Art of Business
Dean Gitter: The Catskill’s Last Resort?
By Josh Ripps



Dean Gitter first moved to the Catskills 30 years ago, but it wasn’t until 1990 that he started to get directly involved in local affairs, leading to perhaps the largest development that the Catskills has ever seen. “For 20 years I lived very quietly and very anonymously here,” Gitter said, explaining that he worked for years in New York City’s entertainment industry. Then, in 1990, he learned from a golf buddy of his that New York City was offering grants to a number of pilot towns to study various aspects of the Watershed Proposal. “So I went to the town board and I said, ‘Hey, they’re giving this money away for research, we oughtta apply for a grant.’ And they said ‘To study what?’ And I said, ‘Why don’t we apply for a grant to study how we’re going to make a living out here?’” Shandaken’s board did exactly that and ended up receiving the largest grant of any town. Gitter was then appointed to head up the economic revitalization.

Following years of research, Gitter put together a group of investors and started to rehabilitate a massive old barn on Route 28 in Mt. Tremper. “It was literally in its last stages of decay,” he recalled. “And next to it was a hotel in bankruptcy, and across the street was another hotel which was in its last stages of dilapidation.” Well, that barn was transformed into Catskill Corners, which today houses a restaurant, café, retail stores, a 27-room lodge, a conference center, and what is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the world’s largest kaleidoscope, which has since brought as many as 175,000 visitors each year. The kaleidoscope, which boosted traffic after being listed in the Guinness Book, wasn’t even in the original plans. “There was a silo at the end of the barn and the architect couldn’t decide what to do with it but wanted to do something,” Gitter explained, then told how he joked with her to make it into the world’s largest kaleidoscope, simply because he said, that was the shape. “I said that in joke, in jest,” said Gitter in midst of his laugh, “and ten days later she walked in with a kaleidoscope designer and he said, ‘the largest kaleidoscope in the world is 12-feet long and the silo is 50-feet high, so if you build it, it would be the world’s largest kaleidoscope.’” Ironically enough, the silo didn’t meet fire codes, so it was destroyed and a 60-foot tall one was built in its place.
In addition, The Emerson Resort and Spa, which is situated amongst sprawling trees and a mountainous background at the entrance of the windy road to Gitter’s office, was opened in 2000. It was featured on the September 2001 cover of Wine Advocate, which listed it as a top pick for a “Great Getaway.”

But it was in 1998, when Gitter opened The Lodge at Catskill Corners, that he decided there was a need for something bigger. “We were just staggered by the proportion of people who called to make reservations and asked where they could play golf,” he said. Then, between drags of his American Spirit cigarette, added, “And simply, you couldn’t play golf in Shandaken.”

So in 1999 Gitter and his group of investors started Crossroads Ventures LLC, the company that would build Belleayre Resort at Catskill Park, a proposed 573 acre resort in Shandaken and parts of Middletown, encompassing a 250-room, three star hotel, a 150-room, five star hotel and spa, 351 detached lodging units, and two golf courses. In all, this project includes 1,906 acres, with approximately 80 percent of the land in Shandaken and the remaining in Middletown. Gitter said that of that, 1,333 acres would be set aside and “deeded conservation space” and “not to be built upon in any way.”

With such an excessive amount of land and extensive project, one could imagine the skepticism that may arise. “I’ve been having trouble with a highly vocal, highly organized group of people primarily made up of folks who have moved up here within the last 10 years who basically don’t want to see any change and who don’t have a great deal of empathy for the economic plight of people who have been here for generations,” he said, then explained how, according to the 1990 census, Shandaken has an annual average income of just $11,239 per person. Gitter said that low amount is due to the lack of jobs in the area and that Belleayre Resort at Catskill Park will create, among other economic advantages, hundreds of full and part-time jobs.

And as for the environmental impacts of Belleayre Resort at Catskill Park, Gitter, along with a handful of consultants such as LA Group of Saratoga Springs and Allee King Rosen & Fleming of White Plains, spent the past two and a half years working on a 3,000-page environmental impact statement draft, which was submitted to the DEC in late January.

“I’ve been actively involved in environmental organizations for years,” Gitter explained. “Those 3,000 pages of documents will prove this is an environmentally benign and totally responsible project.”

Even though the start of construction on the Belleayre Resort is a few years away, a foundation, called Crossroads Foundation, which will receive a third of Belleayre Resort at Catskill Park’s profits, was already set up last year. The foundation’s purpose is to benefit community health and cultural and environmental purposes of Middletown and Shandaken. When the foundation was set up last year, it was done so with $250,000, half of which has already been donated to the Margaret Dill Hospital, in Margaretville, the Belleyare Conservatory, and the Neil Grant Youth Foundation, which provides financial assistance for youths in Shandaken and Middletown in the form of scholarships and recreational programs.

Some people may call Gitter crazy for constructing such enormous resorts in the Catskills, saying its time has come and gone. But according to Gitter, there are certain reasons why. “We had hundreds and hundreds of small hotels and several large famous hotels. The famous hotels are all gone, they burned down, or were burned down.” He explained that with the invention of air conditioning in the late 40s and the availability of cheap gas and two cars in every garage, people from the city had the mobility to go anywhere they wanted so they stopped going to the Catskills because the service had deteriorated. “But,” he reveled, “the mountains are still beautiful. The streams are still beautiful.”

And why would Gitter, an accomplished man of 67 who has already, among other things, started the Kingston television station WTZA TV (currently owned by RNN), built Rudi’s restaurant in Big Indian, co-founded the Big Indian Spring Water Company, and built the first high-rise building completed in the Boston Waterfront Area possibly want to take on such an enormous task?

Because, he explained, “I grew up in a grubby industrial town just north of Boston, and in this town the only thing of real excellence was a series of buildings just outside the town square, designed by Henry Hobson Richardson, one of the foremost architects in America in the 1800s. And when I was in junior high school, in order to satisfy an essay requirement, I went to the library and I discovered that all four of those buildings had been donated by a man named Elisha D. Converse, the founder of the Converse Rubber Company.” Gitter said that even though there is no trace of the Converse Company in the town anymore, there is still this “complex of four magnificent buildings. They are the best things of the town and Converse did that,” he marveled, “and I find that kind of cool.” Gitter paused for a second, leaned back in his chair, and continued with a smile on his face, “So I would like to leave something behind in this town which has that level of excellence, and to have,” he paused, “that kind of affect on the people who live here.”