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The Party Rolls On In The Catskills

By Craig Altschul
July 24, 2006

They knew how to party. They were packed so deep at the bar day and night they overflowed into the first sushi bar to ever grace a ski area base lodge outside Nagano. They recognized all the faces of the snow journalists on the Hunter Hall of Fame Wall. They were the firemen, nurses, cops, ad and pr account execs, CPAs, secretaries of Manhattan, blue collars tinged with white. They made "Huntah" in the New York Catskill Mountains into an American skiing legend starting 47 years ago.

The trio of Orville and Israel (Izzy) Slutzky, combined with Paul Pepe, the unchallenged and forever king of ski PR, put on a show on snow the industry had never before seen. Hunter became the first area in the world to feature summit-to-base snowmaking by 1967, and in 1980, became the first resort to achieve 100 percent snowmaking coverage. City skiers felt comfortable skiing runs called, of course, Madison Avenue, Broadway, Belt Parkway, Bleeker Street, East Side Drive, Gramercy Park, and Grand Concourse. At least those who left the bar skied them.

Pepe touted the area on every radio station and in every tabloid as "The Snowmaking Capital of the World." Skeptical New Yorkers and journalists were quickly convinced that if rain was pouring down on Madison Avenue, there was snow to ski on at Hunter. Orville and Izzy's I&OA Slutzky Construction Co., a Catskill's-based family business, became moguls in a different way. Their local community roots were deeply set and they had other business interests if it really rained.

Then, in what seemed like a blink of an eye, though it was a decade or two in the making, everybody got a little longer in the tooth. The 10-deep-at-the-bar "meat market" thinned out. Marriage and those darn kids got in the way. Uh-oh, they didn't want to stay where the loud music from the bars in the area kept the babies awake all night.

"We started to notice a big change in the demographics. The singles of the sixties through the eighties had families now. Some were even on their second families," Orville's son Paul Slutzky who, along with Izzy's son C.B., runs the development part of the business, told The Industry Report. "We began to reposition Hunter in the nineties toward the family market, heading toward four-season use."

The people in the market didn't change, but their party-hearty lifestyles did. They needed family-friendly lodging, something the towns of Hunter and Tannersville didn't offer in either style or great abundance. First came 23 condos in 1990 that sold out, and then, says Paul Slutzky, they backed off while the market recovered. More condos were added in 2001 and 2002 that also sold out.

But, the bold move that perhaps has changed the familiar face of Hunter forever was the conception in 2002 and the construction of the Kaatskill Mountain Club in 2004 and 2005, opening last August. (Kaatskill is the original Dutch phrase roughly translating to mountain lions - cats - and the river or "kill.")

The Club, an unqualified success and 98 percent sold out, is actually the first Grand Hotel to be built in the region in more than 30 years. This, by the way, is the same region famous for its "grand hotels" (wooden, uninsulated, and non-air conditioned as they were, in the nearby Sullivan County Borscht Belt).

"We did our research and the Kaatskill Mountain Club meets the needs of our new market," Paul Slutzky says. "The quarter-share ownership changes everything for us with all of those warm beds in the base area."

The ownership model gives each family one fixed week out of every four year-round, for a total of 13 weeks. The exact weeks shift among the owners each year. That fits the blue-white collar pocketbooks of virtually getting a second home at slightly more than a quarter of the price. Like similar properties across the alpine nation, the Club has all of the four-star hotel amenities, including valet parking, restaurants, bars, and a top-of-the-line spa. Its 109 units range from 356-square-foot studios to almost 2,000-square-foot suites.

The fractional units went for $35,000 to $190,000 pre-construction, but the only ones left - a very few small studios for those few remaining single partiers - are going for about $58,000 per fractional unit now. Still, that's within the market range for a product on a par with the Marriott Vacation Club, Club Intrawest, or others of the ilk. The exchange with RCI network is at Gold Crown level.

Hunter now can count on people sleeping on all its pillows most nights of the year and, of course, that calls for more amenities. After all, Rip Van Winkle once took quite a long nap in the neighborhood.

"We've had mountain biking here for a long time, but now we've added terrain parks with ramps and different configurations for mountain bikers as well as skiers," Paul Slutzky said. "We're going to build a multi-station fitness trail starting at the Club, ropes courses that are popular with corporate groups, and we're doubling the snow tube park so kids will have plenty to do this winter."

Hunter has added three new weekend Festivals for the summer and fall crowds, bringing that number to eight, with the German Alps Festival long the highlight. Casino gambling in the Catskills is not an "if," but a "when," and soon that will bring more people to the area.

"We have lots of plans for the future and it is going to start potentially as early as next month when we begin putting seven large two- and three-bedroom condos on the base lodge roof," Paul Slutzky said. (He added that Orville's office - in which, at 89, he still works an eight-hour day, seven days a week, will be spared. Izzy died last year.)

The price points for these condos will range from $495,000 to $695,000, appealing to those former partiers who can now pay for the whole party. He said a village is likely, with town homes, more condos, and additional fractional units. A golf course, about three miles from the base, is in the planning stages.

Is there a thorn in their side? Yes, and it's one that's been there a while. "We still don't operate on a level playing field in New York State," he said, reflecting an old complaint. "Belleayre, for example, is state owned (as are Gore and Whiteface), about 28 miles away from us and they are aggressively doing everything possible to build skier days. Not being state supported, we still have a bottom line to worry about. They just replaced a four-year-old lift with one that cost the state taxpayers $7 million." Ski Windham, virtually next door, has new ownership, but has long been a "friendly competitor."

So, the inevitable final question, asked hundreds of times by journalists over the past 20 years. "Is Hunter for sale?" Paul Slutzky acknowledges there have been some tempting offers, "but when we look at what happened to the stock that was included, we're happy we didn't sell. Our family is committed to Hunter and this community."

There aren't many families still running winter or four season resorts anymore. This one's now run by a second generation, with, as Paul Slutzky notes, a third generation already working its way up.

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	Hi, Could you please tell me if you have single week for ages 48 to 65? Thank You, Gale
	Posted by: Gale Boyce | April 10, 2007 08:45 AM