In February 2011, Phoenicia looked like a town on the rise.
The tiny Shandaken hamlet was home to about 388 residents and had just been named the “sixth-coolest small town” in the country by Budget Travel magazine. Its half-mile Main Street, a two-lane strip of restaurants, shops and music venues tucked beneath Tremper Mountain, buzzed with weekend visitors and locals alike. After springtime tubing in the Esopus Creek, which ran just yards from downtown, people lingered for dinner, live music at the Phoenicia Hotel, or a slow walk past storefronts glowing late into the night.
The beauty of the Catskills, paired with a hippie aesthetic that kept just enough rural roughness, proved irresistible to city dwellers across the Northeast looking for a weekend escape. They tubed in the summer, hunted in the fall, skied in the winter and hiked in the spring. Business boomed nearly year-round.
Fifteen years later, the picture has changed.
Phoenicia’s population fell to 244 by 2023—a 37 percent decline since 2012—according to census data. More than half of the remaining residents lived below the poverty line. In 2024, Phoenicia Elementary School closed after 60 years, its enrollment too small to sustain it.
Storefronts that were once mainstays are now vacant or gone: Tinker Tubes, the Phoenicia Hotel, the Phoenicia Deli, Phoenicia Hardware. Sidewalks, many in disrepair, have seen the wave of tourists and locals slow to a trickle.
The impact of those losses is hard to overstate. The Phoenicia Hotel, which was destroyed in a 2007 fire, once hosted music events that drew crowds of up to 300 people. Tinker Tubes, which shuttered during the pandemic, has been credited with attracting close to 30,000 visitors a year to the hamlet.
During its busiest years, “there used to be hundreds of vehicles in town,” said Declan Feehan, who owns Phoenicia Wines and Liquors and the parcel where the Phoenicia Hotel once stood. “Now, there is hardly any.”
Asked recently about the challenges facing the hamlet, Shandaken Deputy Supervisor Robert Drake, a Phoenicia resident, struck an ominous tone.
“My fear,” Drake said, “is that Phoenicia is actually going to die.”
Bridges over troubled water
The turning point came sooner than many expected.
Forecasters did not expect Hurricane Irene to hit Phoenicia in August 2011. Weather models predicted the worst damage would hit downstate. Instead, the storm stalled inland, dropping more than 11 inches of rain across parts of Ulster County.
The Esopus Creek and the Stony Clove Creek swelled beyond their banks. Floodwaters overtopped Phoenicia’s two entry bridges from Route 28—the Bridge Street bridge and the Main Street bridge—cutting off access to downtown. Homes and storefronts took on up to four feet of water. Storm damage across the region was later estimated at more than $20 billion.
Flooding was nothing new to Phoenicia. Major storms in 1950, 1977, 1980, and 2005 pushed the Esopus Creek to record levels. Irene exceeded most of those figures and exposed a deeper problem.
The bridges that once served as gateways to Phoenicia’s prosperity were now, in the face of climate change, a liability that could eventually—and literally—sink the hamlet.
A 2016 flood analysis, recently updated, is what the Town Board and newly elected Supervisor Barbara Mansfield are using as a guide to mapping out solutions. It projected that without major changes, a future storm could send up to nine feet of water onto Main Street.
To make matters more complicated, the Bridge Street bridge is owned by Ulster County and the Main Street bridge is owned by the state.
Engineering studies for Bridge Street are complete, Drake said, and project funding discussions with county officials are underway.
“The Bridge Street bridge is undersized and contributes to flooding because of its design,” Drake said. In the absence of action, he said new models project the next major storm, “would have nine feet of water on Main Street. It would essentially remove Phoenicia from the map.”
The work would be extensive. Drake said it could require removing homes or yards near the bridges to widen channels and reduce flood risk.
Those discussions could prove difficult, he said.
“This is serious stuff,” he said. “This is the most important thing we will be involved in.”
For businesses, the stakes are immediate. Closing one of the two access roads into downtown for several years could be devastating.
“The bridge work could put me out of business,” Feehan said. He said the prospect has made him consider pulling up stakes. “It might be time to put stuff on the market and move on.”
Mansfield acknowledged the challenges, but said she remains hopeful.
“We have to move where we have wind at our back,” she said of the prospective bridge projects. “This could take Phoenicia out of the floodplain if we can pull it off.”
‘Impossible for anyone who wants to build a business’
Flood risk was not the only issue Irene left behind.
In early 2012, the New York City Department of Environmental Protection and the Catskills Watershed Corporation withdrew from a $15.8 million proposal to build a municipal sewer system along Main Street. One report at the time described the situation as Shandaken’s “latest bout of dithering”.
The decision followed years of debate and a Town Board resolution that would have put the project to a public referendum, a step opponents said ultimately stalled momentum. A similar proposal failed in a 2007 vote.
The lack of a municipal sewer system hurt businesses at the time and continues to do so today.
