Building Seven Stories on Deep Roots

Physical education teacher Cory Puopolo and developer Martin McDonough are building a seven story hotel with a rooftop bar in Port Jervis. A seven-story residential and commercial building is next.

Cory Puopolo at The Front Hotel in progress. (Photo by Jessica Cohen)

Cory Puopolo, a Port Jervis physical education teacher, recently used his school lunch break to visit his  seven-story hotel in progress on Front St. This is his venture with developer and close family friend Martin McDonough, of Milford. Their vision includes a rooftop bar with a panoramic view of mountains and city, which they aim to make the festive scene of a ball drop on New Year’s Eve. 

Puopolo watched with exhilaration as the construction crew worked on the hotel’s roofless third floor. The contractor, Sandyston Construction, transports the crew from New York City for the job and gives them money to patronize Port Jervis eateries at lunch, Puopolo said. They’ve been building one floor a month and are now working on the fourth floor.

The hotel idea was sparked by a visit to the Port Jervis Fall Festival four years ago.

“There were thousands of people there, and Martin said, ‘We should invest. Find a vacant lot and come up with an idea,’” recalled Puopolo, who has renovated four Port Jervis houses in the last eight years. Building things, making money, mentoring kids and motion have been constants in his life, as he describes it. He recalls, even in elementary school, building walls with loose bricks or carting them around in a wagon to sell.

“ I would do lemonade stands, yard sales, yard work for people. Anything I could do to make money. I loved it. At night, when I was in elementary school, my mom would have to tell me to come inside and stop making stone walls and gardens or whatever else I was building,” he said. “Once I became old enough to work a real job with working papers I stopped playing sports and focused on making money. I was the kid in school that drove teachers crazy because I had so much energy. But what’s funny is now people tell me they wish they could bottle my energy. Isn’t that funny how someone’s energy is considered a nuisance at a young age, but at an older age it’s gold?”

He found a lot at the center of downtown on Front St., and he and McDonough bought it for about $75,000. At first they considered building apartments, but then the hotel vision took hold.

“We talked about including a pool, but that wouldn’t make money,” Puopolo said. What excited them was the rooftop bar and ball drop idea. 

Soon after buying the lot, they also bought 29-31 Front St., across the street, paying the city $50,000 for the old tattered building that once housed Woolworth’s. Demolition will be the next step because of its extensive deterioration. On the resulting empty lot, they plan to construct another seven-story building, this one with storefronts on the first floor and 32 one- and two-bedroom apartments above. McDonough and Puopolo have applied for a grant to help finance the project. They can’t start construction until the grant award is decided, but they expect to begin early in 2024.

The building at 29-31 Front St. will be demolished. (Photo by Jessica Cohen)

Fear, then affection, for Port Jervis                                                          

Puopolo explained how his feelings about Port Jervis have shifted from adversarial, as a teen, to affectionate. Now 36, he grew up in Matamoras and graduated from Delaware Valley High School.

“I was scared of Port Jervis. It had a bad name, and our schools were rivals,” he said.

However, he also has deep roots in Port Jervis. Like a foreshadowing, his great great great great grandparents owned a Port Jervis hotel and bar, likely on Jersey Ave., a few blocks away from his new construction on Front St. Their liquor license, from 1880, was discovered by Mike Worden, Deerpark historian, former Port Jervis Police Department detective–and some kind of cousin of Puopolo’s. Worden’s grandfather and Puopolo’s great grandmother, on his mother’s side, were siblings.

Puopolo’s maternal great grandparents lived on Ball St., where they had 11 children. His great grandfather, after returning from a semi-pro baseball career in Florida,  was a train engineer in the days when Port was a railroad town. Puopolo’s mother teaches special education at Port Jervis Middle School; his sister teaches special education English at the high school, and his brother teaches special education science and electives there. 

But Puopolo could settle neither on a career nor school for a while. In college, he explored business management, then criminal justice for a year. His disinterest in the reading prompted a school advisor to tell him, “If you don’t like reading, maybe college isn’t for you.”

He left school, although, he noted, ten years later he would write three children’s books. He tried real estate and bartending, but nothing kept his interest.

Then he mentored a friend’s neighbor, a seventh grader who was having trouble in school, taking him to work out at a gym in Port Jervis. When the boy started doing well, getting high grades and awards in school, he told Puopolo, “I changed my life, but what are you doing with yours?”

In 2011, that was a big question. Puopolo again gravitated toward mentorship and being in motion.

“Since my mom is a teacher and I loved mentoring Tyler, I decided to go back to school to be a teacher. I loved being active, so I thought phys. ed. would be perfect. I was on the dean’s list multiple times and absolutely loved school. That’s when I knew this was the right choice,” he said.

Cory Puopolo put the Field of Dreams on two of four acres that his mother owns behind Price Chopper.

While in school, Puopolo did substitute teaching in Port Jervis schools on his days off, delighting in the diversity there. He also started the Field of Dreams Pumpkin Patch in Matamoras on two of four acres his mother owned behind Price Chopper. With sponsored events, pumpkins and sunflowers, he raised thousands of dollars used to help local youth in various ways and fund a popular 3 vs. 3 basketball tournament at Church Street Park and a successful Amateur Athletics Union travel basketball team, at no cost for Port kids.

A Field of Dreams weekend day. Visitors walked around, took a hay ride, picked pumpkins and paid for the pumpkins before they left, Puopolo said.

The Port Jervis Amateur Athletics Union team was supported by the Field of Dreams Pumpkin Patch.

While most teams include the best players from a broad area, the Port team was an underdog, being only Port Jervis players, Puopolo said. He wrote a children’s book, Chasing a Dream, aided by then Port Jervis High School student Isaac Cayetano, about their true experience of winning an AAU championship. The book is interspersed with writing prompts, and responses can be emailed to Puopolo. Cayetano now assists Puopolo with coaching varsity basketball. Another student, Kareem Haynesworth, Jr., illustrated the book, peopled with players from the traveling team.

Isaac Cayetano , left, and Cory Puopolo did a reading of Chasing a Dream at a Port Jervis elementary school.

The Pumpkin Patch enterprise subsided when Puopolo’s 75-year-old grandfather, Richard Zabowski, no longer worked the field with his tractor, choosing instead to cruise on his motorcycle, which he still does, at the age of 80, said Puopolo, who turned his attention to seven-story constructions and renovating houses, along with teaching.

Cory Puopolo’s grandfather, Richard Zabowski worked the Field of Dreams.

Soon after Puopolo graduated from ESU, a gym teacher retired from the Port Jervis School District. Puopolo got the job, work about which he continues to enthuse.

“I go to school every day and love my job. It’s almost a break from all the other stressful things like flipping houses and building a hotel,” he said.  

However, new cycles of mentorship have followed, as the need for foster parents in Port Jervis is high. Puopolo pursued foster certification, and as one foster child returned to their family, another took their place, one that Puopolo will soon adopt.

Meanwhile, what will be The Front ascends skyward by one floor a month, a process expected to end in June. Then come all the inner workings and wirings–plumbing, electricity, HVAC. Meanwhile, the room decor may be designed by teens. The plan is to decorate each of the 24 rooms with a different theme. Since one of Puopolo’s  colleagues recently took a job at Greenwood Lake High School teaching art, including interior design, Puopolo will give his students a chance to design hotel rooms.

“I’ll give them ideas, and they can put their spin on it,” he said.

He envisions the hotel opening with a fundraising gala to raise money for new basketball courts at Church Street Park.

The Front is now four stories high and growing.

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