Today
Today, the region is a summer home for many Orthodox Jewish families, primarily from the New York metropolitan area. It has many summer homes and bungalow colonies (including many of the historic colonies), as well as year-round dwellers. It even has its own year-round branch of the Orthodox Jewish volunteer emergency medical service Hatzolah. A few resorts remain in the region, though not many associated with the Borscht Belt Prime (including Kutsher's Hotel, Villa Roma, Soyuzivka, a Ukrainian cultural resort, and the Skazka, Xenia, and Hotel Pine resorts, which are Russian cultural resorts.
Plans are now in place by those who purchased former Borscht Belt resorts Concord Resort Hotel and Grossinger's, for example, to work with American Indians in an attempt to bring gambling to the region. Because the Borscht Belt's prime has long passed and many of the resorts are abandoned, developers feel that this is the only way to revitalize the region to the popularity it once had by attracting guests to world-class casinos and resorts such as the ones in New Jersey and Connecticut. However, large-scale casino plans have not come to fruition.
The Heiden Hotel in South Fallsburg, which was the location of the movie Sweet Lorraine starring Maureen Stapleton, was destroyed by fire in May 2008.
The Stevensville Hotel in Swan Lake, which was owned by the family of accused Bernard Madoff accomplice David G. Friehling, has reopened as the Swan Lake Resort Hotel.
The former Homowack Lodge in Phillipsport was converted into a summer camp for Hassidic girls. Officials of the state Department of Health ordered the property evacuated in July 2009, citing health and safety violations.
Kutsher's Hotel and Country Club has hosted the United States edition of the music festival All Tomorrow's Parties in 2008, 2009, and 2010.
The Granite currently operates as the Hudson Valley Resort.
The Tamarack Lodge caught fire in 2012. 30 buildings were partially or completely destroyed.
Read more about this topic: Borscht Belt
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