_ritter_
Gadfly
Friends and fellow anglers,
Two newspaper article appeared today in The Times Herald Record and New York Times.
This time about the groundbreaking of the 1969 Woodstock site - now called Bethel Woods - in Bethel, New York.
Right off of New York Route 17B in Sullivan County near White Lake.
Yes - and those to the south will be taking NY Route 17 to get there as will those going to the VLT's and possibly casinos in the future.
The New York Philharmonic will be the summer orchestra as the BSO has been the summer ochestra at Tanglewood in the Berkshires.
Pataki, the senators and the dignataries were there.
The area is changing...I should say, has been changing for the past five years.
Please read the article.
Thank you.
TR
Narrowsburg, NY
www.delawareriverfishing.com
..........
http://www.recordonline.com/archive/2004/07/20/woodgrow.htm
Gerry makes dream a reality
By Steve Israel
Times Herald-Record
sisrael@th-record.com
Bethel – Alan Gerry stood in front of the bowl-shaped field where the main stage of his performing arts center will sit.
He thanked the executive director of the New York Philharmonic for coming to the groundbreaking next to the 1969 Woodstock festival site. Then the Liberty cable TV magnate said this to the crowd of more than 300 seated under a white tent: "You know they [the Philharmonic] are going to open the show in two years."
Gerry was talking about the opening of the $63 million arts center, the first weekend of July 2006.
Later, the Philharmonic's Zarin Mehta went one step further. The brother of conductor Zubin Mehta said one of the world's great orchestras could make the Bethel Woods Center for the Arts its second home.
"It's a great idea. We've been looking for a summer home," he said, after mentioning the orchestra would first have to figure out logistics like travel and housing.
The Philharmonic won't be the only show in this central Sullivan County town of farms and fields. The man developing the arts center's programming, David Carlucci, formerly of the Saratoga Performing Arts Center, said he's already talking to performers, ranging from modern dance and ballet companies to new musicians and rock 'n' rollers.
But you didn't need officials or Gov. George Pataki digging a shiny shovel in the ground to tell you decades of Woodstock dreams were coming true.
You just needed to stand on the hill and listen to the rumbling of bulldozers. Thirty-five years after 450,000 blanketed Max Yasgur's dairy farm, construction on the performing arts center that will celebrate the festival has begun.
Yesterday, some 300 invitees, from bearded Woodstock veteran Duke Devlin to bearded County Attorney Sam Yasgur, the son of Max, got a look at the model of the 4,800 seat indoor-outdoor pavilion and the interpretative center that will house an exhibit devoted to Woodstock – all built with natural-style materials chosen by Gerry.
They munched hors d'oeuvres, sipped chardonnay and heard politicians praise Gerry, who turned a black-and-white-TV repair shop in Liberty into a $2.8 billion cable TV empire.
State Sen. John Bonacic, R-C Mount Hope, who reiterated the promise of $15 million in state aid, even quoted Ralph Waldo Emerson: "To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived/This is to have succeeded."
But politicians like Bonacic, Assemblywoman Aileen Gunther, D-Forestburgh, and Rep. Maurice Hinchey, D-Saugerties, were playing to an easy crowd.
Miles from the tent and chocolate strawberries, some of the folks in show-me Sullivan are finally beginning to believe this arts center will be built.
"It can only help, it's only a good thing" said Mike Schwartz, standing outside the White Lake Firehouse. "There's no downside to it."
"I'm all for it; it's better than a casino," said Alice Froelich at her Kenoza Lake farmhouse. "And if a local guy can do it, it's even better."
Local guy Gerry, who was once so poor he stuffed cardboard in his shoes to cover holes, knows Sullivan County is a tough sell.
"We read a lot of promises and ideas and unfortunately very little turns to reality," said the man wearing black Luchese cowboy boots.
Then he paused, and you could hear reality: the rumbling of bulldozers building the Bethel Woods Center for the Arts.
