Nemacolin resort closes for holidays, plans to reopen next week when covid restrictions lift

If you’d hoped to usher out 2020 at the posh Nemacolin resort in Fayette County, you are out of luck.

Nemacolin closed Dec. 22 in an effort to do its part to help prevent the spread of coronavirus. The luxury retreat does not plan to reopen until Monday.

The closure required canceling reservations for about 250 guests who had planned to ring in the New Year at Nemacolin on Thursday night and over the weekend. They were offered options to rebook their stays, said Christopher Baran, Nemacolin vice president of sales and marketing.

“A majority of our guests were able to find alternative dates in their travel schedule to reschedule their visit to Nemacolin,” Baran said.

The closure followed Gov. Tom Wolf’s order that closed many entertainment venues and indoor dining at restaurants from Dec. 12 through Jan. 4. His order also limited the number of people who can gather indoors in an effort to stop a surge in covid cases and deaths in Pennsylvania. Those restrictions will expire Monday.

Nemacolin’s closure was an unprecedented move for the Farmington resort, owner Maggie Hardy Knox said in a statement.

“I couldn’t imagine an associate at Nemacolin inadvertently exposing a family member to covid during the holiday season,” stated Hardy Knox, whose father, 84 Lumber Co. magnate Joe Hardy, opened the property in 1987.

All employees who are furloughed as a result of the closure will receive full pay, Baran said. Nemacolin typically has about 900 employees at this time of the year, though it is operating with a skeleton crew until Monday, Baran said.

Wolf’s order and Hardy Knox’s decision to close over the holidays collides with a typically busy time at Nemacolin, featuring programmed holiday weekends beginning at Thanksgiving that generate high demand at the resort, Baran said.

​Like all other hospitality companies, Nemacolin said covid-19 has impacted its business model, Baran said. Resort ownership reduced from 323 the number of rooms available to guests in an increased effort to mitigate the spread of the virus and for safety reasons, Baran said. As people tended to remain closer to home for any vacation during the pandemic, Baran said Nemacolin “really saw an increase of demand from our surrounding drive markets,” which include Ohio, New York, Virginia, Maryland and Washington, D.C.

By reducing the number of rooms available, “we saw the same percentage of bookings compared with 2019,” Baran said.

John Longstreet, president of the Pennsylvania Restaurant and Lodging Association, could not be reached for comment on whether other resorts also decided to temporarily close.

Without guests, Nemacolin on Dec. 23 provided $20,000 worth of fresh food to the Fayette County Community Action Agency in Uniontown, which operates food banks in the county, said David Bork, director of the agency’s food bank project.

That food, some of which came to the food bank in restaurant-size quantities, was broken down into family-size portions and distributed Wednesday from its warehouse in Republic, Bork said.

The donation from Nemacolin, as well as food donated from Save-A-Lot stores and the Uniontown Shop ‘n Save and a Fayette bakery, was sufficient to provide boxes of food for “a significant number of households,” Bork said. The food distribution from the warehouse in Republic typically helps between 300 and 700 households.

The food distribution was a continuation of Nemacolin’s Unwrapped Nights, which has given more than $1 million to local and regional charities since Thanksgiving.