Chatting with Bill Puffer

There's not much that Bill Puffer, the co-founder of Puffer Morris, hasn't seen in his thirty-plus years of real estate experience here in Lancaster.  We caught up with Bill recently and had a lively and informative exchange that really put into perspective some of the big changes that have reshaped our community during the past three decades. 
Lancaster Notebook: What was your background before going into real estate?

Bill Puffer: I have been involved in sales and marketing for over 50 years and I came to Lancaster with the Hamilton Watch Co.  Among other experience there, I was the District Manager for the South Eastern US. and National Director of Sales for the Vantage watches, a Hamilton product line.

Puffer Morris founder Bill Puffer

LN: When did you launch Puffer Morris, and what motivated you to go into the business here?

Bill: My partner, Nancy Morris and I established Puffer Morris Real Estate in 1982. We both had a strong interest in Lancaster City and believed that there was great future potential here. For many years, we advertised ourselves as urban realtors who specialized in Lancaster City. This was unique in the local real estate community since most offices offer services in the general  market.

LN: What are the primary changes that have taken place in the city during the time Puffer Morris has been in business?

Bill: The City of Lancaster has gained wide recognition as one of the finest urban residential locations in the Eastern U.S.A. This has been like a snowball that continues to grow and today several surveys have listed Lancaster among the top choices in the country.

LN:  So how have these changes affected the real estate market during this time?

Bill: Real estate values have continued to increase and will do so in the future because home prices here are only a fraction of those for homes in adjacent markets from Washington DC to New York.

LN: And have the changes in the real estate market changed the way real estate professionals go about doing their job?  What has remained the same?

Bill:  When I got in to the business, we operated with a card system that was unmanageable. Changes were updated twice a week and the pile grew rapidly. For information, we would call the listing office. Comments regarding the system were mostly profane and in the first office that I was in, the broker stacked the cards in a corner.  When the pile fell over the cards were thrown out. Today, we operate with a state of the art MLS system that gives us and the customer instant access to thousands of listings and information, present and past.

LN: In the near term, what are a few of the biggest factors that will shape the future of the real estate market in Lancaster?

Bill: Maintaining the stable government that we have now is critical. The city has a dynamic menu of special events that is also growing. The list is too long to cover here, but the lifestyle in Lancaster is robust. People who come in from other areas are surprised to find the wide range of activities. Lancaster is also a city of neighborhoods where residents get to know each other and interact socially. Groups often get together and visit the many fine restaurants, taverns and cultural events downtown.

LN: Do you have any off-the-beaten-track places in Lancaster you love to visit or take visitors to? 

Bill: I often take clients on a tour of the Lancaster that I know. We go through neighborhoods, side streets and alleys where there are remarkable homes hidden behind facades that normally would not be noticed. These run the gamut from beautiful restorations, to dramatic contemporaries, to converted warehouses and commercial buildings. Many of them could be featured in a magazine. One of the pleasures of this business is that we have been fortunate over the years to have sold many of them several times.

LN: What trends in your business do you see growing in the years ahead?

Bill: Each year, our clientele from other areas of the country continues to grow as more people become aware of the benefits of life in the City of Lancaster. They become our best ambassadors,  and  at this time, I can think of several who are now moving in, or planning to, because of friends who are here now.

LN: This year, Puffer Morris's ownership changed hands.  What does the future hold for your firm?

Bill: Last January 1, our business was sold to Ric and Mary Tribble and Scott Haverstick, three of our former agents. They are continuing our long term interest and commitment to Lancaster City while also using their considerable knowledge and expertise as they expand in to select suburban areas.

A meta-shoot of the #figlancaster Puffer Morris shoot

       The FIG team discusses the composition of the shoot, while the Puffer
Morris team discusses another beautiful evening to be in Lancaster.

FIG Lancaster, this city's beautifully designed, high-concept, hyper-local quarterly from the folks at Moxie House, had their camera lenses out the other evening for a photo shoot of the Puffer Morris team.

We caught up with them with our I-pad doing camera duty outside the Lancaster Public Library's central branch on Duke Street, so it seemed only right to do a meta-shoot of the FIG shoot.  For the real deal, you'll have to check out the next edition of FIG to see what their camera saw.

                             FIG at work: (from left) Style Director Marie Kojitani, photographer Mike Miville
          and Deborah Brandt, the creative director and maestro of all things FIG.

The action moves to the west side of Duke Street, while Puffer Morris
partner Scott Haverstick contemplates a deep blue twilight sky.

