The Catskills Are Always Back
On March 25, 2020, three days after Governor Andrew Cuomo declared a lockdown in New York City due to the increasing number of COVID-19 cases, the New York Times ran a story by Tracey Tully and Stacey Stowe headlined, The Wealthy Flee Coronavirus. It was an attempt by the writers to impart the sense of panic that was quietly brewing within the city that never sleeps. It seemed that the rich would be the first to escape to their weekend homes during the pandemic. And where would they go? The Catskills of course (among other nearby regions), which was also where the first anecdote in their article took place.
Though considerably small (it was a blip in the New York section of the paper), it seemed that Tully and Stowe’s essay would become the impetus to more than a dozen stories by the New York Times shortly after; and a recurring theme would present itself in every one of these articles: the notion that the Catskills are back.
As a restaurant owner and full-time resident based in the Catskills, my personal experience has proved otherwise. Sure, New Yorkers are heading upstate, they’ve been doing so for the past decade or more; but from what I’ve experienced these past few months is that the numbers for my own businesses (I own three restaurants throughout the region) weren’t adding up to a narrative of a “boom,” but rather, the sales figures this year so far, felt much more like a fizzle. This was one side of the story I hadn’t read, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that maybe the media elite were force feeding us all a manufactured reality.
“The Catskills are always back,” Ed Justus, a former New York City resident, said with a laugh. Justus, who moved upstate “decades ago,” is a long time resident of Jeffersonville, NY, a small village located in the Western Catskills, population 338, that has seen better days. He tells me that he was also the mayor here for several years. “I was in charge of organizing the TLC people from that show, ‘Town Haul,’ back in 2005,” he said.
We are sitting at a distance in the public-facing section of his haphazardly organized tire shop located on Main Street in Jeffersonville. Justus prefers not to reveal his age, but by my guess, he is probably in his late 50s and has an easy going demeanor. His face is slightly round, particularly his nose and cheeks—though it’s barely noticeable because his crimson-colored goatee takes over. He is wearing a frayed blue cap and a well-worn, matching uniform inked with tire and oil stains. His eyes are intense, like mafia intense, and he still has a strong NYC accent.
According to the former mayor, the Catskills have always had its ups and downs. “People came up here after 9-11; then they came again after Hurricane Sandy. Now they’re up here again. Nothing’s changed,” he said. But maybe things are different this time. Perhaps the Catskills are really back because of the effects of gentrification throughout the years due to the resurgence of second-home owners, the ability for professionals to work remotely from home, and also because of the pandemic, I proposed to him. Justus ponders this for a moment and admits that he has been extremely busy at the shop, “You know, I hope so. That would be nice,” he said.
He has good reason to be hopeful. As specified by a real estate market report conducted by One Key MLS, the value of homes within the Sullivan West school district, which includes the town of Jeffersonville, has skyrocketed since COVID-19. As of November 2020, residential property prices in the area have spiked by a whopping 33%. A home in Jeffersonville, once valued at $150,000 in 2019, is now worth nearly $200,000 in a pandemic-driven market; these numbers clearly point to the massive interest and competition of home sales caused by new buyers and residents entering the market.
“Enrollment has gone way up,” said Nisha Gupta, a teacher who runs a nearby school alongside Headmaster and husband, Jack Comstock. She adds, “We’re completely full at the moment with a waiting list due to all the New York City folks moving this way.” The Homestead School, a private Montessori school located in Glen Spey, NY, is the only institution of its kind in the lower Western region of the Catskills, that serves students as young as pre-k all the way through 8th grade. Tuition at the school ranges between $450 to $1,045 a month, depending on the grade level. And although considered “very affordable” for Manhattan and Brooklynites, the costs associated with attending the private school has been a subject of contention for some local parents. One mother, who moved up to the area from NYC approximately ten years ago, and lives in the Sullivan West school district, admitted that she had always wanted to send her kids to the Homestead school, but complained that the costs associated were way too high and out of her budget. (She wished to remain anonymous for this story.)
About an hour north of Glen Spey, in a quaint college town near Delhi, NY, population 4,842, Esther de Jong, a former model turned full-time mother, artist, and successful real estate agent for one of the largest real estate firms in the region, Timberland Properties, is tidying up her house. Like the recent transplants to the Catskills, de Jong decided to firmly plant roots upstate nearly ten years ago in search of space and peace of mind. “It was 2006 and I was pregnant with my daughter. Only once did I lug all my paints to Central Park to study landscape painting before I realized I couldn’t bear the city,” she said.
By 2010, shortly after the Great Recession, and for the sake of her sanity and artistic endeavors, de Jong and her family relocated to the Catskills permanently, setting up a large art studio for herself and her husband, also a painter, in their newly purchased home. When I spoke with her on a rainy Sunday evening over the phone, she told me that she has been cleaning and reorganizing all day. “I’m building a bed frame for a bedroom that we’re renovating. We’re not leaving our house these days, so we’re just trying to make it extra cozy. I think that’s what we’re all focused on right now,” she said.
