See what this vacant, decaying Playboy resort in N.J. looks like today

It was once among the most glamorous locations in New Jersey.

Now the eight-story building that was home to the Playboy Club resort in Sussex County for much of the 1970s and early 1980s has fallen quiet, a silent monument to a faded era — nearly six years after its last remaining occupants departed.

The site includes a crumbling pool, an overgrown parking lot, a barely recognizable tennis court and scores of birds lining its deserted hotel room balconies. Other than a few maintenance workers or others on official business, no one is allowed inside the building, which has more than 600 rooms overlooking the hills of Vernon.

It is a far cry from the days when Frank Sinatra and Ann-Margaret were among the celebrity performers and customers were served by costumed waitresses known as “Playboy Bunnies.” Hugh Hefner, founder of Playboy magazine and his network of Playboy Clubs, had a suite in the building and showed up when the resort hosted its opening party 52 years ago this month.

“Very posh. It was beautiful. High class all the way,” Frank Reilly, a retired transportation planner, recalled of the resort’s heyday. He fought unsuccessfully in the 1970s to launch a commuter train line from Hoboken to bring more people to the resort.

As for the what the future might hold for the location, no one seems to know.

The former Playboy Club site is among the once-prominent attractions in Sussex County that seem to remain trapped in time. In Hamburg, an effort to revive the Gingerbread Castle, a fairy tale-themed playground that closed in the late 1980s, has been going on for several years. On Route 23, the Franklin Diner still stands but has not served a meal since 2005, when its owner died.

Despite some early success, the Playboy Club exited in 1982, about a decade after it opened. The property found new life as a series of hotels that opened and closed. Within two decades, the once luxurious hotel was nearly entirely turned over to low-income renters.

Amid concerns about safety and living conditions in the deteriorating building, Vernon officials in 2016 began enforcing a 17-year-old municipal ordinance barring anyone from staying more than 30 days in the building. Following a court battle, those who remained in the building — by that point, only about 40 tenants — departed in April 2018.

The doors closed permanently in a building that held artifacts from its Playboy Club heyday, including Hefner’s suite.

The building is owned by Metairie Corporation. The company’s attorney, Thomas Molica, said in 2020 Metairie was “continuing to explore possibilities for the hotel property.”

But, Molica told NJ Advance Media last month he did not have an updates on the property’s future.

Mike Saporito worked at the building as a lifeguard and assistant manager for about a year starting in 2003, when the building was still functioning as a hotel, restaurant and spa. Performers at the hotel at the time included My Chemical Romance, then an up-and-coming band from New Jersey.

He recalled a room with mirrors lined along the walls and ceilings, filled with velvet couches and chairs, that was used by smokers.

“The building was just so cool. The modern 70s design was incredible. I wish I could’ve seen it in its prime,” Saporito said.

However, by the time he departed in 2004, the location had fallen on hard times. The restaurant and spa closed, along with the hotel.

“After that, the building closed to the public and only people who lived there were allowed in,” said Saporito, who lives in Califon and works in construction.

The former Playboy Club building is secluded yet accessible, located in the woods about a half-mile from the Route 517 entrance. It is about 50 miles from Manhattan. Vernon’s biggest draw, the Mountain Creek ski resort, is less than two miles away.

A reminder of the Playboy Club’s heyday is nearby. The 27-hole Great Gorge Golf Club, built by Hefner in 1970 for the club’s visitors, was restored under new ownership starting in 2016. Hef’s Hut Bar and Grill opened in 2022, five years after Hefner died at age 91.

Vernon Councilman Patrick Rizzuto said he, like many area residents, has heard rumors and speculation over the years about various businesses taking an interest in buying the former Playboy resort site.

In 2020, then-Vernon Mayor Harry Shortway talked about the possibility of a new hotel, satellite campus for a college or senior housing. In 2021, the township council nixed a proposal that would have spurred redevelopment by dropping its bid to collect $60,000 in unpaid building and fire safety violation fines, among other measures.

“We’re still working to try to get something going,” Rizzuto said of the township’s efforts to spark interest in a new use for the site.

Before it closed, there were efforts to bring in more business for the Playboy resort.

In the early 1970s, Reilly, then a young transportation planner, made a novel pitch to Hefner on behalf of his boss: Launching “Bunny Trains” offering passenger service from Hoboken to Vernon Valley, near the resort, on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays.

Playboy Club officials seemed enthusiastic, agreed to build a railroad station next to their property and even suggested putting Playboy Bunnies on the trains to greet everyone, Reilly recalled last month.

Prompted by the idea, two railroad companies ran some “ski trains” one winter, absent any formal Playboy Club connection, to Vernon Valley, he said. However, it was a warmer than usual winter, few people rode the trains and the Bunny Trains were over before they started.

“I still think it would have worked,” Reilly told the Star-Ledger in 2004 upon his retirement as Morris County’s transportation director.

Ann Genadar, a longtime reporter in the region, recalled her visits to the Playboy Club in a 2017 story in the Bergen Record. She recounted long-shuttered establishments such as the Playmate Bar, Sidewalk Café and the club’s discotheque.

While men were perceived as the Playboy Club’s target audience, Genadar wrote that women met there for lunch and enjoyed shopping and entertainment, as well.

“We went there, swam in the pools, enjoyed the buffets. It was just a wonderful experience,” she recalled last month.

Rizzuto, the Vernon councilman, moved to the township in 1968, a few years before the Playboy Club debuted. When Vernon Township High School opened in 1975, the Playboy Club gifted the school a scoreboard — still in use, Rizzuto said — that didn’t have any reference to the club’s familiar bunny ear insignia because some questioned its appropriateness at a school.

The scoreboard is another hint of the site’s fading past. Recent photos of the once bustling Playboy Club show torn carpets, falling ceiling tiles, overgrown tennis courts and few signs of the high-end resort that once drew people to the Sussex County mountains.

“It was a nice time,” Rizzuto said of the former Playboy Club, “but things change.”

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