On the Bright Side: Howe Caverns plans to add jobs

On the Bright Side

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January 7, 2012

BY JOE MAHONEY Staff Writer The Daily Star Tue Jan 10, 2012, 02:47 PM EST

Situated in a county that has shed jobs and is slowly recovering from tremendous flood damage last summer, Howe Caverns Adventure Park in Howes Cave is beginning the new year with ambitious plans to hire an additional 20 workers for its busy warm-weather season. To Schoharie County Treasurer William Cherry, that’s very good nes.

After all, he said, the county is still trying to get back on even footing after it lost hundreds of jobs with the closing of the Guilford Mills factory a decade ago.

“Jobs are very, very important to us here because it’s a way to keep people from leaving Schoharie County,” Cherry said Thursday. “Creating 20 new jobs is the kind of thing that can stop some people from packing their bags and moving out.”

Robert Holt, general manager of Howe Caverns Adventure Park, said his company will hold its annual job fair March 31.

The park is built around a cave discovered 170 years ago by a farmer named Lester Howe. He noticed his cows were lingering in the same spot on hot days.

Cutting through the brush, he came across the cave — and within a year began charging admission to what is now billed as the largest cave open to the public in the Northeast.

Holt said the new hires will bring the total workforce at Howe Caverns to about 190 workers during its peak season, he said. The seasonal hires generally work from Memorial Day weekend in May through late October, he noted. Holt said 92 percent of his workers live in Schoharie County. The park has 20 year-round employees.

The anticipated hiring is tied to the scheduled opening of several new or expanded attractions this year. These include a 26-foot rock-climbing wall and New York’s first course for OGO Balls — an attraction involving a ride inside an orb. These attractions are expected to open in time for the Caverns’ Discovery Days celebration, which runs from May 25-28

The new attractions build on last year’s opening of Howe High Adventure — an attraction billed as “the above-ground world featuring a four-tower zip line and a ropes course.”

Located between Cooperstown and Albany, Howe Caverns is Schoharie County’s leading tourist attraction. Most of the roughly 150,000 visitors it attracts each year come from the metropolitan New York City region, New Jersey and Connecticut, Holt said.

Cherry, the county treasurer, said the expansion could prove to be very beneficial to Schoharie County’s overall economy, because visitors are bound to spend money in local shops and restaurants on their way to and from Howe Caverns.

And among those tourists, Cherry said, may be some who become so quickly impressed with Schoharie County that they could opt to spontaneously buy a home — such as what he said he ended up doing in 1979 after a joy ride through the countryside. “It was just a random Sunday drive,” he recalled of the year he moved to schoharie from Dutchess County.

While Howe Caverns itself escaped significant damage in the flooding triggered by Hurricane Irene and Tropical Storm Lee in 2011, Holt said the number of visitors dropped off for several weeks because some roads leading to the attraction were rendered impassable.

“It impacted our business for Labor Day and for some of the fall,” he said.

However, traffic picked up during the school break ending on New Year’s Day weekend, aided by ski slopes barren of snow.