Galli Curci Road @ New York State Route 28
Highmount, NY 12441

Property description was prepared September 13, 2026 from the project record...

Dean Gitter assembled roughly 1,960 acres on both sides of the Belleayre Mountain Ski Center between 1999 and 2001, buying parcel by parcel from more than thirty separate owners. He proposed a resort. What followed was seventeen years of environmental review, negotiation and litigation, ending in approvals that were upheld on appeal and re-affirmed by both towns in 2019. Gitter died in 2018, before any of it was built.

Along the way the project was cut roughly in half by agreement, more than 1,200 acres went to the State as Forest Preserve, and 203 acres went under a New York City watershed easement. What remains in private hands is about 670 acres.

1.  The mountain, before the project

The Highmount Ski Center operated from 1947 to 1993 on the western shoulder of the same ridge that carries Belleayre. Two T-bars, a Poma lift, a novice area and a dozen named trails. It closed in 1993 and has been dormant since, which is why the land next to a State ski mountain was available to assemble at all.
Belleayre itself is the anomaly that makes the corridor work. Article XIV of the New York Constitution requires Forest Preserve land to be kept forever wild, and Belleayre exists under a specific constitutional exception that permits the State to operate a ski center there, capped at 25 miles of trails. It is run today by the Olympic Regional Development Authority.

2.  The assemblage, 1999 to 2001

Crossroads Ventures LLC was formed in 1999. The operating agreement in the project file is dated June 30, 1999. The first deed into Crossroads was recorded on May 3, 1999, from John H. Mann. Thirty-three acquisition deeds follow in the Ulster County index alone, concentrated in an eighteen-month run. The sellers were a cross section of who had owned the Catskills for the previous half century: private families, a fish and game association, two sportsmen’s clubs, a spring water company, a realty partnership, the County of Ulster, and the operators of the closed ski hill.

The result was 1,960 acres in two non-contiguous groups on either side of the State ski center: the Big Indian Plateau, roughly 1,242 acres east of Belleayre in the Ashokan Reservoir watershed, and Wildacres, roughly 718 acres to the west. Both sit inside the Catskill Park and inside the New York City water supply watershed, which is the fact that shaped everything that followed.

3.  The first project and the review that stalled it, 1999 to 2006
The original program was one economically integrated resort across both assemblages. The opposition was organized and well funded, the watershed exposure was real, and by the end of 2006 the project was in front of an administrative law process with no clear end. Seven years in, nothing was built.
 
4.  The Agreement in Principle, September 5, 2007

Rather than litigate the adjudication to a conclusion, the parties settled. The Agreement in Principle was executed by the State of New York, the City of New York, Crossroads Ventures, and the environmental organizations that had opposed the project: the Catskill Center for Conservation and Development, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the New York Public Interest Research Group, Riverkeeper, Theodore Gordon Flyfishers, Trout Unlimited, and the Zen Environmental Studies Institute.
It is a detailed document, not a statement of intent. What it did:

•	Abandoned the eastern half of the project. Crossroads ended its development effort on the Big Indian Plateau.
•	Sold 1,216.5 acres of the Big Indian Plateau to the Trust for Public Land for conveyance to New York State, to be held as public open space.
•	Required a watershed conservation easement over the 203 acre Adelstein parcel in the Town of Middletown in favor of the City of New York, with a building envelope of no more than 10 acres and impervious surface capped at 43,560 square feet. Section 26 of the Agreement said the easement would provide for no residential, overnight lodging or industrial uses.
•	Re-scoped the western project into the Wildacres Resort and the Highmount Spa, with a hard cap on unit counts.
•	Required Crossroads to record covenants in favor of the easement holder limiting lodging and residential density to the modified project, and barring Class III gaming.
•	Committed DEC to trail and lift improvements at Belleayre, expanding from roughly 14.5 miles of trails toward the constitutional limit of 25.
•	Bound the parties and their successors and assigns.

The easement itself was executed three years later, by Crossroads on November 17, 2010 and by the City on October 14, 2010. Its operative restriction, section 4.9, reads in full: “Residential dwellings, and improvements related to industrial use, are prohibited on the Easement Property.” It does not carry forward the overnight lodging prohibition described in the Agreement in Principle. Inside the building envelope the easement restricts total impervious surface to one acre or 30 percent of the envelope, whichever is smaller, and contemplates utilities, a water supply and a subsurface sewage treatment system serving a use allowed under the easement. The examples it gives of permitted improvements include an amphitheater and tennis courts. A buyer should confirm the instrument as recorded at the Delaware County Clerk and obtain the Department of Environmental Protection’s position before relying on the difference. The Agreement also contemplated conveying part of the former Highmount Ski Center to the State for incorporation into Belleayre. That never happened. The ski center parcel remains in private ownership and no State acquisition is pending.

The trade was straightforward. The developer gave up the more sensitive half of the holding and accepted permanent limits on the rest. The opposition stopped opposing. That is why this project got through a review that kills most Catskills development, and it is the single most valuable thing in the file.

Measured against what was originally proposed, the approved project was a different animal. The site went from 1,960 acres to 739. Developed acreage went from 573 to 218. More than 1,200 acres went to the Forest Preserve and 203 acres went under conservation easement. Approval did not end it. The Catskill Heritage Alliance filed Article 78 proceedings in February 2016, in Albany County against DEC and in Ulster County against the Shandaken Planning Board. Every challenge was resolved in the project’s favor, at every level. For a buyer, that record is worth more than the permits themselves. The opposition that mattered has been to court twice and lost.

Dean Gitter died in 2018, the same year the Appellate Division cleared the last of the appeals. He had carried the project for nineteen years, the first deed in 1999 through the settlement, the review and the litigation. The approvals survived him. The program did not advance without him nothing was built, time did the rest.