Chandra is turning former historic hotel into a modern yoga retreat.

AB Wire

NEW YORK: One of the most significant events of the International Yoga Day on June 21 happened a couple of hours away from New York City: at Kutsher’s Country Club in the Catskill Mountains.

Billionaire Indian media magnate Subhash Chandra, along with New York-based entrepreneur Sant Singh Chatwal, held a groundbreaking ceremony at the Club, in the Sullivan County village of Monticello.

Chandra, chairman of the Essel Group which includes Zee TV, is going to transform the once-erstwhile retreat for Jews into an all-inclusive getaway for Jews, into a $250 million yoga center for wealthy New Yorkers, reported Bloomberg News.

Chandra inaugurated the work on the 260,000 square-foot retreat on the banks of a lake in the Catskills Mountains, a 2.5-hour drive from the city.

The Watershed Post reported the Z Living/Veria Nature Cure & Ayurvedic Wellness Center will be a “wellness resort” offering programming and treatments based on ancient Indian healing traditions of Ayurveda and yoga.

Chandra plans to have it up and running in 12 to 18 months, according to the Times Herald-Record.

Chandra also plans to “assimilate” the project into the surrounding community, where Kutsher’s was an anchor business that attracted stars and tourists for 100 years before slowly sliding into disrepair.

“The community of Sullivan County has welcomed us and supported us for this project. We will reciprocate by assimilating ourselves into the community. This Wellness Center will bring peace, harmony, jobs and a boost to the Monticello economy. Our project will create 1,000 construction jobs and 800 permanent jobs … We will bring the Town of Thompson much pride, and we will make the Kutsher family proud. We will preserve the legacy of the Kutsher Hotel by keeping sections that could be saved, and adding to it, so that tourism activities can be continued at the original site,” said Chandra in a statement.

Chandra and his project, which were proposed less than three years ago, have been embraced by the town of Thompson and by the former owners of Kutshers, according to the Times Herald-Record.

“Between our town dealing with a billion-dollar project, the casino and the water park and all the infrastructure over there, we sort of squeezed in a $100 million dollar project which was ready to build, fully approved, in six months,” said Bill Rieber, supervisor of the Town of Thompson.

Mark Kutsher, the scion of the Kutsher family, attended the groundbreaking and contributed a hearty endorsement to the new project.

“This is personal for me, the memories and nostalgia are extensive,” said Mark Kutsher, son of the late Milton and Helen Kutcher who ran the resort. “We hope that our property would go to someone who was going to make it special and we can be proud of, and that is what this project is,” Mark Kutsher said in a statement.

Bloomberg reported the former historic hotel in upstate New York inspired the 1987 film “Dirty Dancing”.

“It’s a no-brainer,” Chandra, who has a net worth of at least $2.8 billion according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, said in an interview to Bloomberg before the groundbreaking ceremony. “Here is this ancient wisdom which has not spread across the globe and it needs to help the world community.”

The timing is not coincidental, the report noted. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a friend of Chandra’s, lobbied the United Nations back in December to recognize June 21 — the day of the ground-breaking ceremony — as the International Day of Yoga. The center plans to open on that same day, a year from now.

Chandra also said in the intervie that he hopes the new yoga retreat would help Americans.

“It’s a very well-known fact that this country needs help in the health and wellness space, I hope I’m not politically wrong in mentioning that.” he said. “The kind of money being spent on part of GDP in health and wellness is unbelievable.”

Although up-to-date numbers are hard to find, a 2012 survey said 20.4 million Americans practiced yoga. By 2020, the yoga and pilates industry is forecast to grow at an annualized rate of 4 percent to $8.8 billion, according to a March report published by market research firm IBISWorld.

Chandra expects the center to generate million in annual revenue by 2019. He plans to open five more centers in the U.S. in the next decade.