ARISE and Adirondack Club Resort

On Wednesday, the 12-person Tupper Lake jury heard the appraiser's report on the value of the proposed easement through the Nature Conservancy property.
News article:
http://www.adirondackdailyenterprise.com/page/content.detail/id/515278.html?nav=5008

As real estate person and more importantly, a skier and resident of the Adks., I'd have to agree with the appraiser hired by the developers who placed the value of the easement at somewhere between $500 - $800.
The easement is a very small piece of land and IMO does not diminish the value of the Conservancy's holdings.
Obviously, this proposed development and the hub-bub surrounding it illuminates the need to address the economic problems in the Adk Park.  A Pollyanna by nature, even after living here for 25 years, I still believe a more stable and sustainable Adirondack economy and respect for the environment can co-exist.

From the information I have, it seems like the developers have respect for our ecosystem and are trying to work with the locals and environmental experts to achieve a good balance. For example, I have it on good authority that the developers contacted the DEC wildlife expert and invited him to the site for a tour and to discuss their plans and any potential impact on wildlife. My DEC contact said they did not have to reach out to him, but they did, and they were very interested in how they can work with him to protect animals and their habitat.

Let's keep our fingers crossed for thoughtful heads to prevail because as we know, skiing's great in New York State!

Update - the developers of the Adirondack Club and Resort won rights to the easement:
http://www.northcountrypublicradio.org/news/story/16293/big-tupper-developers-win-round-in-court-nature-conservancy-cries-foul

A significant point about this decision is because the developers will utilize an existing road to cross the NC's 400 feet of land and will not have to build a new road, there will be less overall environmental impact.

I found this link to a paper written by some St. Lawrence University Students in 2005.  I thought it had some interesting points, especially about the environmental impact of the Great Camp development.

http://it.stlawu.edu/~bart/Barthelmess/CB2005_final_papers/pdfs/big_tupper.pdf

Goreskimom wrote

I found this link to a paper written by some St. Lawrence University Students in 2005.  I thought it had some interesting points, especially about the environmental impact of the Great Camp development.

http://it.stlawu.edu/~bart/Barthelmess/CB2005_final_papers/pdfs/big_tupper.pdf

This is quite an extensive report (45 pages) and I don't pretend to have read the whole thing. There is no executive summary of findings.  I did read through it and found it interesting, although parts of the report seem contradictory.  There is some praise of the existing proposal, discussion of habitat fragmentation, water quality issues and alternative proposals.

One thing that is worth noting is that the report was evaluating a larger development (more units) but fewer total great camps:



As GSM points out there is concern expressed about the impact of the great camps. The group seems to favor the densely clustered housing near the ski mountain, although I did find some contradictory wording on that issue as well.

Some snippets from the report:

SLU REPORT wrote

(The existing) proposal contains many good attributes for conservation, and tends to illustrate a need for protection and preservation of open space lands.  They have completed several good studies on the impacts the project may have, and have included allowances in their proposal to maintain large tracts of undeveloped land.  However, we feel that the overall spread and fragmentation created by the project would cause drastic harm to the existing communities, and is unnecessary given that there are alternative development schemes.

The best alternative for the project would be to reopen the ski area with no or limited development at the base of the ski mountain as it exists in its present state.  According to The Preserve Associates, this is not a feasible option due to the fact that the real estate investments render capital for the operation and maintenance of the ski area and the open space lands.

Idealized Solution:

(We recommend) a modified development plan which maintains most of the aspects of the original proposal, but many of which are downscaled.

The ski area must be developed first to kick off the influx of revenue which Foxman anticipates.  Since the majority of the area where the new trails and chairlift are proposed has been exploited via the logging industry in past years, there would be no large environmental effects. If the existing lodge were to be renovated, or razed with the intention of erecting a new building of similar size, there would certainly need to be compromises in the form of cutting some of the superfluous aspects of the proposed new lodge (for instance, the tennis courts, health club, art shacks, etc.). Another idea would be
to construct a parking lot at the base of the ski area, and have a shuttle service from the base to the lodge, housing, etc.
 
We believe the condos are a good choice because the clustering of the development enables only small parcels of land to be consumed by the housing structures. Also, if there were to be a shuttle system, many of the housing units would be of the ski in/ski out nature, significantly reducing the environmental impact as long at the selection of land was suitable in terms of slope gradients and addresses other concerns regarding environmental impacts. Certainly there must be a downscaling of the residential component to the proposal in general. The exact number of housing units the area could actually support would require extensive research, and also a more in depth analysis of the water and sewage municipalities to determine just how many more housing units could be added to those grids, as well as the electrical grid.

