It's Been 6 Years Since "Catskills — the New Hamptons"

Remember, not so long ago, when the Catskills were the 'new hot place' for second homes and weekend getaways from the city? The resurgent popularity of having a place in Sullivan County started in the mid to late 1990's, when country wannabees from the city could pick up run down farmhouses for a song, and many did. But it was all kind of below the radar, the weekend getaway equivalent of knowing about a really great band playing in an obscure club in an outer borough.

Then came 9/11, after which a lot of folks in the city took a close look at their lives. The Catskills became an appealing draw as a place that was kinder, simpler, gentler and more authentic. The Norman Rockwell-ness of it all, updated in a popular shabby chic style, was like a warm glass of lifestyle milk. Why go to the Union Square green market to buy heirloom tomatoes when you can buy everything you need to grow them yourself, including the house and land?

The growing popularity of the Catskills was a real word of mouth guerilla thing. People passed along the names of hamlets and villages like Jeffresonville, Livingston Manor, Roxbury, Bovina and Margaretville like the locations of off the beaten track beaches in Mexico. The farmers selling at the green markets, with their signs showing where they were from, were like missionaries. And the windows of the Rural Connection real estate company on Perry Street in the village were a shrine for those with rural yearnings.

There were occasional small articles and mentions in the New York press about the popularity of the Catskills. Then the dam broke. The August 6th, 2003 issue of New York Magazine featured the Catskills, with a lengthy article (and cover) devoted to the Call of the Catskills. The gist of the article was how trendy New Yorkers, including some celebrities, were abandoning the hipper getaway locales like the Hamptons for the kinder, simpler, gentler Catskills. (The article is still in the NY Mag archves. You can read it here.)

The impact of the article was huge. It gave the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval, trendsetter version, to the Catskills. The New York magazine article was followed by other articles and news reports in the city that fueled the fire that the Catskills was hot again. The timing of this publicity also coincided with the availability of cheap and easy mortgage money during the lending boom, and the deep pockets of many New Yorkers, flush with cash from either bonuses or pulling cash out of their rapidly appreciating apartments and homes.

I found it very interesting to go back and read the article six years later. It helps to put the popularity of this area in perspective. Lots of attention has been focused on the 'big' projects, from those that have gotten off the ground like Bethel Woods and Chapin Estate to those that haven't like casinos and the pie-in-the-sky renderings of new luxury hotels. But the "Catskills as the New Hamptons" epitomized in the New York Magazine article wasn't based on those big projects at all. It was rooted in the same values and dreams that brings second home shoppers to Sullivan and the other Catskills counties today. A kinder, simpler, gentler — and affordable — place where you can run with your dog, grow tomatoes and herbs, see cows up close and kayak on a river or lake. We still have plenty of the kinder, simpler and gentler. Now we have to work on getting back to being the most affordable.

Comments

[Dan Appelbaum]

As a prospective home buyer in the Catskills (going on 18 months now), I have to tell you that the concerns over the wind farms (more Delaware County than the others) has me and a lot of others thinking elsewhere. So even if affordability comes back, the overhang of such "projects" may keep the area out of vogue...

[Brad]

I would think the natural gas drilling issue is a much bigger potential problem for the area. From what I have read, it seems people are underestimating the amount of damage this would do to the natural beauty of the county. The amount of free water (100s of millions of gallons at the very least)from the Delaware to drill these wells is one example. Another then would be what to do with all the polluted residue since there are no treatment plants in the area, so there would be the need for several to be built, not free either, but that is the taxpayer's problem. Given the large drop in natural gas prices in the last year (and the corporate credit freeze), the drilling companies have pulled back, but this situation is unlikely to last in the longer term. The NY State DEP should take a hard stance and put a moratorium on fracking until the many downsides of this activity are better understood. The 2005 Energy bill that gave the energy companies carte blanche is hopefully about to be overturned. There are plenty of other areas in the US that have the same geological structural potential that are not in a water shed area that provides drinking water to over 10 miilion people. But of course, for the incompetent NY State politicians, this looks like a great revenue source for a group who never can balance a budget.

Getting back to Dan's point, why would any weekend resident from NYC looking for peace and quiet consider the area when there are several other counties within the same commuting range without this problem?

Brad

[Falconic]

Yeah, people need to wake up to what gas drilling is going to do to this area, and to the second home market. I'm trying to do my part with letter writing, and by not patronizing businesses that have signed leases (Eldred Preserve, Kitatinny Canoes). But it seems that people got burned out with the casinos and the power lines, and they aren't being active enough to stop the drilling. Casinos can go out of business, power lines will vanish once alternative fuels take hold, but try fixing a poisoned water supply.

[Marilyn]

People are not burned out there are a lot of people in Sullivan County , Delaware County & Otsego, Broome, and Chenango County fighting this fight. The problem is, fighting the energy industry is akin to fighting the rulers of the world. There are websites and groups galore, (Damascus citizens.org, Unnaturalgas.org, chenangogreens.org, riverkeeper.org certainly still not enough people, and most residents of NYC seem to continue to be unaware and also unconcerned about what is about to happen to their drinking water, aside from the costs of building a filtration plant (20 billion), environmental engineers say many chemicals in fracking fluids cannot be filtered and are carcinogenic.