A few weeks ago, we wrote about how eventually the remaining buildings at the Nevele will be taken down, and how we suspect it will be surprisingly poignant for a lot of people as they drive over the ridge and don’t see the Nevele Tower marking the village below. We point this out as a way to encourage officials to take stock of the historical buildings in danger of falling into the same fate. But we don’t believe there’s anything to do for the rickety, waterlogged, fire-beaten tower that once housed Lyndon Johnson. It’s been slated for demolition for a very long time now.

After that editorial, the Nevele caught fire twice in the same week. You can look at the photographs and see plumes of brown smoke spread across the ridge. What’s in that smoke? Who knows, but we do know asbestos mediation is on the demolition checklist. Whatever’s burning on Arrowhead Road isn’t something anybody wants to breathe.

Each time it burns, squads of volunteer firefighters are scrambled and on-site until the blaze is tamped down. Firefighters, we should mention, are something like nine percent more likely to contract cancer. Firefighting foam, we should mention, is often laden with PFAS, the so-called forever chemicals we’ve been finding more and more of in our soil, our water, and our bodies.

We don’t need more firefighters breathing more toxic smoke, and we don’t need to lay a bed of yet more toxic foam to stop that smoke. We just need the Nevele to come down.

No cause has been determined yet for the fires at the Nevele, but one of the most persistent amateur theories is that it was the result of people seeking shelter from the cold who lit a fire that got out of control. (Ellenville’s lack of adequate overnight shelter on cold nights, by the way, is another topic worth discussing.) Use of the Nevele as shelter from the cold, clearly, is a dangerous proposition.

The Journal’s Chris Rowley asked owner Keith Rubenstein about the timeline for taking down the building. He promised demolition was coming soon but couldn’t give a date. He also said that he’s tried having security on the site, but the extent of the terrain makes it difficult.

We’ve seen the Nevele sit for a long time after purchase, but across the village, the Terrace Motel, purchased in October of 2024, began to be taken down almost immediately – and the owners didn’t even know it had to be demolished until the sale was underway!

It was sad to see the demise of another iconic hotel, but it probably saved some people from breathing in more smoke, particularly as the bitter cold followed the purchase, and temperatures in early winter plummeted. All through the winter, all across the county, homes have burnt because of heating accidents.

Believe it or not, we’ve been lucky. Back in November, when drought-powered wildfires ripped across the state, an 18-year-old firefighter from Spring Valley named Dariel Vasquez was killed fighting the Jennings Creek wildfire, another pointless, preventable blaze that got out of control.

The Nevele has become a ticking bomb, and the only thing that anybody has control over is when and how it comes down. We urge Rubenstein and his partners to take it away.