Main Street shops include Last Chance.
Ask someone if they know Hunter Township, and they might look at you quizzically and ask, “Do you mean Hunter Mountain? In the Catskills?���
Yes, Hunter Mountain is one of the Catskill High Peaks, about three hours from Manhattan, and has been drawing skiers and snow hounds since the 1960s. But there’s more to upstate Hunter than powder.
Those who venture beyond the slopes have discovered Hunter Township, made up of the Village of Hunter (where the mountain is located) and the Village of Tannersville, 4 miles east along Route 23A.
Hunter’s transformation began about a decade ago, when the Catskill Mountain Foundation, a nonprofit, upgraded the barren Hunter Village Main Street with gallery spaces, a bookstore and literary arts center, an organic-farm market, a theater that plays mainstream and indie films, the Doctorow Center for the Arts, the Evelyn Weisberg Concert Hall and a piano museum.
Last year, the foundation opened the Orpheum Performing Arts Center in Tannersville, the more charming of the two villages, with its candy-colored buildings and funky Main Street fixtures like Last Chance Antiques and Cheese Cafe and Maggie’s Krooked Cafe.
The foundation also runs the Orchard Project, a theater-arts collective, and Sugar Maples Center for Creative Arts, a visual and performing arts school, in the nearby hamlet of Maplecrest.
Hunter Mountain also puts on events including the Brats and Brews Festival, Bluestock and Oktoberfest.
Marina Weinstein recently bought a two-bedroom slope-side condo. Her husband, Alexander, and her two grown children are avid skiers. But Weinstein, a Riverdale resident, doesn’t join them.
“I love the movie theater and the chamber-music series and long walks,” she says. “There’s plenty to do here beyond skiing.”
The cool air and fresh water draw those who hike, swim, mountain-bike, kayak, fish, ice-climb, sled and cross-country ski.
Locals call their town the “mountaintop,” and they gush when they talk about it.
“To me, it’s like a Frank Capra movie,” says Carolyn Bennett, who manages the Village Square Bookstore and Literary Arts Center, part of the Catskills Mountain Foundation. “If you live here or spend a lot of time in the community here, you know it’s the kind of place where if someone sneezes on the east end, someone on the west end says, ‘Gesundheit.’ ”
Second-home owners have many options — from basic $100,000 cabins to a $625,000 log home set on 33 acres to million-dollar hideaways — in and around Hunter Village and Tannersville. Options include Onteora Park and Twilight Park, two private communities north of Tannersville, as well as nearby hamlets like Lanesville, Haines Falls, Platte Clove, Edgewood and Elka Park.
The median house price in the area is $275,000, according to Gene Gordon, owner/broker of Gene Gordon Realty. He says there are more than 225 condo units on and around Hunter Mountain, from $125,000 one-bedrooms to $400,000 three-bedrooms.
At Liftside Village a 69-unit ski-in, ski-out complex, a two-bedroom condo costs about $350,000. At the recently-built seven-unit Pinnacle condo building, situated on top of the base lodge, a three-bedroom, two-story unit is on the market for $615,000.
Another option is the Kaatskill Mountain Club, a chic, 77-unit, ski-in, ski-out condo-hotel where unit owners buy “quarter shares” for 13 weeks each year. Ownership is usually spread throughout the year so owners can use the unit one out of every four weeks. Units range from 356-square-foot studios to 2,000-square-foot suites. Shares for two-bedrooms range from $70,000 to $90,000, with a $325 monthly maintenance.
Paul Slutzky, an owner of Hunter Mountain and the slopeside condo developments, has more perspective on the town and mountain than most. He is the son of Hunter Mountain co-founder Orville Slutzky. He grew up in the township. He has watched it go through boom and bust. What surprised him recently, though, was a study showing 70 percent of all homes in the township, including condos, were second homes.
“Couldn’t believe it was that many,” he says.
It makes sense. There’s something here for everyone.