The Fledgling Ehrenreich & Gelman Empire Is Snaking its Away Through the Amwell Valley Area

By: Mike Spille

Clarification: To the best of our knowledge, Golden Nugget is not owned by Enrenreich & Gelman, it is shown on the maps only to help viewers understand the location involved.

Big Bear Gear. Big Bear Gear Delaware River Tubing. Lambertville Sunflower Festival. Bellemont Farms. The Quarry House. Bellemont Farm Brewery.

Local residents in the Amwell Valley area of West Amwell and Hopewell Township may have heard of some or even most of these businesses and locations. But we bet you didn't realize that these are all owned, operated, and/or proposed by the same couple: Michael Ehrenreich and Rebecca Gelman, of South Orange, NJ.

We first heard about Big Bear Gear in 2020, which seemed to be an interesting attempt to renovate an older property and business. But since then, there has been a continued push where the couple has acquired more and more properties, and over time appears to be trying to connect them all together to each other.

What started at a single site in West Amwell along the Delaware River now appears to be a fledging attempt to create a little business empire in the Amwell Valley area of Western NJ. And local residents are ringing the alarm bells.

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It all started 7 years ago, when Michael Ehrenreich & Rebecca Gelman purchased what would become Big Bear Gear. They renovated a local antiques center near the Golden Nugget indoor/outdoor flea market, and quickly expanded the business to include kayaking and expanded into Big Bear Gear Delaware River Tubing.

They later bought the property now called Bellemont Farms around the corner, sandwiched between Valley Road and Goat Hill Road and Route 29. The duo of Ehrenreich & Gelman have been trying to develop Bellemont Farms ever since, with constant skirmishes with Hopewell Township zoning officials, with various permits put in for a live concert venue, a full-bore on-site Brewery, and most recently the so-called Lambertville Sunflower Festival.

Now the couple is trying to bring to market a concept they have dubbed the Quarry House. The Quarry House is being pitched as a boutique hotel and restaurant, and has been the subject of fierce opposition by local residents of West Amwell.

Mr. Ehrenreich has also been in near-constant fighting with his neighbors regarding the turnaround at the end of Old River Road, which he attempted to close with a chain across the road. Old River Road is highlighted in yellow in the map above.

Mr. Ehrenreich further raised eyebrows when he offered an unspecified monetary "donation" to the West Amwell Township Committee - at the time when the Quarry House was at a critical permitting cross roads with the West Amwell Land Use Board.

What is striking is how close these projects are to each other geographically. In fact, if you include the Old River Road path, the Big Bear, Quarry House, and Bellemont Farm properties are effectively interconnected pieces of a larger whole.

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Some of this has flown under the radar, as the properties are all owned by different LLCs (Big Bear Gear, 1874 LLC, Bellemont Farms LLC) and marketed under different brands. Even more confusing, half the properties are within West Amwell in Hunterdon County, and the other half are in Hopewell Township in Mercer County. This makes permitting and zoning arguments more difficult as they span multiple municipal and county boundaries.

Right now, the Quarry House is facing final site approval by the West Amwell Land Use Board for its plans at Block 26, Lot 17, sandwiched between Big Bear Gear and Golden Nugget.

The big concern here of many residents is the incredibly sensitive area that Quarry House is being situated on. This is across the street from the D&R Canal, is in the South Western most part of the Sourlands Mountain region, and abuts right up against the NJDEP Designated Goat Hill Natural Heritage Priority Site.

The map below is a 3D projection showing the steep slopes that the Quarry House is jammed up against. The Goat Hill Natural Heritage Priority Site is shown in green, the Quarry House property in red, and the D&R Canal is in blue.

We will be doing a series of articles addressing each of these properties in turn, starting with the Quarry House footprint and proposed plans, moving onto Bellemont Farms, and finishing up where they began - Big Bear Gear.

For now, a big question for locals is - why do all this development here, in one of the most sensitive and protected areas in the State of New Jersey? This is not a NIMBY concern, it is an environmental and historical one.