-----------
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/20/nyregion/20woodstock.html
Establishing a Center to Remember Woodstock
By MAREK FUCHS
Published: July 20, 2004
BETHEL, N.Y., July 19 - In summer-weight suits and dresses, chatting over white wine and choice hors d'oeuvres, business leaders and politicians gathered here Monday to scoop ceremonial soil and declare a new future for former alfalfa and corn fields best known for the mud, nudity and three-day concert that came to define a generation.
The New York Thruway was not backed up for miles Monday, but those who were here were full of hope that their development plans, now officially under way, would redefine Max Yasgur's old dairy farm and the surrounding acreage and give Sullivan County the means to compete with places like Saratoga Springs and Tanglewood for summer concert dollars.
There will be an amphitheater and museum opening in two years, and it is possible that a hotel and conference center and a music school will start by 2012. That would be more than four decades after the famous warnings came from the stage in August 1969, advising the 400,000 revelers to stay clear of the brown acid.
The new direction of the old site of the Woodstock Music and Art Fair took form when Alan Gerry, a local man who made a fortune in cable television, bought the Yasgur farm and surrounding land for more than $10 million starting in 1997.
The land had always existed in a state of arrested adolescence, troubled by different owners, fizzled plans and ambivalence in Bethel about how - if at all - the concert, considered a nuisance by many, should be commemorated.
For years there has only been a small marker where the stage stood. "It's like the tomb of the unknown hippie," said Duke Devlin, 61, who came for the concert from a commune in Texas and never left. The concert had to be moved to Bethel because of the large crowds, and Mr. Devlin, for one, always felt that a grander tribute was in order.
Neither the amphitheater nor the museum, both of which are scheduled to open with a concert by the New York Philharmonic on July 4, 2006, are to be directly on the concert site. They will sit instead on a plateau above it, part of a sloping contoured area with several outcrops of rocks and trees. The museum and 4,800-seat covered amphitheater, which will be run as nonprofit organizations, will cost a combined $63 million to build. Funds are to come from the Gerry Foundation and New York State, which will provide $15 million.
Though Gov. George E. Pataki could not attend the official groundbreaking ceremony for the Bethel Woods Center for the Arts, he arrived several hours earlier to survey the site and toss dirt with a titanium shovel. Mr. Pataki said he hoped to bring his children to the museum to tell them about the concert.
Asked later, the governor said he missed his chance to attend Woodstock. A friend asked him to go when he was a summer intern at a Wall Street law firm. "He said we should go, but I told him I didn't think it would be exciting,'' Mr. Pataki said. "I should have gone."
Some of those who did go, and even those who did not, are raising some eyebrows about the hotel and conference center that might go up around the amphitheater and the museum.
Jonathan Drapkin, the executive director of the Gerry Foundation, said the first goal was to complete what was begun Monday. He could not say whether the hotel and conference center would be nonprofit, too.
Rose Hillock, 58, a homemaker who lives nearby in Cochecton, said that anything on the site that concerned music was appropriate, "but I draw the line there."
Kamber Kukic, 51, who owns the Bethel Country Store, said the area was in desperate need of the energy Mr. Gerry was offering. He added that even if a conference center went up, that would beat the alternative being talked about in the area: casinos.
Wavy Gravy, or Hugh Romney, one of the Woodstock purists who is famous for his raspy festival announcement of "breakfast in bed for 400,000!" said he had mixed feelings about the plans. Reached by phone in Canada at the Vancouver Folk Festival, Mr. Romney said it was the first he had heard of the development. "It could be something amazing or it could be schlock," he said. "I never say there's no hope."
Mr. Romney added that the strength of the Woodstock festival was the people, not some magical parcel of land. "It rained. The whole world was watching and declared it a disaster area. But we lifted ourselves up by our collective bootstraps, and it truly was that energy that lifted people up spiritually," he said.
"It could have been the Mississippi flooding and everyone pitching in so there were no bankers or street persons. It was just like that, only we had a better sound track. It is never the dwelling place, but the dweller," he said. "Besides, maybe peace and understanding will be spoken about at the conference center."
