I’ve only heard good things so far!”

The restaurants involved are also happy to be part of this new partnership. Charlie Stadtlander at Creekside Cafe said he’d already seen several customers using the vouchers from New Park.

“It’s a nice thing to see community businesses supporting one another,” Stadtlander said. “It’s good exposure for all of us, and it promotes tourism.”

Supporting other small businesses seems to be a theme at New Park. From the local artisans whose stone, glass and woodwork abounds in every corner of the property; to the caterers and cake decorators, photographers and musicians needed for weddings and other large events; to the multitude of lodging and dining establishments that benefit from increased tourism and overflow, New Park is definitely a boon to the local economy.

“Besides that, they’re just nice people,” Stadtlander said.

Now that their first year is behind them, Abernethy and Lees are looking forward and still dreaming big.

“I like to make a lot of plans and see which ones take,” Abernethy said. “I think there is still a lot of growth to be had within the property and within the area as well.”

2022 looks to be a good year at New Park, with a full season of weddings already booked including two with hobbit themes!

Food for Thought appears in the third edition each month of Tompkins Weekly. Send story ideas to editorial@vizellamedia.com.