Welcome to 978 N. Greece Rd. - URD Headquarters
We have been eager to share the story behind our recent purchase of what will soon be the official Upstate Roots Design Headquarters. We have high hopes and dreams for what this property will become one day and offer to our clients combined with the local community. If you have been following us thus far, we are so grateful to have you join URD for this exciting journey. What many may not know, is that for us, this journey started almost an entire year ago. It just doesn't feel right to have you come on board without the insight into the WHY and HOW we obtained this historic property.
Allow us start by telling you more about this AMAZING gem of home, located at 978 N Greece Road. This property is a cobblestone farmhouse built in 1832. It is one of the four surviving cobblestone properties located in Greece. The property is known as the William Covert-Pollok House, is listed on the national landmark site, and was the very first designated town landmark in 1998. The prior family that owned this property, Helen and Bill Pollok took great pride in the home and fought hard to preserve its beauty and bring awareness to its history. The roots of this property are deep and we are excited to continue to uncover the special stories behind these walls.
THE WHY:
URD comes with a lot of baggage..literally tons of STUFF as you all know. We explored the idea of renting space, purchasing a warehouse, and many other crazy ideas we entertained for 2 years that quite simply never sat right. In October of 2021, we staged a beautiful historic home and it hit us. We knew then that we wanted a property with history, character, charm and one that we could bring to life while upholding & honoring all that stood before. We treasure all styles, and through the art of staging and design, we help clients see the beauty in mixing the old with new; and we just knew we wanted our business headquarters to do the same. After exploration, we were connected to the Covert-Pollock property and it was love at first sight. The funny thing is, Meagan grew up & Kristin now lives only miles from this property and we have driven by it hundreds of times. All the more reason this property felt special. We started to wonder how many other people felt the same way about this beautiful landmark that appeared to be vacant for many years. Maybe much like us, they always knew it was there but never truly understood its history. We hope to change that!
THE HOW:
We were silly to think this may be an easy journey and per usual, we put our hearts far before the reality of the situation. What started as an exciting idea led down a path of tears, exhaustion, and often defeat. But, we stayed committed to our goal and we had some really great people working by our side to get us here. 978 N Greece Rd has always been a residential property, therefore our largest hurdle ahead was our goal to run it as a commercial property. Throw in the fact that it is a national & local historic landmark, and our hopes to build on it in the future…you can imagine the mountain of approvals that were ahead of us. There were a lot of highs & a lot of lows, but we stayed the course and continued to push our vision forward. We gained not one, not two…BUT the three approvals we needed from the town of Greece and on October 30th, 2022 we became the proud owners of 978 N. Greece Rd.
What’s to come?!?! This is SO hard to put into words. A lot! It’s the next chapter of our story. Our story that went from an idea, to a conversation, to an LLC, building of a brand, to our first design project and our first vacant stage…Working out of our garages, getting a storage unit, partnering with a moving company, getting a second storage unit, moving out of our storage units and into a building…to now putting our roots in the ground at our first ever headquarters. We have built this business from the ground up and through all of the ups and down that come with entrepreneurship, we are so dang proud of this brand! It’s been quite the ride and an even sweeter one to have people like you interested & following our journey. There is so much more to come both with the property itself & URD’s services.
We thank you from the bottom of our heart for being here.
Kris & Meg