The Last Mile: Saving Pine Hill's Wellington Hotel
In this episode, host Brett Barry joins Jan Jaffe, board president of Wellington Blueberry LLC, outside the shuttered Wellington Hotel on Main Street in Pine Hill, New York — a 12,000-square-foot, 19th-century landmark and one of the few remaining intact Catskill hotels that survived the era's notorious fires.
Jan shares the origin story of this ambitious community-driven project: how roughly 20 neighbors pooled resources in the fall of 2022 to purchase the long-vacant building. Their goal: rehabilitate the historic structure into 10 units of workforce housing (studios and one-bedrooms targeted at residents earning 60–80% of area median income) and a much-needed community grocery store.
Four years in, Wellington Blueberry has made remarkable pre-construction progress — clearing 60 dumpsters of debris, completing environmental review, obtaining all necessary permits, securing a letter of intent from Bank of America for historic tax credits, and earning a 2025 designation from the National Trust for Historic Preservation as one of America's 11 Most Endangered Historic Places. Their developer and construction manager is RUPCO, the region's leading nonprofit housing developer, and their architects are Albany preservation firm Thaler Riley Wilson.
But they're still at "the last mile" — approximately $1 million short of the full funding needed to break ground.
Topics covered:
- What workforce housing means and who it's designed to help
- How historic tax credits work and why they matter for this project
- The "Dagwood sandwich" of layered funding sources (grants from Restore NY, Ulster County, anonymous donors, and more)
- What the community has already accomplished — including two volunteer clean-up events with 40 people each
- Plans for a local grocery store serving both residents and visitors
- How prospective tenants will eventually apply via lottery
To learn more or donate, visit pinehillwellington.com. Donations can currently be made through RUPCO's website.
