By Kate Bartlett
This past Tuesday, June 11, Hideaway Bay Resort held a Ribbon Cutting Ceremony to celebrate the opening of their boutique resort in Silver Creek, NY. This new premier destination on Lake Erie serves as a lakefront beach resort, restaurant and event venue offering a one-of-a-kind stay featuring sandy shores and breathtaking sunsets.
Local and state officials gathered in Silver Creek on Tuesday to help cut the ribbon for Hideaway Bay Resort, a four-season, eco-friendly resort located on 3.6 acres of secluded lakefront property just to the east of the Walnut Creek outlet on Lake Erie. The event was co-hosted by the County of Chautauqua Industrial Development Agency (CCIDA) and the Chautauqua County Chamber of Commerce.
Hideaway Bay Resort is the culmination of a $2 million redevelopment project made possible by an ownership team represented by Kevin and Christian Cullen of Adventure Sports Development and Mathew and Gene Tundo of Tundo Construction. In 2021, the group formed 42 Lake Erie, LLC to develop the project.
The resort provides high-end boutique resort and recreation opportunities, featuring ten new waterfront cottages (each 360 sq. ft.) and a 4,080 square-foot, two-story restaurant and banquet space designed to host events, including weddings, banquets, and retreats, complete with upper and lower patios and indoor/outdoor full-service bars. The restaurant, called “Drift”, will be open to the public seven days a week and can also be rented for private events and parties.
Watersports operations will also be provided on site, including paddle boarding, kite boarding, and a natural kayak launch. The resort will also feature a hot tub, sauna, and spa service as well as walking trails, a fire pit, in-house fishing guides, and educational birding events.
Hideaway Bay also presents itself as being eco-friendly, inside and out. This includes a dune restoration project, complete with native plants and a rain garden. Each cottage will have eco-friendly sheets and bath products and the owners are working to make Hideaway Bay the first destination anywhere on the Great Lakes to be certified as “eco-friendly” by the Surfrider Foundation.
“We are excited to showcase the area’s natural beauty and leverage its recreational attributes to draw visitors and sports enthusiasts to the area,” said Kevin Cullen. “There really is some-thing for everyone to do in this region and we are going to celebrate the variety of activities that are available here in Chautauqua County.”
“The resort is a terrific new development that connects the community and the Local Water-front Redevelopment Plan very well,” said Gina Paradis, Chautauqua County Land Bank Executive Director. “We were happy to facilitate the process of identifying the best new development for the site and are extremely excited to see it is now open and ready to serve the pub-lic.”
“We’re extremely grateful to the Cullen family and the Tundo family for making this long-term investment in our community,” added Jeffrey Hornburg, Mayor of Silver Creek. “The Hideaway Bay Resort will fit nicely within the lakefront area and is going to help put Silver Creek on the map as a must-visit Western New York destination. We look forward to the positive impact it will have on our village in the many years to come.”
Funding for the project came from a variety of public and private sources, including CCIDA and New York State’s Homes and Community Renewal (HCR) program. A total of 30 temporary construction jobs benefited from the project and 16-plus new jobs created, once fully open.
“This is yet another project that illustrates how we can make positive change to our region and the local economy when we all pitch in and work together,” said Mark Geise, Deputy County Executive for Economic Development and CCIDA CEO. “Thank you to everyone involved with this project for helping to make it a reality.”
For more information on the Hideaway Bay Resort, visit HideawayBayResortNY.com, call (716) 401-5762, or find it on Facebook.