-----------------
Two newspaper article appeared today in The Times Herald Record and New York Times.
This time about the groundbreaking of the 1969 Woodstock site - now called Bethel Woods - in Bethel, New York.
Right off of New York Route 17B in Sullivan County near White Lake.
Yes - and those to the south will be taking NY Route 17 to get there as will those going to the VLT's and possibly casinos in the future.
The New York Philharmonic will be the summer orchestra as the BSO has been the summer ochestra at Tanglewood in the Berkshires.
Pataki, the senators and the dignataries were there.
The area is changing...I should say, has been changing for the past five years.
Please read the article.
Thank you.
TR
Narrowsburg, NY
www.delawareriverfishing.com
..........
http://www.recordonline.com/archive/2004/07/20/woodgrow.htm
Gerry makes dream a reality
By Steve Israel
Times Herald-Record
sisrael@th-record.com
Bethel – Alan Gerry stood in front of the bowl-shaped field where the main stage of his performing arts center will sit.
He thanked the executive director of the New York Philharmonic for coming to the groundbreaking next to the 1969 Woodstock festival site. Then the Liberty cable TV magnate said this to the crowd of more than 300 seated under a white tent: "You know they [the Philharmonic] are going to open the show in two years."
Gerry was talking about the opening of the $63 million arts center, the first weekend of July 2006.
Later, the Philharmonic's Zarin Mehta went one step further. The brother of conductor Zubin Mehta said one of the world's great orchestras could make the Bethel Woods Center for the Arts its second home.
"It's a great idea. We've been looking for a summer home," he said, after mentioning the orchestra would first have to figure out logistics like travel and housing.
The Philharmonic won't be the only show in this central Sullivan County town of farms and fields. The man developing the arts center's programming, David Carlucci, formerly of the Saratoga Performing Arts Center, said he's already talking to performers, ranging from modern dance and ballet companies to new musicians and rock 'n' rollers.
But you didn't need officials or Gov. George Pataki digging a shiny shovel in the ground to tell you decades of Woodstock dreams were coming true.
You just needed to stand on the hill and listen to the rumbling of bulldozers. Thirty-five years after 450,000 blanketed Max Yasgur's dairy farm, construction on the performing arts center that will celebrate the festival has begun.
Yesterday, some 300 invitees, from bearded Woodstock veteran Duke Devlin to bearded County Attorney Sam Yasgur, the son of Max, got a look at the model of the 4,800 seat indoor-outdoor pavilion and the interpretative center that will house an exhibit devoted to Woodstock – all built with natural-style materials chosen by Gerry.
They munched hors d'oeuvres, sipped chardonnay and heard politicians praise Gerry, who turned a black-and-white-TV repair shop in Liberty into a $2.8 billion cable TV empire.
State Sen. John Bonacic, R-C Mount Hope, who reiterated the promise of $15 million in state aid, even quoted Ralph Waldo Emerson: "To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived/This is to have succeeded."
But politicians like Bonacic, Assemblywoman Aileen Gunther, D-Forestburgh, and Rep. Maurice Hinchey, D-Saugerties, were playing to an easy crowd.
Miles from the tent and chocolate strawberries, some of the folks in show-me Sullivan are finally beginning to believe this arts center will be built.
"It can only help, it's only a good thing" said Mike Schwartz, standing outside the White Lake Firehouse. "There's no downside to it."
"I'm all for it; it's better than a casino," said Alice Froelich at her Kenoza Lake farmhouse. "And if a local guy can do it, it's even better."
Local guy Gerry, who was once so poor he stuffed cardboard in his shoes to cover holes, knows Sullivan County is a tough sell.
"We read a lot of promises and ideas and unfortunately very little turns to reality," said the man wearing black Luchese cowboy boots.
Then he paused, and you could hear reality: the rumbling of bulldozers building the Bethel Woods Center for the Arts.
