Both of Pine Plains' Paths Back to a Grocery Store Still Need a Grocer

Peck's Market didn't close with a sign on the door. As The New Pine Plains Herald told it, the shelves thinned and the hours changed. By late September 2025 the lights at the Church Street store were off, and the phone number that had been part of family routines for decades played a short recording: "Your call is currently suspended, please try later."

That ended 103 years in business and left Pine Plains without a grocery store for the first time in more than a century. Fourteen months later the town has two ways back to one. One runs through the old Peck's building at 2991 Church St. The other runs through a vacant hardware-store site on South Main Street. They differ in almost every way except one. Each still needs a grocer willing to stock the shelves.

What fourteen months without a market looks like on Church Street

The closure moved more than the grocery run. Business owners on Church Street told the Herald that their own trade depended on it. Michel Jean, who runs the French restaurant Champêtre with Patricia Jean, described the link this way in the Herald's November 2025 report: "some people come to get food there, and then at the same time they come to a restaurant. Now they go somewhere else for groceries, and they will go for another restaurant." In the same report, Gautam Patel of Pine Plains Fine Wine and Spirits said customers had come from Gallatin, Shekomeko and Elizaville to shop for groceries and pick up a bottle on the same trip. Once the store closed, they bought wine wherever they went for groceries instead. Storybook Café, right next door to Peck's, felt the same drop in foot traffic.

What's left in town is a set of partial options:

• Chaseholm Farm's farm store, 115 Chase Road. Its website lists self-service shopping every day from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. It carries milk, cheese, beef, pork, bread, cured meats, pantry staples, seasonal vegetables and snacks. Owner Sarah Chase told the Herald, "I won't ever really be a proper grocery store."
• The Pine Plains Community Food Locker. It hands out food and staples on the second Saturday of each month, 10 a.m. to noon, in the basement of the United Methodist Church at 3023 Church Street. The next listed date is Saturday, Dec. 12.
• The full supermarkets. In August 2025, before Peck's closed, the Herald named the nearest ones: Hannaford in Red Hook, Tops in Rhinebeck, Freshtown in Amenia and LaBonne's in Salisbury, Connecticut. Each one is more than 15 miles away.

Those four stores sit in four different directions from town. That's what Patel was describing. With no market at the center, shoppers split off toward Red Hook, Rhinebeck, Amenia or Salisbury, and their other errands go with them.

The village has lost other storefronts too. Hammertown Barn announced in April 2026 that it would close its Route 199 flagship after four decades. The company's own site now lists May 16 as its last day.

Path one ran through a single Saturday in August

Peck's has a legal advantage that no new store would have. Its grocery business is older than Pine Plains' zoning law, which took effect in 2009. That makes it a "preexisting nonconforming use," a status that lets a grocery keep operating there without the approvals today's code would otherwise require.

That protection doesn't last forever if the store sits empty. As the Herald laid out in August 2026, the town law says a nonconforming use "shall not be re-established" once it has been discontinued for a calendar year or longer, and that "Intent to resume a non-conforming use shall not confer the right to do so." Planning Board Chair Michael Stabile said that once a year passes, "you lose that status, that grandfather status, and you have to do a full site plan review." He also said the status generally stays with the property rather than the owner.

On Aug. 23, 2026, about eleven months after the closing, Peck's sold vegetables outside the building and rang up the purchases at a register inside. In a Sept. 2 letter, Building Inspector and Code Enforcement Officer Ed Casazza ruled that Peck's "was legally open for business on August 23, 2026." The Herald reported on Oct. 1 that the ruling carries the grandfathered grocery use through Aug. 23, 2027. Until then, the owners or a buyer can reopen a grocery at the Church Street property without first going through Planning Board review.

"Obviously, the town would like to see a market again," Casazza told the Herald. "I wanted to make it as easy for them to reopen as I possibly can."

The ruling saves the zoning, but it doesn't put a store back on Church Street. The building is there and the permission is there. What's missing is an operator.

Path two starts from bare ground on South Main

About half a mile of village separates Peck's from 7723 South Main St., the former Deuel's Home Center property. The first new business there opened July 31. It's a cannabis dispensary inside a restored 580-square-foot railroad weigh station, run by Brian Seiler and Benjamin Abrahams of Upstate Pines in Red Hook in partnership with property owner Christopher Gumprecht. When it opened, the Herald reported that the operators hoped the shop would help pay for a grocery store planned elsewhere on the same property.

Revised plans for that grocery went to the Planning Board on Oct. 14. They were the first plans presented since April, held up by groundwater. Soil tests that spring found standing water about 4½ to 5½ feet below the surface in several spots, so the stormwater and wastewater designs had to change. According to the Herald's Oct. 16 report, the current proposal includes:

• A 14,067-square-foot building on the 2.48-acre site, which sits in the town's Hamlet Main Street zoning district.
• An 11,819-square-foot grocery and a 2,248-square-foot restaurant, with separate entrances and run as independent businesses. The restaurant replaces the ice cream shop in the earlier plan.
• Four existing structures torn down, with the restored Weigh Station kept.
• 65 parking spaces with access from Railroad Avenue, outdoor restaurant seating, and landscaping where the asphalt along South Main now runs.

The approval list is long. The project needs at least two zoning variances. In an Oct. 14 letter, town engineer George Schmitt asked for a full traffic study, a stormwater pollution prevention plan, and word from the Dutchess County Department of Health on the septic system. He also recommended widening Railroad Avenue to two 10-foot lanes with two-foot shoulders, bringing its intersection with Route 82 up to state transportation standards, and adding a crosswalk to the sidewalk on the east side of Route 82. No grocery operator has been identified.

The two routes side by side

The dates that decide it

1. Wednesday, Nov. 18, 7:30 p.m. The Planning Board moved its November meeting to this date because of Veterans Day. The Oct. 16 report gave the same date as the board's next session after the South Main presentation. Meeting details are on the town's Planning Board page.
2. Saturday, Dec. 12, 10 a.m. to noon. The Community Food Locker's December distribution at 3023 Church Street.
3. Monday, Aug. 23, 2027. The last day Peck's grandfathered grocery use is protected. After that, any grocery at 2991 Church St. faces the same full site-plan review as a new one.

In November 2025, two people told the Herald they had made offers to buy or rent the Peck's property for a grocery. Peck's has the building and the zoning, and it needs a grocer before Aug. 23, 2027. South Main has a design, and it needs a grocer plus variances, a traffic study, a stormwater plan and county health sign-off.

This is general information about local land-use rules, not legal advice. If you own property or are considering a business in Pine Plains, confirm how the zoning applies to you with the town and your own attorney.

For four decades, Paula Redmond has watched Pine Plains and Stanford through changes like this one. If you own on Church Street, South Main or the roads around them and want to know how the village's next chapter could affect your property's value, request a confidential home valuation and we'll talk it through quietly.