Partition Street hotel gears up for late September opening

Is Saugerties ready for a boutique hotel, a large restaurant and still-larger conference center? Is this a good thing? Van Bolle, who’s owned and operated the Partition Street clothing store DIG with his wife Daisy since 2005, answers an enthusiastic “Yes!” on both counts.

“We’re really thrilled at the prospect of the hotel opening,” said Bolle. “I think it’s going to be a fantastic thing for town.”

Bolle said during the summer, pretty much all the bed and breakfasts, vacation rentals and hotels in Saugerties are full. He hears sad tales from customers who have to stay in a town of Ulster hotel (which will remain nameless) overlooking the scenic beauty of the Wal-Mart parking lot and… the Target parking lot.

“I think that’s really unfortunate,” said Bolle.

Bolle thinks the project will succeed because the demand is there. He says he hears from customers who work at large corporations in the city who are already looking forward to booking retreats. They like the adjoining hotel, and the location in the middle of a walkable, cool town. Business-owners will reap the benefits, Bolle predicts, as the 60 or 65 additional temporary village residents wander up the hill and spend money at local shops and eateries. Perhaps that area between Diamond Mills and Stella’s will be the next to get a facelift.

And yet for those who had hoped the developers would build a public walkway by the creek in exchange for the $780,000 in public money the project received and out of some benevolent spirit, the contemporary American food with fresh local ingredients they’re served on the deck overlooking the majestic falls will always taste a little bitter. Just last week the town and village once again teamed up to ask the state for one of their annual wish-list requests: funding for a pedestrian trail running from the lighthouse to Dock Street. If by some chance this is approved, these advocates, who had coalesced in early 2009 under the name Saugerties Citizens for a Smarter Partition Street Project (their website is still up), will find it galling to end their walk at the foot of the project they feel blocked the public from the falls.

Whose side would Martin Cantine have been on? As an old-school industrialist, one can assume he would side with progress, prosperity and private property. He’d point out that the land by the falls had never been part of the commons; that any previous onlookers had been trespassing, and the falls were not a natural wonder but the result of a dam built for industry. But he was also a very generous soul who turned over the land that became Cantine Field, a jewel among regional recreational facilities, to the town in 1938. Is Struzzieri a 21st-century Martin Cantine? Was it he who donated the $150,000 that kept sports going at Saugerties High School last year? Is HITS the reason local businesses have been able to prosper and attain the critical mass necessary to make Saugerties the happening place it is today? Will this project revitalize the entire south-side, as former Mayor Robert Yerick predicted? Time will tell.