A Catskills developer and longtime owner of hundreds of undeveloped acres in Mamakating is now building on some of them near Wurtsboro. His project is classified as a one-family residence. But some neighbors suspect it will have another purpose; speculation about what that purpose might be has appeared on social media.

The house belongs to real estate developer Simon Gelb. For years he has lived in Kiryas Joel, the Hasidic community near Monroe, in Orange County. His new home, near Wurtsboro on County Route 56, sports an 1,800-square-foot living room, over 1,100 square feet of dining room, 12 and a half bathrooms and nine large bedrooms. The residence totals over 7,300 square feet. According to Mamakating Building Department clerk Kyra Platt, it will likely be the biggest single-family house in the area.

Gelb declined to answer Shawangunk Journal’s question about who will reside there. But Mamakating officials, including town building department head Mary Grass, say he has told them it’s for his extended family — some one-dozen children and 30 grandchildren. According to Mamakating building codes, as many as 36 people, including non-relatives, could legally live in a one-family home this large.

However, some social media commenters suggest that it will actually be used as a Hasidic school. Grass said she has inspected the building’s planning and construction “every step of the way,” and it follows local zoning rules for a single-family dwelling.

Even so, Bill Lothrop, chair of the Wurtsboro Fire District’s Board of Commissioners, said the structure looks more institutional than like a home, and he called the claim that it will be a single-family residence “B.S.” Lothrop acknowledged that the structure is code-compliant but said he is concerned that the property’s new fencing and gating could make it hard for firefighters to enter during an emergency. Grass countered that people for years have been trespassing on the land, including for hunting. She said the new security measures make sense.

Mamakating Planning Board member Mort Starobin said that he, too, has closely monitored the construction, and it meets code as a single-family dwelling. He believes the controversy is fueled by anti-Semitic animus and bitterness about the scandal that occurred over a decade ago in Bloomingburg, involving developer Shalom Lamm. Lamm promised the Bloomingburg community luxury housing and a golf course but then pivoted to Hasidic housing. Mamakating went into an uproar, with lawsuits filed by and against political leaders in the town, including Town and Planning Board members. Lamm was eventually charged with organizing voter fraud in order to bring in new political leaders to Bloomingburg who would rubber-stamp his development plans. He served prison time.

Now, said Starobin, suspicion in Mamakating about Gelb’s new house is “a kneejerk reaction,” and “a paranoia that almost feeds on itself.” He said he has dealt with Gelb in the past and finds him “reasonable, a smart guy and, in a way, humble.”

Gelb first brought his development ambitions to Mamakating in about 2007, with plans to build 2,000 homes on land he owns in a three-mile area between Rock Hill and Wurtsboro. But the project eventually fizzled out. He then got involved with an unlikely project in Yankee Lake called China City of America. It was promoted as a multi-billion-dollar, “Forbidden Palace” Disneyland knock-off, then became plans for a college in Thompson. China City and the college were exposed last year by the U.S. Department of Justice as alleged scams to bilk Chinese investors of millions of dollars by falsely promising them U.S. residency. The fraud’s masterminds, Sherry Li and Lianbo Wang, were indicted. Both are now jailed in Brooklyn, awaiting outcome of their cases.

Elsewhere in the Catskills, Gelb joined development efforts in Orange County almost two decades ago to annex land to Kiryas Joel. He did the same in 2015, which fueled conflict between Hasidic and non-Hasidic residents of Monroe, as depicted in the documentary “City of Joel.” The annexation was ultimately successful.

Now Gelb is embroiled in another controversy. This one involves Divrei Chaim, the new name for his original Clovewood Estates. It’s a 600-home, Hasidic-oriented project in South Blooming Grove, near Kiryas Joel. The plan moved slowly until 2022, when Hasidic candidates and people who supported them were elected as South Blooming Grove’s mayor and village trustees. The mayor then replaced the planning board with men mostly inexperienced in board service. They quickly approved Clovewood/Divrei Chaim.

But within months, the project received several stop-work orders from the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC). The work did not stop, however, and in March of this year the DEC fined Gelb and his partners $228,000 for building without required permits. They were also fined for violating water standards, and several area streams and lakes turned blue and green from dye which spread to lakes and streams that feed into the Hudson River. In June the press reported continued construction, despite DEC ongoing orders that it cease.

The Shawangunk Journal asked Gelb by phone and email to comment on Divrei Chaim/Clovewood. He did not respond. The Journal also asked Mamakating Town Supervisor Michael Robbins, the building department’s Grass and planning board member Starobin if they had heard about Gelb’s fines and unheeded stop-work orders. None said they had.

Meanwhile, Gelb’s structure is still being built as a code-compliant single-family home. “We have laws in place here,” Starobin said. At this point, it seems Gelb is following them.