Last Thoughts on Kerhonkson

As Kerhonkson slowly dies, it occurs to me that there are a couple of different courses of action that can be taken. One is to maintain the status quo. A friend of mine commented earlier that, in her opinion, and I agree with this, the blame falls mainly on the collective populace of the town. They might be making changes but at such a glacial pace that you can’t see it from outer space. I doubt adding a menu item at the Rainbow Diner counts for much….
The trouble is that, like in a bad marriage, people become accustomed to just getting through the day and that would appear to be the case here. A collective apathy, like much of what has stricken the country, is occurring on the local level, and unless someone makes the decision to step up and change things, they will remain the same.
And what is the current status of Kerhonkson? Of course, any comments about Kerhonkson must, by necessity, include Wawarsing, a section of Accord, Napanoch and Ellenville, since they are all at least part of the Town of Wawarsing, and ultimately anything administrative has to be approved by the Town Board in Ellenville, where the Town of Wawarsing government is housed. As I visited all four of those villages recently I was dismayed to see that the once busy former Jamesway, formerly Whites, formerly Grants, formerly Ames ( I think) Plaza looks like it is a radioactive “stay out zone” with what appears to be a flea market in its place. From a lifetime of experience I know that when a place reaches flea market status the body is almost cold…and they tend to look like flea markets, cheap, trashy garbage masquerading as merchandise once you can get the mildew smell out of it. It’s not funny, but the flea market/auction subculture is a strange cycle of buying and reselling that makes no sense but keeps a certain group of people busy. Years ago I worked for a couple of summers and winters with Vic Zolinksy at Trader Vic’s Napanoch Auction Barn. His faithful followers were buying the same items over and over, selling them to each other and then having Vic sell them again at the auction. A strange, probably unique American experience that would, if it wasn’t so pathetic, be funny.
So, I digress again. Kerhonkson is in the flea market stage. Same old crap every day, same unemployment, same ugly and abandoned buildings, same drug problems, same everything. Almost ready for a new bridge that connects…what?
Reader David Witkus had a great idea to turn what is left of Main Street into a type of culinary row, refurbishing or rebuilding the remaining buildings to house cooking schools for local teens. Free tuition as long as they promise or agree to operate restaurants on the street after they have graduated. Money certainly would be problematic (Where the HELL is all that tax money going????) but it’s possible that someone with the capital would be able to seize the moment and build something memorable. Heck, they could even name the thing after themselves: Schoonmaker Row, or Kortright Korner, or any number of well to do families who have a vested interest in keeping their hometown alive.
Another reader reminded me of the fact that there is another resort, Soyuzivka, on Foordmore Road. It caters to Ukrainians, but has been a thriving and good neighbor to the area. Maybe expanding the Ukrainian theme would help the town a bit--some shops and restaurants with a touch of Ukrainian heritage, perhaps? Down here in Georgia, there is a town called Helen, which has a Bavarian theme going on, amongst beautiful scenery, no more so than Kerhonkson, and the place does extremely well with tourists, especially during Oktoberfest time. The beer and bratwurst are great. Why not adopt something similar in Kerhonkson, playing up Minnewaska as aprt of the mountainous area.
Of course all of this is speculation. Previously I had floated the idea of a grand hotel being built on the mountaintop, but someone reminded me that a large section of the mountain was declared “forever wild” by the Town of Wawarsing. I don’t know if the area above Kerhonkson is part of that but I’m sure someone will tell me.
C’mon folks…let us put our heads together and figure out how to revive this lovely place before its too late.

The Kerhonkson Conumdrum: Death of a Village Pt 2

In my last piece I recounted coming home to Kerhonkson after a long absence and finding out that it looked like parts of a third world nation. A friend commented: I believe that the problem Kerhonkson has always had exists in its residents, collectively. If the majority were so inclined to productively change their community - it could be done. For a plethora of reasons it has not been done, and currently if anything is being done...it remains at a snail’s pace. Your blog on Kerhonkson was, unfortunately, correct to a very large degree.
Well, I’m sad that she agrees with me, since she has been there through it all. But since it seems to be the consensus that the place is close to dead, what can be done to resurrect it? Too many blogs and even traditional media use their space to list and lament problems in an area but never come up with solutions. Let’s dare to be different here.
It’s obvious that the area itself has many strengths—it offers beautiful scenery, is a very large village if you realize that Kerhonkson itself runs from roughly the Lake Minnewaska entrance on Rt 44-55 all the way to Palentown Poad and the former Peg Leg Bates Resort, now owned and operated by another group of people. That is a distance of 15 or 16 miles, plus it runs from Wawarsing to Accord, another 5 or so miles on Rt. 209. It’s a big area, and the mountains, especially the Shawangunk Mountain that Minnewaska is part of and the ridge along its top that runs to Ellenville, along which were the old shacks and huts that housed the denizens of the huckleberry industry of days of old, offer a great resource if rules and regulations can be moderated to accommodate some sort of industry or business up there. Years ago Marriott wanted to put a hotel at Lake Minnewaska. That idea was voted/shouted down. So why not move the site of a nice big hotel to the very top of the mountain, among the scrub pines and granite, keeping it as environmentally friendly as possible, accessible from Rock Haven Road near 44-55? The place could be called Mountain Top Hotel, and if landscaped properly and new, "green" methods of waste disposal were handled in an intelligent way, it could be a huge boon to the area, offering jobs and bringing sorely needed money into the local economy. And who knows what it might lead to?
Local farm stands are another example. The most beautiful and prosperous of these is definitely Saunderskill Farms in Accord, but others are doing well and there is room for more, especially in the Kerhonkson area. Burd Farms on 209 has a nice little stand but it could be bigger and offer more produce and baked goods. Other small, roadside shops and markets of specialty items like maple syrup, arts and crafts (local, not mass produced crap)and more. Look at Woodstock for an example, with a few constraints. Woodstock is Woodstock. Kerhonkson is Kerhonkson. There's a great creek that runs through town. Make use of it! Put a nice restaurant over looking the water somewhere. Clear the crappy looking old trees and woods and open it up. People will come, industry or no industry.
Another suggestion is to play up the fresh water that the area produces. I recently brought back a few bottles of out of the ground pure goodness from Upper Cherrytown Road. Someone shold bottle this stuff for the tourist trade. Doesn't have to be a huge production, but water that pure can get top dollar as a specialty item for tourists. Nice bottle, fancy label, sell it in town, and a lot of cash will flow like that water. People come to the Catskills for the scenery. Let's give them a show. (Of course we don’t tell the tourists exactly where the water comes from---can’t let that cat out of the bag, cuz it needs to be left alone for the locals who already drink it).
C’mon, people. A few of you read this blog, and more read my facebook page. Gimme more ideas so I can submit them to the proper authorities. There is no need for all of this to get bogged down in beaureaucratic red tape, as I’m sure it will, per the usual way of things getting not done in Kerhonkson, but for the town’s sake, let’s try.