The Concord and Grossinger's Are On Their Way to Reopening in the Catskills

Artist's Rendering of the New Resorts World in Kiamesha Lake

The glory days of' the Borscht Belt and the Catskill Hotels in New York came to a sad end in the 1980s. Now, 30 years later, signs of hope are beginning to appear.

Current plans don't envision the return of the Concord and Grossinger's Hotels as the kosher getaways that flourished from the 1940s to the 1980s, but activity is picking up on the site of both hotels.

Construction of a new Resorts World casino hotel on the site of The Concord in Kiamesha Lake is well underway with a planned opening in March 2018. Meanwhile, 13 miles away in Liberty, the sleeping giant of Grossinger's is stirring, crumbling buildings and all.

As Sarah Maslin Nir reported in The New York Times last week,

In the spring, Louis R. Cappelli, a Westchester-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, Mr. Cappelli says, to bring back the world-class resort.

Mr. 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.

Here are two videos, one depicting the high hopes of area residents when the casino license was awarded to the hotel being built on the Concord property, and another report from a local TV station on the current state of the Grossinger's property.

Here's hoping!

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