A shot of the shoot.

Team Puffer Morris: (from left) Nelson Keener, Janelle Ellis, Bill Puffer,
Scott Haverstick, Ric Tribble and Mary Tribble.

Taming The Black Heart Of The Ashman

One of The New Yorker's signature cartoons from its early, Roaring Twenties period was Ralph Barton's "The Sort of Thing That Brings Joy To The Ashman's Black Heart."

There, in the pre-dawn hours of an apartment building courtyard, a bug-eyed, sadistic hell-hound of an ash collector (this, from the day when garbage was incinerated down in the cellar) is hurling the parade of sooty, emptied cans -- bang, clatter and boom -- deep into the courtyard, simply ecstatic to wake up the entire block.

Barton, who was afflicted by depression and later died by suicide, was making a bleak statement concerning one of the enduring realities of big-city life: dealing with garbage is foul business.  Not for nothing that Tony Soprano's day job was "waste management consultant."

With the world urbanizing at a rapid pace, one need not be a Manhattanite to know the misery of waking up prematurely to the roar of the collection truck, the spume of its exhaust as it rumbles through the neighborhood, and the banging of tossed emptied cans (now, at least, thankfully no longer metal). 

So it's with a small measure of optimism that one reads help is perhaps on the way, in the form of a new generation of waste collection vehicle using quieter and much cleaner hybrid engines fueled by compressed natural gas rather than the diesel beasts currently plying our neighborhoods in the morning.

Miami has been leading the way in the transition, and, while the transition costs are substantial, the operational and maintenance savings make for a reasonably quick payback.  And there are immediate environmental benefits of CNG over diesel, not just locally, but in terms of carbon emissions, globally too. 

Lancaster leadership take note: we should be pressing our trash haulers to bring the dirty business of collection into the 21st Century.

Of course, it's still up to each of us to consume less, waste less, compost and recycle more, and otherwise clean-up after ourselves.  But a cleaner and quieter truck wouldn't hurt either.

Show Time

Yesterday was show-time at 442 N. President Street, as Lancaster's real estate agents stopped by to view this traditional School Lane Hills beauty.

Michael Stolzfus of Coldwell Banker is ushered inside by our Mary Tribble.

Ric Tribble and Allison Whittaker explore upstairs.

A tasty Thai lunch was served in the dining room.

Andy Esbenshade checks out the TV nook with Abby Tribble, the creator of this lovely home.

Ashley Brunner and Jennifer Rule enjoyed the food.

The sun room bathed in morning light.

                   Young Dayton loves to show-off the living room.

Mary with Bill Puffer -- our founder.

Abby's ornamental mask from Congo remained impassive throughout.

Lancaster the Beautiful - Money Rocks Park

It is said that during the Civil War, Pequea Valley farmers hid their money high up in the rocky ledges of Welsh Mountain in eastern Lancaster County to safeguard it from the approaching rebel forces.  After the threat passed, they climbed back up the steep hills only to find the money gone.

Today, you can drive 20 miles east of Penn Square to Narvon and clamber up those same imposing cliffs, now preserved in Lancaster County's Money Rocks Park.  You may cross paths with a few rambling couples or families on the trail near the parking lot, but for most of the time, you'll have the 3-plus miles of moderately difficult hiking trails and spectacular vistas all to yourself -- just you and the ruffed grouse, wood thrush and wild turkey.

Here's what we saw this weekend:

The cliffs of Money Rocks

Two intrepid climbers atop the Rocks!

Spectacular vistas

A steep descent beckons

Precipice

Wild flowers of Money Rocks

Dramatic terrain

My Kind Of Town

Thinking of moving somewhere new? You may have heard that this town was nice, but snobby; another one's shabby and maybe not so safe, but possibly on the rise; a third one is cool and youthful.

So how do you sort out the buzz from the beef?  For many folks looking to relocate to a new community, the factors are pretty basic: the reputation of the schools, property taxes, convenience to the workplace, and how much house you can get for your money.

For a deeper, more personalized method of evaluating a community and whether it's right for you and your family, The New York Times proposed in a recent article taking what they termed a "values audit.”  While the term may be nothing more than a bit of marketing jargon for doing your due diligence, the underlying notion is a sound one.

To really get a sense of whether or not a place fits, you have try to understand the values that a community and its people reflect and then see how they align with your own.  If that sounds amorphous or subjective, try structuring the exercise into a series of key questions, such as these below:

• What are the public priorities of the place?  Is the major concern for keeping taxes low, or economic development and job growth, or quality public services and amenities?
  
