localmatters
‘Great Camps,’ Slopes and Condos: Tupper Lake Development Gets a Green Light B y paul h ei n tz
SEVENDAYSvt.com 07.16.14-07.23.14 SEVEN DAYS 14 LOCAL MATTERS
photos: jessica collier/adir ondack daily enterprise
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or 11 years, residents of Tupper Lake, N.Y., have wondered whether their once-bustling lumber town would play host to the largest development ever proposed within the Blue Line boundary of the Adirondack Park. “I think there’s been a lot of people on hold, waiting for it,” says Tupper Lake Mayor Paul Maroun. “It was dragging down the economy.” Two weeks ago, the waiting came to an end. In a unanimous opinion, a New York State appellate court upheld state approval of the $500 million Adirondack Club and Resort, which is planned for a 6,400-acre tract of land a couple of miles south of the village center. Over the next 15 years, the project’s developers expect to build 700 condos, vacation homes and luxury “great camps,” along with a 60-bedroom hotel. To draw visitors to a town that has long played third fiddle to nearby Lake Placid and Saranac Lake, they plan to revitalize an existing ski slope, a golf course and a marina. “There’s a lot of things that are on the verge of really happening here,” says Maroun, a longtime supporter of the project. “There’s a sense of optimism now in Tupper Lake.” That optimism is not shared by the small band of environmentalists who continue to fight it. “This is not a decision that is in the long-term interest of either the ecological health or community viability of the Adirondacks,” says Peter Bauer, executive director of Protect the Adirondacks! “It is throwing open the gates of the park for wanton development, and that’s a sad fact and a bitter pill.” The Adirondack Park Agency, which governs land use and development within the region’s six million-acre patchwork of public and private lands, conditionally approved the Tupper Lake project in January 2012 by a vote of 10-1. By then, after years of hearings and mediation sessions, several environmental groups had dropped their opposition. One of them, the Adirondack Council, won limited concessions to reduce the project’s environmental impact and then vowed to work to strengthen the park’s land use rules via legislative action rather than fight the APA in court. “The council is focused on lessons learned and moving forward,” says executive director William Janeway. “While disagreeing with some of APA’s decisions
State officials and Adirondack Club and Resort representatives discussing the proposal alongside Cranberry Pond in 2011
on [the Adirondack Club and Resort] and fragmentation, as a tract that had been in agreeing with others, we recognize the timber production for 100 years will now APA’s authority, limitations and priorities.” be sliced with roads, building lots and But Bauer’s group, along with the Sierra power lines,” he says. “We feel that the Club, pressed forward. They sued the APA precedent the agency enshrined and that in state court, arguing now the courts have that the agency failed enshrined is a ruinous to follow its own rules, precedent for the great communicated inapproforested backcountry priately with the develof the Adirondacks.” opers and bowed to poNow that the state’s litical pressure exercised second-highest court by Gov. Andrew Cuomo, has ruled against his who supports the project organization, Bauer and appoints most of the says he does not yet APA’s commissioners. know whether it will “Gov. Cuomo has appeal again, calling it taken the position that “a very steep hill.” the entire Adirondacks Adirondack Club should really be like and Resort partner Lake George,” Bauer Tom Lawson, who says, referring to the spent much of his T om L aw son crowded, kitschy and career developing motel-festooned town private islands in the on the park’s eastern boundary. Bahamas, accuses Bauer and his allies of Particularly galling to Bauer and his fighting “a war of attrition.” allies are the high-end “great camps” that “If they appeal, it’s just more frivolouswould be scattered throughout the devel- ness,” he says. “They have no case. They opment, occupying lots ranging from 30 to never had a case.” 1,500 acres. Lawson and his business partner, “This leads to classic forest Philadelphia developer Michael Foxman,
I don’t think there will ever be another project like the Adirondack Club. I think the environmentalists always knew that.
aren’t waiting any longer. Last month, they tore down Tupper Lake’s aging marina to make room for a replacement. And in the weeks since the appellate court ruled, Lawson says, at least seven investors have signed letters of intent to purchase “great camps.” Supporters and opponents alike say that, if anything, the decade-long regulatory delay may have helped the developers, given the upward trajectory of the real estate market. “The timing couldn’t be better for us, because the economy has come back around,” Lawson says. Critics of the project have long questioned its financing. They say it relies too heavily on public investment, including state Industrial Development Agency bonds, a payment-in-lieu-of-taxes agreement with the town and municipal upgrades to water and sewer systems. They wonder whether, if the project stalls after the town invests in infrastructure improvements, Tupper Lakers will end up holding the bag. Recently, Lawson says, he met with Jay Peak Resort co-owner Bill Stenger to learn whether the federal EB-5 investor visa program could play a role. It provides green cards to foreigners who invest at