Indeed, even in my own experience, it does seem as though most of my friends who are living up here are investing more in their living quarters. My friend, a shopkeeper named Ninze Chen, I tell de Jong, owns a very chic, mid-century modern furniture and home goods store called Long Weekend, in Livingston Manor, NY. She is always telling me how busy she is and that, “since June, sales have increased by 250%!” De Jong quickly agrees. “Local businesses that cater to the home are doing really well. My local contractors are always busy,” she said. “Everyone in real estate right now is having the best year of their career.”
For sure, it would seem that the influx of new home buyers and residents in the Catskills, driven by the Coronavirus, has bolstered the local economy. Monthly year-over-year changes in local sales tax collections from businesses in New York State indicate a considerable jump in the third quarter in counties outside of NYC. In September 2020, at the tail end of summer, sales tax collections reported by New York State of the local businesses outside of the NYC area, leapt by 19% from a deficit of -8.2% the previous month. Whereas the sales tax collections in NYC dropped by a massive -44%. These contrasting figures do illustrate the potential legitimacy of a mass exodus of NYC residents who are indeed, “escaping” to other regions in the state.
Additionally, sales tax records from local counties upstate for the third quarter indicate a similar narrative. In the Mid-Hudson region, sales tax collections improved overall by 3.6%. However, like the Coronavirus, growth in the region has been selective, with only the wealthiest counties that already have in place a vibrant cultural center, accessibility to public transportation, and is ripe for commercial expansion, as the winners. Rockland and Putnam counties hold this title; whereas, Sullivan County, with its lack of public transportation, and Orange County, with its un-idyllic landscape — a “big-box store epicenter” — are the losers.
But fiscal selectivity doesn’t stop there. According to a monthly year-over-year report by statista.com on the development in retail sales in the U.S. from 2019 and 2020, the industries that have seen the most growth during the pandemic have been those mainly catering to the home: online stores, grocery and beverage stores, and building materials and garden supply stores. Unsurprisingly, the industries hit the hardest during the pandemic are clothing stores and electronics and appliances. Moreover, in an environment where the public are either too afraid to go out because of the possible exposure to COVID-19 or because the government mandated quarantines, another industry, unmentioned in this report, has experienced a similar decline.
Marla Puccetti, who co-owns the Heron Restaurant, with her husband and chef Paul Nanni, moved upstate from New York City nearly ten years ago, and had a dream to run their own restaurant. Shortly after, their dream came true after securing a main street storefront in the quaint but trendy town of Narrowsburg, NY, population 338. Considered “the Balthazar” of Sullivan County, the Heron is known for its first-rate quality in food and service, and known by the locals as the place to people-watch. It was also voted year after year, ‘The Best Restaurant’ by readers in “The River Reporter.” Yet, while other businesses in the region boasted the highest sales growth ever, the Heron has felt the opposite. “Our business has decreased in sales since March. We were anticipating that this would have been our best year ever, but now we’re doing only a third of what business should be,” Puccetti said. Although, she does declare, there is one silver lining: the category at the restaurant that has definitely seen a major boost in sales throughout the pandemic has been indisputably, “beer, wine and alcohol.”
Like the Heron, my own restaurants have been in sharp decline. During the beginning of COVID-19, when the weather was still cold, I had the slowest quarter ever, since launching my business in 2014. Although fortunately, the numbers for my restaurants did eventually improve once indoor dining was allowed by the spring; and interestingly enough, this summer was our best yet. But by the beginning of fall, once the temperatures outdoors began to drop, our sales plummeted as well. It has gotten to the point now where I may be forced to close down my restaurant for the season in order to at least control my overhead expenses.
Restaurant Operators’ Outlook for Sales Volume in 6 Months Versus Same Period Previous Year 2019-2020
On the surface, it would appear that the New York Times writers Tracey Tully and Stacey Stowe and those writers who followed, were onto something: the Catskills are indeed booming. But that statement alone seems to be an oversimplification of the whole narrative. Yes, the Catskills are booming; but it’s only booming for certain parts of the region, and for certain sectors of certain industries, and also, only for certain privileged households that can afford to manically buy up real estate, and invest more on remodeling projects, home furnishings, or investing in their children’s future through private education.
In truth, these market fluctuations in real estate, tourism, local investments and interests, reveal but one portion of the overall populations. Like Justus said, “the Catskills are always back.” It’s been this way since the 1920s through the 1960s, when the Borscht Belt, the epicenter of the Catskills, was a destination for tourism — at the time aptly named the “Jewish Alps” — before it’s decline. The region was once again injected with life throughout the 80s, 90s, 2000s, and the present, by NYC artists, creatives, entrepreneurs, and families like mine, Justus, de Jong, Chen, Puccetti, who all migrated north from the city in the hopes of either escaping a natural disaster, or an economical disaster, or to simply have more room to grow, or perhaps find more opportunities. Of course, there will be more like us, like the recent expats who have left the city during the pandemic, who will continue to inject more life, spirit and economical abundance into this region. But the same could be said for those who do the opposite: People who have come up to the Catskills, only to realize that country life just wasn’t for them. As de Jong succinctly put it at the end of our interview, “They will go back, they always do. They like it here for now, and they’re happy here, but they’re not going to be here forever.”