Standing off Arrowhead Road south of Ellenville, New York, sits a closed Nevele resort at the foot of the Shawangunk Mountains.
It began in 1901 on a farm that soon took in boarders. Postwar building added wings, an indoor pool, and a 10-story tower. After a 1997 sale it merged with the neighboring Fallsview as the 682-room Nevele Grande Resort and Country Club.
By 2008, occupancy was down to 28 percent. The hotel closed without notice on July 5, 2009, the day after the holiday.
The town counted 34 buildings in 2022. Several have burned since 2024. A $300 million redevelopment has its zoning and a key state permit. Nothing new has been built.
The Nevele started as a farm taking boarders
Charles Slutsky bought a farm at the foot of the Shawangunk Mountains, just south of Ellenville, New York, in 1901, and soon began taking in boarders.
The first accommodation was the Nevele Falls Farm House.
The farm kept working beside the hotel until about 1938, while the guest side grew into one of the big Catskills resorts.
The name is "eleven" spelled backward. Why eleven is less certain.
One story credits 11 schoolteachers who found a waterfall nearby, another the size of the Slutsky family, and the record settles neither.
In 1906 the family split its land, and the neighboring parcel became the Fallsview resort.
Through the 1920s and 1930s, the Nevele added Mission Revival wings: stucco walls, arches, and low roofs.
The Waikiki pool and the Empire Wing
Earlier in the 1950s, architect Sydne Schleman designed the Vacationer Wing and the Waikiki Indoor Pool.
A pool under a roof meant a guest could swim in November, which is what the big Catskills hotels were then competing on.
Herbert D. Phillips took over in 1956 with the Golden Gate and Empire wings. The Empire held the main lobby.
Tunnels ran between buildings so nobody crossed the grounds in the rain to reach dinner.
Phillips had worked for Morris Lapidus, and you can see it in what he drew: curved walls and stairs, theatrical lighting, patterned finishes.
A photographer spent September 29, 1959 recording the lobby and nightclub rooms before later remodeling changed them.
12 sides, 10 stories, one president
The tower was designed in 1964 by Viola, Bernard & Phillips: 10 stories and dodecagonal, which is to say nearly round.
Wrapping 12 sides around a central core kept the walk from elevator to room short, and it gave a low, sprawling resort something visible from across the valley.
The Stardust and Safari lounges tied the tower back to the lobby, and the Colonnades and Pennsylvanian held more rooms.
At its peak, the Nevele alone had 432.
On August 19, 1966, Lyndon Johnson came to Ellenville to dedicate the new community hospital, and he stayed in the tower.
800 workers at full scale
The 1970 ski chalet and ice rink, by Dennis Jurow, used glued-laminated beams that swept up toward skylights.
The rink doubled as a roller surface out of season.
That was the model: give a guest no reason to leave. Meals came with the room, and one auditorium seated around 900.
In 1984 the golf course was rebuilt to 18 holes through work associated with Robert Trent Jones and Tom Fazio.
Running it took about 800 people at peak.
The guests came largely from Jewish families in the New York area, at a time when many American resorts barred Jewish guests.
Sold in 1997, the Nevele closed in 2009
Fred Kassner, a co-founder of Liberty Travel, bought the Nevele and Fallsview in 1997 for $10 million and ran them as one 682-room property, the Nevele Grande Resort and Country Club.
In March 2000, his estate sold the resort to Joel S. Hoffman and Mitchell Wolff for $15.8 million, and they put another $10 million into rooms, corridors, and conference space.
Occupancy sat near 40 percent. Low occupancy still left hundreds of rooms, pools, and sports halls to heat, maintain, and staff.
Fallsview was sold off in 2006.
By early 2008, occupancy was around 28 percent, the resort was listed at $26.5 million, and guests were finding the seams: missing heat and hot water, leaks, mold.
A LimmudNY learning conference ended early in 2009 over the conditions.
On July 5, 2009, the day after the Fourth, the Nevele closed without notice.
By September, Ulster County was chasing more than $700,000 in back taxes and fees.
The casino bid that lost on financing
Nevele Investors closed on the property on April 27, 2012 and paid nearly $1.8 million in back taxes and $100,000 in unpaid wages.
The plan was a casino, estimated between $500 million and $640 million, with 2,000 slot machines and a 446-room Westin hotel.
The tower would stay, renamed the LBJ Tower.
On December 17, 2014, the state siting board picked Montreign in Sullivan County instead.
It gave a reason: $240 million of the Nevele's equity was uncommitted, and firms meant to supply a substantial share had produced no financial statements.
Two months later, the owners proposed a sports campus with four baseball fields and a rebuilt hotel. Its financing was still not secured in 2019.
What $5 million bought on Arrowhead Road
In 2018 the site traded for $27.9 million. On September 29, 2023, it sold again for $5 million.
By 2022, the town counted 34 buildings and 640,000 square feet of floor space, most badly deteriorated, and the approved plan takes nearly all of it down.
Nesting bald eagles and potential rattlesnake habitat had already pushed the developer to revise the layout and clear less forest.
Fire has been faster than the demolition schedule.
On January 11, 2025, a two-alarm fire tore through the main building's lobby, kitchen, and theater, and two more that November finished a vacant house on Arrowhead Road.
The developer answered with fencing, cameras, and off-duty police patrolling hundreds of acres.
The project runs past $300 million: an 80-room hotel, houses, townhouses, a spa, and restaurants.
As of August 2026, nothing new has gone up, and the tower Johnson slept in still stands over the valley.
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