Columbia County, N.Y., Becomes Haven for City Commuters.

Byline: Kevin Harlin

Oct. 7--About six years ago, Lori Selden and her husband, Mark Young, would ask their New York City friends what they knew of Columbia County.

"It seemed like no one had ever really heard of it," she said.

Five years ago, the two, who own a Mexican restaurant in lower Manhattan, bought a 300-year-old farmhouse in Stuyvesant.

The Columbia County weekenders plan to let their Manhattan apartment go at the end of this month and commute to the city.

And next year, they expect to open a second branch of their restaurant, Mexican Radio, amid the antiques shops on Warren Street in downtown Hudson.

Today their friends know Columbia County.

Selden and Young are part of an ongoing wave of settlers from Manhattan, Boston and other urban areas, buying second homes in rural Columbia County, slowly remaking Hudson and the surrounding area into a kind of hub of boutiques and restaurants.

Now the Columbia Hudson Partnership -- the joint economic development effort of both the city of Hudson and Columbia County -- is trying to figure out what that population means for the county's economic future.

"We know there's an influx. We just don't know the quantity," said Jim Galvin, executive director of the partnership. "The second-home market is going to be a …