August Lodge Owner Designs Country Idyll For Visitors to Cooperstown HotelThe August Lodge owner put together a unique Cooperstown lodging venue of hybridtimber-frame architecture and Adirondack style wood furniture on a wildflower-coveredhillside meadow in Hartwick Seminary,Originally from New York City, August Lodge owner Steve Stegman discovered theCatskill Mountains county of Otsego when he came first came up as a student at theState University College at Oneonta. While traveling around after college, he worked inTaos, New Mexico as a ski instructor. It was during a visit to Taos that his future wife,Jamie, from Texas, took a class with him. Eventually, they moved back to OtsegoCounty.A few years ago, Stegman and his family went on a ski vacation in Stowe, Vermont. Theidea of a luxury lodge on the vast hillside acreage he owns near the tiny village ofHartwick Seminary, just minutes from Cooperstown Dreams Park, was something Stevehad been contemplating for awhile, but when the family came back from their bothenergizing and relaxing vacation in the Green Mountains, he was determined to makehis dream come true. Recently, Steve had sold his pest-control business in Oneonta,NY, so it was the perfect time to start a new business.Upon their return to Hartwick Seminary, they teamed-up with a friend of theirs, LeeMarigliano, who is an architect. After taking care of the particulars with the PlanningBoard, and the painstaking job of building what was to become a unique rustic lodgebegan.They named The 25-room August Lodge after their son, and they named Sidney Roomafter their daughter. The establishment opened its doors to tourists from all over theworld that summer. Many of those tourists come to visit Cooperstown for the baseballattractions. The lodge was almost completely booked that first summer.The August Lodge features Adirondack-style wooden architecture and furniture. There isa bench constructed of rhododendron roots. This type of wood has the strongcharacteristics of mahogany, and makes the furniture sturdy, yet very comfortable.The hybrid timber-frame of the lodge, and the wainscoting of birch-bark, oil paintings ofpastoral scenes and rustic style furniture, all on a wildflower covered hillside completethe image.One could imagine a scene from "The Sound of Music" appearing in the meadow.Thisscene is not a dream, however - there is a hard-nosed business plan standing behindthe entire undertaking.Thanks to Historic Doubleday Field, Cooperstown Dreams Park, the National BaseballHall of Fame and other venues, the draw for baseball tourism in Cooperstown is huge.
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