Legends Resort & Country Club

The Legends Resort & Country Club, often called simply Legends, is a hotel located on County Route 517 in Vernon Township in Sussex County, New Jersey, United States. In the 1970s, Hugh Hefner built it as The Great Gorge Playboy Club Hotel, officially opened in 1972. The Playboy Club was closed circa 1986 and sold and turned into The Americana Hotel. Later being sold again, was turned into The Seasons Hotel. Seasons was later sold again to parent-company Metairie Corp (owned by Hillel A. (Hillie) Meyers), which turned into its current incarnation as the Legends Resort & Country Club. The Hotel has been derelict and permanently closed to public operations for many years. In February 2017 Vernon Township started to evict many of the low income full time residents of the hotel. It was revealed Andrew Mulvihill was the owner of many of the rooms rented out illegally to low income residents. Mulvihill has a controlling interest in the lower income Great Gorge Village in Vernon Township and the nearby Crystal Springs Resort in Hardyston. Some of the evicted residents are thought to have been relocated to these developments.

During the 1970s, the Great Gorge Playboy Club had 800 rooms, but various owners since that time have combined units and converted many into condominiums, reducing the total number to less than 400 rooms at the current Legends Resort & Country Club. The eight-floor hotel has a cabaret, ballroom, restaurant, a fitness center, indoor pool, jacuzzis and an Olympic-sized swimming pool located outside. Most of the rooms have been renovated at least once, but some are still set up as originally constructed in 1970s decor. Much of the hotel is derelict in 2016. Some units are occupied full-time by low income renters. Some residents have characterized the resort as a homeless hotel.

The Playboy Club, in the 1970s, was the host of the first New Jersey Special Olympic Games.

David Haulmark, a 36-year-old contract laborer living in the Legends Resort & Country Club, was beaten to death outside the hotel on August 17, 2008. Haulmark, an Oklahoma native who was working on a pipeline project in nearby New York, was found lying on a sidewalk near the east entrance of the resort around 3 a.m. He had been battered around the face and head, and authorities determined the cause of death to be blunt force trauma to the head, neck and face. Jacob R. Gentry, 27; Jarrod C. Gentry, 20, of Port Jervis, New York and Emily M. Henry, 24, of Plymouth, Michigan, were arrested in Port Jervis on August 17 in connection with the homicide. The Gentry brothers were charged with first-degree murder and endangering an injured victim. Henry allegedly pepper sprayed Haulmark and left the scene of the crime; she was charged with endangering an injured victim and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.

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