If it were me, and that was the price range I was looking at, I'd just be looking at Craigslist for a 20 year old mountain bike. Right now I am kicking myself because I don't have the measly $125 for a '91 Schwinn Paramount Series 70 in my neck of the woods. Same geometry you are looking for, and some of the high end components probably still have some life left in them. For the difference in price with that company in NY, you could probably get a used bike sandblasted and painted, or strip the paint yourself and have it powder coated.

My '88 GT Timberline is still going strong as a daily commuter and I use it for pretty heavily loaded bike-camping trips. A few months ago I picked up a '91 Sekai/Norco MTB that had clearly sat in someones garage for all of the past 20 years, it didn't even have any wear at all on the original brake pads! There appear to be a fair number of bikes out there like that, that have seen very little use that people are looking at now thinking they will never ride them or that they are "outdated". These are essentially new framesets for you for about 100-200 $.