For those who are frequent travelers of Route 55, south of White Lake, the large construction project which is being undertaken at The Eldred Preserve is hardly a secret. Large concrete walls have already been poured and workmen are busy putting the steel up for the inn and the restaurant.
Chief Operating Officer Scott Samuelson said, “The building project is coming along very well, we are just struggling with the weather. We have to be realistic, March isn’t even over yet and we all know what kind of weather that can bring.”
Temperatures in the single digits have greeted workmen for much of early March and the minus 15-degree temperatures in February were also a challenge.
But Myhren Builders, of Vernon Township, NJ, are working through it, raising steel on the restaurant as local contractor Allison-Devore keeps pace on the inn with the help of Liberty Iron Works.
“This a $12 million project so there is a lot of work going on,” Samuelson said. “In addition to the inn and restaurant, we will have three lodges, each with five rooms and five private cabins.
“We will have 28 rooms in total and they will be very, very luxurious,” he said.
The restaurant will have a familiar Sullivan County ring to it as The Old Homestead owners, Paul and Alice Edelman, return to the restaurant business. And the Eldred Preserve will also employ a catering chef in the name of John Botti from John’s Harvest Inn in Middletown.
“He became available and we scooped him up,” a delighted Samuelson said. “And Ed Dudek will be our General Manager for Lodging.
“We are just very excited [to watch the project come to life],” he said.
By Fred Stabbert III