In 2011, Sweet Sue’s Diner—now the home of Bettina Cafe—was temporarily closed due to sewer issues. The year before, the Maverick Health Center chose to relocate to Boiceville because it could not legally expand its sewer system in Phoenicia.
“Failing to embrace the sewer project and accept the funding that was available has had an enormous impact on the town,’ said Michael Connor, the president of the board of directors of the Phoenicia Playhouse. “It makes it impossible for anyone who wants to build a business that requires a modern septic system. It makes it impossible for them to do business.”
Feehan said he has been unable to develop on the site of the former Phoenician Hotel because of the lack of a sewer system.
Christina Varga, owner of Varga Gallery and Studio on Main Street, said she had hopes of buying a building near her studio but agencies such as Catskills Watershed Corporation wouldn’t assist with the purchase. “Banks won’t touch the property because it is so rundown,” she added.
Varga described the hamlet’s decline as “death by a thousand small cuts.”
Samantha Awand-Gortel, branch manager of Ulster Savings Bank’s Main Street office and former president of the Phoenicia Business Association, said financing challenges remain widespread.
“People can’t get the lending to buy or open a business on Main Street because of the flood threat and lack of sewer,” she said. “It definitely gets a little tricky.”
Blame for the failed sewer project has shifted over the years, from elected officials to business owners who clashed over costs and impacts.
Robert Stanley, who was supervisor at the time, did not respond to requests for comment.
“The sewer issue became a problem because we couldn’t get people pulling in the same direction that was good for everyone,” said Kathy Nolan, the Ulster County legislator for District 22, which includes Phoenicia, and a longtime Shandaken resident. “We can blame the lack of a sewer treatment plant as a problem, but there are solutions that require innovation and consensus building.”
She added that she has recently initiated conversations with Supervisor Barbara Mansfield about those solutions.
Mansfield said momentum for the sewer project has been stalled for years as the town has worked to mend relationships with the New York City Department of Environmental Protection and the Catskills Watershed Corporation. As a result, the Town Board, in the near term, is prioritizing bridge reconstruction over any new sewer proposals.
“The Catskills Watershed Corporation and New York City have no idea that we can proceed in a way where we have people backing things instead of fighting things,” Mansfield said. “This is really important, what we are about to do. There is definitely going to be an educational aspect for the public.”
The battle of hope and jadedness
Despite decades of decay and disagreements, there are signs of progress.
Mansfield took office at the beginning of the year with promises of change and better communication. She and the Town Board are finishing work on a new comprehensive plan that they say will help rewrite zoning laws that had previously complicated how zoning and planning officials could rule on new business proposals.
There are signs of progress on another long-running challenge: the shortage of affordable worker housing. The Town Board is in ongoing talks with the Onteora School District and the housing agency RUPCO about purchasing the vacant Phoenicia Elementary School and converting it into affordable units.
Separately, the newly formed nonprofit Catskills Alliance for Housing and Preservation is in the early stages of trying to purchase the 19-unit Skyrise Apartments on Ava Maria Drive to preserve them as affordable rentals. In nearby Pine Hill, RUPCO last year supported a grassroots effort to convert the former Wellington Hotel into a mixed-use hub with affordable housing, a grocery store and a café. Construction on that project is expected to begin in March.
Varga said she hopes to begin conversations about building an arts center on Main Street.
On Rt. 28, just outside of downtown, businesses such as the Phoenicia Diner, Woodstock Brewing, and Phoenicia Pizza 28 seem to be thriving.
Even on Main Street, bright spots exist. Brio’s Restaurant and Bettina Cafe still attract crowds on most days, though not close to the high points of a decade ago.
As a result, apprehension remains.
“Longterm residents have optimism, but there hasn’t been any headway made on some of these issues,” said Awand-Gortel. “They don’t want to see it be a ghost town, but some people are really jaded.”
Harry Jameson, the former owner of Tinker Tubes, said that although he is no longer closely involved in the hamlet’s affairs since shutting down his business, what he has seen has not left him optimistic.
“Phoenicia had a lot: canoeing, kayaking on the Esopus, a rappelling tower,” he said. “Now it has nothing. It takes people to make a town, and they have to be willing to work together for the good of all. Unfortunately, I have yet to see it.”
Jameson added that a sale of the Tinker Tubes site is pending.
Mansfield has already faced pushback in her first stabs at implementing change. Dozens of residents accused her and the Town Board of “political overreach” and “scapegoating” when the board replaced Zoning Board of Appeals Member Henry Williams, whose term had expired, with alternate Frank Cuevas.
Despite the formidable challenges—and the tensions they create—Mansfield said she remains hopeful.
“Time changes everything. Everything is different now,” Mansfield said. “You have to acknowledge the accomplishments of the past, but also make the case for what is changing.”
Jim Rich is a senior reporter for The Overlook. You can reach him at jim@theoverlooknews.com.