• What is the tone of public discourse?  Do issues get debated in a respectful and harmonious way, while allowing for disagreement and dissenting points of view?
  
• Is there a healthy mix of long-time families and newcomers?
  
• What can you learn about the community from the on-line comments and letters-to-the-editor of the local paper or from the postings on social media groups devoted to the life of the community?
  
• Are public officials accessible and responsive when you call their office?  How about police, fire and other emergency services?
  
• Who is dropping off and picking up the kids at school – a lot of nannies and caregivers, grandparents or stay-at-home dads and moms?
  
• Does the local shopping district feel like its populated by a diversity of people, or is it very homogenous, and if so, are they folks you feel comfortable being with?
  
• Is there a wide availability of programs and activities that you and your family will want or need as the years go by?
  
• Are there decent accessible medical care, social services, and transportation to meet your needs?

Here in Lancaster, we are endowed with a vibrant community, full of diversity, a high quality of life and rich in opportunity for a wide range of cultural, social, professional, educational and leisure pursuits.

But even a stellar community profile does not make Lancaster – or anywhere else, for that matter– right for everyone.  So go ahead and ask some questions of your own that occur to you.  Put a place to the test against the things that matter in your life.

Once you start, you soon see that taking the measure of a community and how well you and your loved ones would flourish in it is a rich exploration that tells you as much about yourself and your personal values as that of the place where you are thinking about putting down roots.

Only 2 Hours From Penn Square: Whistler Like You’ve Never Seen Him

The Freer-Sackler Galleries, side-by-side repositories of the Smithsonian's Asian art collection, also house one of the finest and largest gatherings of work by James McNeill Whistler, the American-born painter who decamped for London where he advanced the radical vision of JMW Turner toward the flowering of 20th Century abstraction.

James McNeill Whistler
1834-1903

 Now through Aug. 17 in the Sackler is the landmark Whistler exhibition, "An American in London: Whistler and the Thames."   Brought together for the first time US and UK collections are some 80 of Whistler's London scenes -- many centered on the great city's great arterial waterway. 

This exhibition is the most significant showing of Whistler in more than two decades.  For Lancastrians, it is a privileged opportunity for a day trip to Washington to experience one of the masters in full.

Arriving as a young man in London in 1859, having left West Point to study etching at the US Geodetic Survey and painting in Paris, Whistler was very much a contemporary of Dickens: steeped in the novelist’s remorseless portrayal of London's squalor, inequalities and virile industrial tumult.  But no Victorian moralist was he -- rather, Whistler's concern was all form, light and color, the very elements that soon would come to define the modernist revolution he prefigures.

Nocturne -- Blue and Silver

Like Turner -- as well as Monet -- he explores the misty, indistinct and impermanent vistas of the riverscape with restrained emotion.  He also brings to life the seedy and roguish characters of the waterfront, as in “Wapping”, a Renoir-like pub scene of two sailors and a lady weighing her options, with the daily commotion of the docks and river spread out behind them.

Wapping

By contrast, a corner of the gallery space is given to work displaying Whistler's fascination (as with the West, generally) with all things Japanese.  He sets pastel-colored proper English women in geisha poses -- complete with kimono and chrysanthemum -- on a balcony overlooking the grey river and the looming charcoal tones of Battersea on the opposite shore.  He even signs the work with a butterfly icon.

Balcony

To complete the contrast, the gallery offers through July 27 a companion exhibition, much smaller in scale, of Kobayashi Kiyochika woodblock prints of Tokyo scenes from the same period. 

Whistler’s great London works challenged the Victorian establishment, and he ultimately fled England for the continent in disgust at the negative critical reception he received. As this stunning display of virtuosity confirms, Whistler’s detractors were shortsighted: his work endures for the ages.

Battersea Reach

Get up and go:

The Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, located at 1050 Independence Avenue S.W., and the adjacent Freer Gallery of Art, located at 12th Street and Independence Avenue S.W., are on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Hours are 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. every day (closed Dec. 25), and admission is free. The galleries are located near the Smithsonian Metrorail station on the Blue and Orange lines. For more information about the Freer and Sackler galleries and their exhibitions, programs and other public events, visit www.asia.si.edu. For general Smithsonian information, call (202) 633-1000

This is the final venue of a three-stop tour for this exhibition.  Don’t miss it.