The Nevele at its peak...and a canvas for what comes next for boutique hospitality
On July 5, 2009, the Nevele Grande Resort closed without notice, on what should have been the busiest weekend of the season. The closure marked the end of an era for Catskills hospitality — and more than 15 years later, the property may finally be on the verge of resurrection.
For over a century, the Nevele (pronounced “NEV-uh-lee”) has stood as one of the defining landmarks of Catskills hospitality — and its unfinished redevelopment story. The property traces back to 1901, when the Slutsky family opened the Nevele and Fallsview hotels in Ellenville. In its heyday, the Nevele was part of a regional hospitality ecosystem nicknamed the “Borscht Belt” — named for the Eastern European ancestry of the working- and middle-class families who made the annual summer pilgrimage from New York City to vacation in the Catskills. At its peak, the Borscht Belt grew to include more than 500 resorts, 50,000 bungalows, and 1,000 rooming houses across parts of Sullivan and Ulster counties.
By the mid-20th century, the Nevele had grown into one of the area’s major destination properties, with the kind of physical scale and architectural ambition that defined the Catskills resort era. Library of Congress photography documents the property in the 1950s, and local historical sources note that President Lyndon B. Johnson stayed at the Nevele in 1966 during his visit to dedicate the hospital in Ellenville. That a sitting president chose the Nevele over every other option in the region says something about what this property represented at its peak.
The Catskills resort era wasn’t simply about lodging. Resorts competed by offering entertainment, dining, social life, and a sense of destination that guests couldn’t get closer to New York City. Many of the country’s best-known comedians developed their acts in resort showrooms across the Catskills, including Mel Brooks, Joan Rivers, Jerry Seinfeld, Rodney Dangerfield, and Sid Caesar. Guests weren’t just booking a room. They were booking an experience, a social environment, and a place with identity.
Why the Old Resort Model Broke Down
Beginning in the late 1970s, airline deregulation dramatically reduced the cost of flying, making destinations like Florida, Las Vegas, and the Caribbean affordable for middle-class travelers who had previously vacationed in the Catskills. Suburbanization reduced the need for summer-long stays, and younger generations preferred different types of travel.
Large Catskills resorts like the Nevele were built for an earlier travel era — hundreds of rooms, full dining programs, golf courses, entertainment venues, and large staffs that required consistently high occupancy to remain profitable. As travel patterns changed, these properties became increasingly expensive to operate, and declining bookings made it difficult to justify the renovations needed to stay competitive.
In the decades that followed, the Nevele changed hands multiple times. In 1997, the Slutsky family sold the Nevele and the adjacent Fallsview resort to Fred Kassner for $10 million. He merged both properties into the Nevele Grande Resort. Kassner died the following year, and his estate sold the property to Joel S. Hoffman and Mitchell Wolff in March 2000 for $15.8 million. Despite significant investment in renovations and conference facilities, occupancy remained weak throughout the early 2000s. The hotel closed without notice on July 5, 2009 — a cruel twist, given that it should have been the busiest weekend of the summer season.
The Recent Sale and the New Redevelopment Thesis
In late 2023, the former Nevele property sold for $5 million to 1100 Arrow LLC, an entity tied to Somerset Partners. The sale price drew regional attention — the property had been purchased just five years prior, in 2018, for $27.92 million. It was a reminder that distressed legacy resort real estate and viable next-generation hospitality real estate aren’t the same asset, even when they sit on the same land.
What matters more than the purchase price is the redevelopment approach now being proposed. Early environmental review filings described a program that included single-family homes, townhomes or villas, hotel keys, workforce housing, wellness components, recreation, restaurant uses, and event space. More recent reporting has summarized the concept as a roughly $300 million mixed-use redevelopment centered around a boutique hotel, spa, cottages, residential units, and supporting amenities — though final program details may change as the project moves through approvals and financing.
What appears clear is that the goal is not to recreate the traditional Catskills mega-resort model, but to build a mixed-use Catskills hospitality and residential project that reflects how travel, second-home ownership, and resort development have evolved.
A Pattern Across the Region
The Nevele story isn’t isolated. Significant capital continues to move into Catskills hospitality real estate and the broader Hudson Valley market, but increasingly in formats that combine lodging, residential components, and experience-driven amenities.
Starwood Capital’s announced 1 Hotel & Homes Hudson Valley development in Ulster County has been reported as a project of more than $300 million, combining hotel, branded residences, and preserved land. Grossinger’s, another former Borscht Belt property, sold in 2025 for $14.75 million to a developer planning an upscale resort and golf destination. Wildflower Farms, a different type of luxury resort model in the Hudson Valley, disclosed $21.6 million in C-PACE financing during development.
These aren’t outliers. They reflect a consistent investment thesis: the Hudson Valley and Catskills have durable demand, but the format that captures it has fundamentally changed.
What This Means for Catskills Boutique Hospitality Operators
The projects attracting investment today don’t look like the resorts that defined Catskills hospitality decades ago. Instead of large, single-purpose hotels, newer developments tend to combine lodging, residential, wellness, and outdoor recreation into more flexible destinations that reflect how people actually travel now.
From a short-term rental and Catskills hospitality perspective, that shift shouldn’t be viewed only as competition. In many ways, it reinforces the same demand patterns operators have been seeing at the property level for years. Guests are increasingly drawn to places that offer privacy, character, and a strong sense of setting rather than scale alone. Views, design, location, and overall experience often matter more than the number of rooms. The same qualities that make boutique resorts viable are the ones that tend to drive performance in the short-term rental market as well.
Institutional and brand-backed capital typically moves toward markets where those demand patterns appear durable. When large projects are still being financed in the Hudson Valley — even if the format looks different than it once did — it suggests developers see long-term strength in the region.
A Market Being Reimagined, Not Recreated
The Nevele story isn’t just about an abandoned resort finally changing hands. It reflects how the hospitality market in the Catskills and Hudson Valley has evolved. The region isn’t trying to recreate the Borscht Belt era. It’s adapting to what today’s traveler, second-home buyer, and hospitality investor actually want.
Large, single-use resorts once defined the Catskills hospitality genre. Today, the projects that move forward tend to be smaller, more connected to the landscape, and integrally dependent on design, setting, and overall experience. That doesn’t signal a weaker market. It signals a different one — and a more interesting one for operators who understand what Catskills hospitality is becoming.
For owners, investors, and operators, that difference creates both risk and opportunity. Those who recognize the gap — between what this region was and what it can become — are the ones positioned to build the next generation of Catskills hospitality. If you’re evaluating how to position a property in this market, our property management approach is built around exactly that kind of long-term thinking.
Note: The observations here are based on public reporting, planning documents, and announced projects. Development plans may change as projects move through approvals, financing, and construction.
Sources
- Borscht Belt Historical Marker Project — Ellenville / Nevele history
- Borscht Belt Historical Marker Project — Overview of Catskills resort era
- Library of Congress — Nevele Hotel photography archive
- Nevele Resort and Country Club history (AbandonedOnline)
- Rockland County Business Journal — 2023 Nevele sale
- Realtor.com — Nevele redevelopment reporting
- Starwood Capital — 1 Hotel & Homes Hudson Valley announcement
- Sullivan County Democrat — Grossinger’s property sale
- Mann Publications — Wildflower Farms C-PACE financing
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