The Catskill Center’s proposal to add a 40-car parking lot, bathrooms, a snack stand, and other visitor amenities at the top of Platte Clove Preserve drew almost two hours of criticism Sunday, Nov. 8, from residents who said it would bring more traffic, more visitors, and more risk to a quiet corner of the Catskills.

More than 50 residents and neighbors filled the Platte Clove Neighborhood Center, a repurposed church run by a nonprofit of the same name, to question Jeff Senterman, executive director of the Catskill Center for Conservation and Development, and David Kukle, who sits on the center’s board and the Hunter Town Board.

“Putting a parking lot for 40 cars with room for expansion, which is written on your website, is a desecration of the mountaintop,” said Christine Wade, a Platte Clove resident. “This is a major gateway.”

The Catskill Center, an Arkville nonprofit founded in 1969, owns and manages more than 300 acres of public conservation land across the Catskills. 

The dispute is part of a strain felt across the mountaintop since the pandemic, as visitors increasingly crowd roadsides and trailheads and tax rescue squads in Hunter. The Catskill Center describes the lot as a fix for that problem, a way to get cars off the shoulder of Platte Clove Road. Many of its neighbors see it as the opposite: an invitation that would draw more people to a fragile clove. For now, the lot exists only as an idea. Any construction would need approval from the Hunter Planning Board, and the center hasn’t drawn up a plan to bring before it.

The Griswold family donated land in the hamlet to the Catskill Center in 1975, establishing Platte Clove Preserve. The 208-acre gift included a small red cabin, which the center now uses to host artists in the summer. The preserve has 1.5 miles of hiking trails, and the center holds events there throughout the year, including themed hikes and mushroom-foraging walks.

The lot is one piece of an almost 250-page strategic plan the center released earlier this year for its three main properties: Platte Clove Preserve, the Thorn Preserve in Woodstock, and the Catskills Visitor Center in Mount Tremper.

At Platte Clove, the plan calls for a 40-space gravel lot off Platte Clove Road on 3.6 acres the center bought in December 2024. It lists a visitor kiosk, bathrooms, a seasonal snack and beverage stand, an open-air amphitheater built from natural materials for performances and gatherings, and a “small observation tower” for scenic views and plein-air painting. The center also wants to restore the red cabin and improve the preserve’s trails.

The center circulated an open-ended survey in June asking for feedback on the plan. It hasn’t released the results or said when it will.

Year-round residents live in the clove, an isolated part of the town of Hunter linked to Saugerties by a seasonal stretch of Platte Clove Road. Known locally as the Back Mountain Road, the stretch closed for the winter Thursday, Nov. 12. Greene County plans to restore the road’s historic bridge over Plattekill Creek next year, and Hunter officials have asked the county to lower speed limits on the upper section, citing safety concerns.

Catskill Center Makes Its Case

At the meeting, Kukle and Senterman said the lot was needed because so many visitors park illegally along the road to reach the preserve.

“For a number of years, the town has been wrestling with the parking issues in Platte Clove,” Kukle said. “As we all know, there’s illegal parking, there’s parking that’s unsafe because it’s blocking road traffic for emergency vehicles to get through.”

The center has nowhere to put its own visitors, either, he said.

“Our programs tend to bring between 25 and 30 people,” Kukle said. “We have no place to park folks for what we do. We can’t even hold a board meeting there, because we can’t park there.”

He said the lot would take cars off the road, not add to them.

“This is not an increase in terms of making more parking for more people to come,” he said. “This is removing people from the road if they exist, and protecting our ability to do programming.”

Residents Fear More Traffic

Speakers said the lot would be unsafe and erode the clove’s character, and several urged the center to commission a traffic study of Platte Clove Road before going further. Others called the project a “money grab” for donations and said the center was turning a place where people live into a tourist attraction.

Hundreds of cars park at the Mountain Top Historical Society campus in Haines Falls, said Larry Tompkins, a Windham native who lives in the hamlet. The same could happen in Platte Clove, he said.

“There is no parking lot you can build big enough that will solve the problem you’re trying to solve,” he said. “It is the one pristine area left.”

Quentin Conybeare, who lives in Platte Clove, said a camera outside his house counted 4,000 cars in a 12-hour period this fall, and that many already park on and near his property. A 40-car lot would fill quickly, he said.

“Not even Tannersville or Hunter can absorb 4,000 people,” Conybeare said. “I just don’t see how our clove, and 40 cars in that pristine spot, will make a difference.”

More visitors could also mean more strain on first responders, said Elizabeth Gross, a fire district commissioner in Windham. She pointed to the parking area at Elm Ridge Wild Forest on state Route 23 in that town.

Senterman said he and Kukle had spoken with many neighbors since the plan came out and that the center would take their feedback into account. The proposal was only that, a proposal, he said.

He rejected the “money grab” claim, saying the preserve already has a place for donations near the red cabin. He also disputed claims that the center had started construction, saying recent work on the property was part of the town’s effort to build a turnaround for school buses.

“This plan is not a construction checklist,” he said. “It was much more of a, you know, ‘Here are your big picture goals.’”

Tourism Beyond the Clove

For some residents, the proposal raised a bigger question: how much more tourism the mountaintop can take.

“After COVID, we’re finding that more people are aware of our beautiful mountaintop,” said Reed Rubey, who lives near Tannersville. “As more people become aware, that 4,000 number is only going to increase.”

Catskill Center officials said rising tourism has helped and hurt the community. Senterman said that growth is the reason the lot is needed, not a reason to reject it.

“Doing nothing does not make the situation better at Platte Clove,” he said. “If we do nothing, the situation will continue to degrade.”

Hunter Supervisor Sean Mahoney, who attended the meeting, said he hoped residents, officials, and the center could form an “organic, grassroots, collective partnership” to balance tourism’s benefits and costs for the town.

“More people are coming here,” Mahoney said. “We don’t have a sign saying, ‘Come to Hunter.’ That doesn’t exist. It’s happening without our input. It’s happening through social media. It’s happening through journalism. It’s happening in so many different ways.

“What I’m asking for is your help to come up with solutions that we can implement,” he said.

Connor Greco is a staff reporter for The Overlook covering Windham, Hunter, and surrounding Greene County communities. Send correspondence to connor@theoverlooknews.com.