-----------
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/20/nyregion/20woodstock.html
Establishing a Center to Remember Woodstock
By MAREK FUCHS
Published: July 20, 2004
BETHEL, N.Y., July 19 - In summer-weight suits and dresses, chatting over white wine and choice hors d'oeuvres, business leaders and politicians gathered here Monday to scoop ceremonial soil and declare a new future for former alfalfa and corn fields best known for the mud, nudity and three-day concert that came to define a generation.
The New York Thruway was not backed up for miles Monday, but those who were here were full of hope that their development plans, now officially under way, would redefine Max Yasgur's old dairy farm and the surrounding acreage and give Sullivan County the means to compete with places like Saratoga Springs and Tanglewood for summer concert dollars.
There will be an amphitheater and museum opening in two years, and it is possible that a hotel and conference center and a music school will start by 2012. That would be more than four decades after the famous warnings came from the stage in August 1969, advising the 400,000 revelers to stay clear of the brown acid.
The new direction of the old site of the Woodstock Music and Art Fair took form when Alan Gerry, a local man who made a fortune in cable television, bought the Yasgur farm and surrounding land for more than $10 million starting in 1997.
The land had always existed in a state of arrested adolescence, troubled by different owners, fizzled plans and ambivalence in Bethel about how - if at all - the concert, considered a nuisance by many, should be commemorated.
For years there has only been a small marker where the stage stood. "It's like the tomb of the unknown hippie," said Duke Devlin, 61, who came for the concert from a commune in Texas and never left. The concert had to be moved to Bethel because of the large crowds, and Mr. Devlin, for one, always felt that a grander tribute was in order.
Neither the amphitheater nor the museum, both of which are scheduled to open with a concert by the New York Philharmonic on July 4, 2006, are to be directly on the concert site. They will sit instead on a plateau above it, part of a sloping contoured area with several outcrops of rocks and trees. The museum and 4,800-seat covered amphitheater, which will be run as nonprofit organizations, will cost a combined $63 million to build. Funds are to come from the Gerry Foundation and New York State, which will provide $15 million.
Though Gov. George E. Pataki could not attend the official groundbreaking ceremony for the Bethel Woods Center for the Arts, he arrived several hours earlier to survey the site and toss dirt with a titanium shovel. Mr. Pataki said he hoped to bring his children to the museum to tell them about the concert.
Asked later, the governor said he missed his chance to attend Woodstock. A friend asked him to go when he was a summer intern at a Wall Street law firm. "He said we should go, but I told him I didn't think it would be exciting,'' Mr. Pataki said. "I should have gone."
Some of those who did go, and even those who did not, are raising some eyebrows about the hotel and conference center that might go up around the amphitheater and the museum.
Jonathan Drapkin, the executive director of the Gerry Foundation, said the first goal was to complete what was begun Monday. He could not say whether the hotel and conference center would be nonprofit, too.
Rose Hillock, 58, a homemaker who lives nearby in Cochecton, said that anything on the site that concerned music was appropriate, "but I draw the line there."
Kamber Kukic, 51, who owns the Bethel Country Store, said the area was in desperate need of the energy Mr. Gerry was offering. He added that even if a conference center went up, that would beat the alternative being talked about in the area: casinos.
Wavy Gravy, or Hugh Romney, one of the Woodstock purists who is famous for his raspy festival announcement of "breakfast in bed for 400,000!" said he had mixed feelings about the plans. Reached by phone in Canada at the Vancouver Folk Festival, Mr. Romney said it was the first he had heard of the development. "It could be something amazing or it could be schlock," he said. "I never say there's no hope."
Mr. Romney added that the strength of the Woodstock festival was the people, not some magical parcel of land. "It rained. The whole world was watching and declared it a disaster area. But we lifted ourselves up by our collective bootstraps, and it truly was that energy that lifted people up spiritually," he said.
"It could have been the Mississippi flooding and everyone pitching in so there were no bankers or street persons. It was just like that, only we had a better sound track. It is never the dwelling place, but the dweller," he said. "Besides, maybe peace and understanding will be spoken about at the conference center."
-----------------
Last edited:
) closed teh doors a few years back.
