Music, dancing, pizza, donuts and boats

New businesses sprout on the shores of Kauneonga Lake

By FRITZ MAYER

KAUNEONGA LAKE, NY — Bill Burns, the market manager who made remarks at the opening of the second year of the farmer’s market in Kauneonga Lake, said with unmitigated pride, “This is the town where it’s happening.” Very few would disagree that, with galloping development and the fastest growing population in Sullivan County, things are indeed happening in Bethel, and much of that activity is centered in the lakeshore business district of Kauneonga Lake.

Five new businesses, in three new buildings, have opened or will open in the next couple of weeks, and a fourth building is on the way. On a trip to the area on July 6, a visitor would have noted spanking new paint jobs, dozens of construction workers plying their trades and sharp competition for parking spaces.

Among the new establishments is the R&B Grille. Ron Barile and his partner, Scott Robinson, opened the place on May 24. Barile said he had been working on the renovation of the building for the owner, and he was so taken by the possibilities that he decided to rent the building himself and try his hand at being an entrepreneur.

The walls are lined with rock posters and musical instruments, and music is the main attraction. Barile said the R&B features live music seven nights a week, offering everything from rhythm and blues to jazz and rock. He said he syncs his programming with that of The Bethel Woods Center for the Arts; if the Bethel Woods is featuring a jazz group, he’ll have a jazz group on stage that night. The famed performance venue is very helpful in bringing crowds to his door.

“The Dylan concert was our best night yet,” he said, noting that the concerts at Bethel Woods end at 10:00 p.m. or so, while the music at his place runs well into the wee hours.

Six boat slips behind the R & B accommodate boaters who may have worked up an appetite for some food, drink and music. “We’ll serve them right on their boats if they want,” he said.

Up the street from the Grill is the nearly complete brick-oven pizza place called Benji and Jake’s. Jake Friehling and his brother, Benji, began planning their restaurant more than a year ago, when they were selling crab cakes on Friday afternoons at the then-new farmers market just up the road.

They, too, have boat slips on the lake, from which they will serve boaters. They also have a large, inviting deck, just above the lake.

Friehling said he hopes the restaurant will be open within the next two weeks, but timing depends on securing the necessary permits from the New York State Department of Health. Half a dozen workers were sawing, sanding and hammering as they strived to finish construction on the new brick-faced building. Friehling said the restaurant will offer simple fare at first, such as pizza, sandwiches, soups and salads, and expand depending on the desires of the customers.

Friehling said he and his brother, who moved here from Long Island, do not intend to run a seasonal business. “This is our home now,” he said. “We’ll be open all year.”

Back on the other side of the R&B Grille, in the building that housed Vassmer’s General Store, owner Rachelle Nacht-Carmack has not yet decided whether the three two-bedroom apartments on the top floor of the newly renovated building will be seasonal or not. But her other businesses in the building, which include the Boat Club Café and her mortgage agency, are year-round.

She said the presence of Bethel Woods played a role in her and her husband’s decision to buy and renovate the building. “It’s all part of one big spin of positive energy,” she said.

The 30 docks behind her building were filled with boats from vacationers, who rented the slips for the season or for shorter periods of time. Like her neighbors, Nacht-Carmack was deeply engaged in putting the finishing touches on her building. The Boat Club Café hosted its first official function later that evening.

On one end of Natch-Carmack’s building is a shiny new bakery, owned by Jane Axamethy, who was washed out of her previous building in Livingston Manor in the flood of June 2006.

At the end of this group of businesses is The Fat Lady Café, which has been open for four years. For a while, it was the only operating business on this small patch of lakeshore. Proprietor Judith Maidenbaum, who said she still “works as a shrink three days a week in the city,” is glad to have the company. She said, “This is what I was hoping would happen when I opened here, when it was practically a ghost town.”

“Now what we need is a really good store,” she said. “One that will appeal to the ultra-orthodox Jews, the ultra-Christians and the rest of us in between.”