The Liberty, N.Y., site served as one of the properties that inspired the fictitious setting for the 1987 film “Dirty Dancing.” Owner Louis Cappelli has applied for state help to clean up the contaminated ruins, and ultimately envisions transforming the property into a conference center with housing, a spa, chalet-style lodging, and a refurbished golf course.
The long-defunct Grossinger’s Catskill Resort Hotel, the Liberty, N.Y., site that served as the inspiration for “Dirty Dancing,” the fictional Kellerman’s in which Baby and Johnny had the time of their lives, stands to be reborn after the owner applied for state help to clean up the contaminated ruins, The New York Times reported.
It is the first step in a plan to bring a glamorous resort back to the site, and perhaps, with it, a bygone luster to the storied but tattered Catskills itself. The resort began its life in the 1910s, and in its heyday was the fulcrum of the swirling midcentury vacation scene in the Catskills. It was a region where New Yorkers, predominately Jews, spent their summers in one of more than 500 hotels that thrived in the area. All are now gone, the Times reported.
In the spring, Louis Cappelli, a Westchester, N.Y.-based real estate developer who has owned the complex for two decades, applied to the State Department of Environmental Conservation requesting that a portion of the property be designated a brownfield, or contaminated site. The former resort is now a hodgepodge of scores of crumbling buildings on hundreds of acres, land he says is laden with chemicals spilled by dry-cleaning and machine repair shops. Such a designation would make the property eligible for state funds to help with remediation of the soil and groundwater, a necessary first step, Cappelli said, to bring back the world-class resort, the Times reported.
Grossinger’s was considered the most glamorous of the Catskills’ resorts. It was visited by politicians and celebrities and was where Eddie Fisher and Elizabeth Taylor were married. And while it never in fact hosted Jennifer Grey or Patrick Swayze, the stars of “Dirty Dancing” (the movie set was spread out across several Southern resorts), it was among the resorts that are said to have inspired the writer of the film, Eleanor Bergstein, cementing its reputation for another generation, the Times reported.
“It was much grander than anyone could imagine today, especially looking at what remains there,” said John Conway, the historian of Sullivan County, where Grossinger’s is. According to Conway, it was the advent of the “three As” that caused the demise of the region and the hotel: airfare, air-conditioning, and assimilation. The Catskills as recreation center was born, Conway said, because “Jews were not welcome in a lot of areas, so they created their own.” The need for the Catskills diminished, he said, as Jews became more accepted into general society, the Times reported.
Cappelli, who bought the place in 1999, more than a decade after the Grossinger family had ceased operations, envisions a grand future: a conference center, housing, spa and chalet-style lodging. It is a bet that piggybacks on the crowds that he hopes will come to the Resorts World Casino, a $750 million complex opening next year in another former borscht belt destination, the Concord Resort Hotel in nearby Kiamesha Lake, the Times reported.
“For 17 years I’ve been a lone wolf trying to do this, and I really haven’t been able to accomplish it because of the enormity of the task,” Cappelli said. “But now that the casino is in fact going to be opening up there, I think the opportunity now exists to have this kind of original dream come true.”
A first step, Cappelli said, would be cleaning the soil. To qualify the land as a brownfield, developers must demonstrate that certain contaminants are present up to a certain threshold. The designation allows developers to get tax credits to offset the cost of cleanup, the Times reported.
Remediating soil and groundwater is a complex task, said Robert Schick, who directs the conservation department’s environmental remediation division. To rid soil of chemicals like perchloroethylene, or perc, used in dry-cleaning, air is sucked out of the earth to extract the contaminant, he said. To treat groundwater contaminated with gasoline, workers force oxygen into aquifers, which causes the gasoline to break down into less harmful components, the Times reported.
The application for remediation at Grossinger’s is still pending, said Julia Tighe, the department’s chief of staff; Cappelli’s company applied to have 72 acres designated a brownfield, but has not sufficiently demonstrated that all of it was contaminated, she said. On July 26, the state sent a letter asking for more information, the Times reported.
But Cappelli’s plans continue—the golf course is already undergoing refurbishment—though what shape the future resort will take is still in flux, the Times reported.
“Do you want to bring back the old and have some flavor of what was there in the ’50s?” he said, referring to the options he has considered. “I want to build what is a 2017 model of Grossinger’s—with some sort of memories still there.”
Instead of bungalows where Baby and Johnny carried out their romance, he imagines Napa Valley-style chalets set deep in the woods. Recreation would be more like yoga than the rumba, the Times reported.
Tell Us What You Think!
You must be logged in to post a comment.