Claremont Riding Academy Closes Its Doors

New Yorkers pushing strollers, walking dogs, or jogging around Central Park's scenic bridle path will no longer do so alongside equestrians wearing English riding helmets: Manhattan's last public stable, the Claremont Riding Academy, yesterday closed its doors for good.

Scores of New Yorkers looked on yesterday afternoon as about a dozen Claremont instructors on horseback made their way out of the building for a final ride through Central Park to mark the end of its 115 years as a stable and riding school. Some watching the procession cheered; some wept; some snapped photographs. One woman called out to the riders: "God bless y'all."

The owner of the academy, Paul Novograd, told The New York Sun that Claremont had been losing money for nearly a decade and was no longer financially viable. He cited increased costs of building maintenance, insurance, hefty real estate taxes, and a dwindling number of Central Park riders.

John Jeannopoulos said that as a teenager in the 1970s he used money he earned as a pharmacy delivery boy to purchase riding lessons at Claremont, where he later became an instructor. More recently, it would have taken a lot of deliveries to pay for such lessons: a pack of 10 hour-long group lessons costs $500.

"Post 9/11, in this city, whatever keeps our economic fabric solid, we're willing to sell off — but it comes at a price, which is the soul of our city," Mr. Jeannopoulos, an attorney, said while looking on as young riders said tearful goodbyes to their peers and instructors.

At times yesterday, the Claremont community's sadness seemed eclipsed by anger at Mr. Novograd for shuttering the academy, for doing it mid-semester, and for informing riders of the closure less than a week ago.

In an interview, Mr. Novograd said that sustaining the stable that his father bought more than a half-century ago has be a focus of his professional life. "I've gone into hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt to support this place," he said. "I don't understand how anyone could, humanly, be expected to do more."

Mr. Novograd has repeatedly refused to say what will be done with the landmark property, though it has been widely rumored that he is selling it to a real estate developer who will build condominiums atop the four-story building.

"This is about money," a longtime Claremont equestrian, Genevieve Montgomery, said. "We have plenty of condominiums, but we have no more stables."

Added 15-year-old Upper West Side resident Georgia Boonshoft, who has been taking riding lessons at the academy for six years: "People are furious."

Miss Boonshoft said she and many of her fellow Claremont alumni have decided to enroll together at Riverdale Equestrian Centre in the Bronx, or at Twin Lakes Farm in the Westchester village of Bronxville, "so we can stay as a family."

At the riding center in Riverdale, 10 miles north of the recently shuttered stable, an office manager and riding instructor, Danielle Cioti, said calls have been coming in "nonstop" from parents of young riders who had taken classes at Claremont. "We're trying to accommodate them, but we don't have space for more horses so we're going to have to turn people down," she said. "We have a lot more of a load than we can handle."

Meanwhile, an advisory on the Web site of Twin Lakes Farms — an 18-mile drive from the Claremont stables, said it is adjusting its schedule in an effort to make room for Claremont equestrians.

Other local stables said they would do the same, when possible.

"We'll be able to accommodate a few students, but we run at capacity, and we're not going to be able to expand," the owner of Kensington Stables in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, Walker Blankinship, said, noting that the stable has been inundated with inquiries since the announcement that Claremont would be closing.

"There's going to be enormous transportation costs to cart these kids to other programs," the mother of an 11-year-old Claremont equestrian, Page Cowley, said.

As a result of those costs, Ms. Cowley said her daughter, Gillian, who had been taking three or four weekly riding lessons at Claremont, would have to cut down to one or two lessons a week at Twin Lakes Farm or at another equestrian center upstate.

Of the 45 horses housed at the stable, Mr. Novograd said some would be sold, while others would go to his home Upstate, to his other riding academy in Gaithersburg, Md., and to a riding program at Yale University, his daughter's alma mater.