More evidence of incredibly tough times in Tupper Lake from today's Adirondack Daily Enterprise:

Tupper Lake Chamber Head Laid Off

This is a Letter to the Editor from The October 29th edition of the Tupper Lake Free Press:


"Fact Check 2: what’s up in Tupper
To the editor: In the Sept. 1st edition
of the Tupper Lake Free Press a long letter, written by real estate speculators Michael Foxman and Tom Lawson, purported to present “facts” about the proposed Adirondack Club and Resort. In my last letter I looked at the number of jobs that they claimed would be created. In this letter I will examine statements made regarding the use of a Payment In Lieu Of Taxes (PILOT) agreement to fund the infrastructure. The applicants claim that “It (the PILOT) only changes the characterization of the (tax) payment not the amount.” They further claim that “It (the amount of tax paid) will go up or down with rates and assessments like the rest of the town.” Both statements are blatantly false!
What does “characterization” mean? It means that the property tax would get paid to the Franklin County Industrial Development Authority (FCIDA), not the town, school district or county. It means that the interest and principal on the bonds would get paid first and that which is left over would get distributed to the town, school and county. You should know that the principal and interest on the FCIDA bonds for the first 3 years would be just under $1,000,000 per year and will increase to over $3,000,000 per year in phase IV. (Over the course of the 25 year bond payment cycles that totals over $80,000,000 for bond payments: money the town, school and county do not get.)
What does “assessments like the rest of the town” mean? In this case it means that the rate per $1,000 of assessed value paid to the FCIDA would be tied to the rates used by the town, school and county. The untold truth is that the bond agreement would include a tax stabilization clause. That means that the assessed value of the property owned by the speculators would remain fixed at the original purchase price for the duration of the bonds (25 years) and the assessed value of the property sold by them would remain fixed at the sale price for the same 25 year period. The assessed value of the property would only be increased by the value of the improvements and not by the increase in fair market value, like all other properties in the town. The millions and millions of dollars siphoned off from the tax dollars to pay for the bonds and the millions lost to stabilization should be going to reduce our tax payments. Instead, every property owner would be subsidizing those who could afford to spend millions for their vacation homes.
The speculators should fund the infrastructure and the cost should be rolled into the selling price of each property. There should be no PILOT. There should be no tax stabilization. The property tax should go directly to the town, school and county. Property values should be assessed just like every other property in town.
Bob Harrison
Vice Chair Protect the Adirondacks! Tupper Lake"

I've been trying to figure out who would be the best person or people to contact to get an articulate, thoughtful  and respected counterpoint position on the ACR project.

In my usual unabashed fashion I wasn't too shy or that concerned with decorum. I asked Jim LaValley.

He was very candid. He recommended Bob Harrison of Protect the Adirondacks and Brian Houseal with the Adirondack Council.  I haven't had any luck reaching either. He also recommended Elaine Yabroudy.

This article in the Adirondack Daily Enterprise may explain some of the difficulty I've had.

If anyone has contact with these people and they think they might be interested in speaking to us, have them contact me at harvey44@nyskiblog.com.

Still no luck reaching Bob Harrison, formerly of the Residents Committee to Protect the Adirondacks (RCPA).

I am getting fed information from those who would chose to remain anonymous. Much of this is information that would be evident or obvious to locals, and may only be news to me. Still I appreciate it.

First, RCPA is not defunct. While the office in Saranac Lake has closed, the group has merged with another organization called Association for the Protection of the Adirondacks.

http://blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org/inbox/2009/07/22/rcpa-a-clarification/

Like I said this is not new news, but news to me. The new organization is called Protect the Adirondacks! I reached out to this group 2 days ago, via email to see if they would like to be heard. No response yet.

I also learned that another group, Tupper Lake Land Owners has also been outspoken on the ACR project.  I sent a blind note to TLLOWEB@GMail.com and got a response from Alex Haddad indicating he wanted to be heard.

One last thing. When up on Mt. Morris, Cliff told me the story of Joseph Fromaget who died at age 6 on the mountain. Today someone forwarded me the most recent chapter of the story as told by the Adirondack Daily Enterprise. A memorial white cross, similar to the one laid on the spot of Joseph's passing, was added to the front of the Ranger Cabin:

http://www.adirondackdailyenterprise.com/page/content.detail/id/515725.html?nav=5008

I've been looking forward to seeing what  Alex Haddad has to add to the discussion about ACR and Big Tupper..
Does it look like there will be some more dialogue in the near future? Still a lot of unanswered questions regarding the developers claims and questionable promises...

Alex Haddad respond quickly to my first communication with him last weekend.  It was my own schedule that hindered my followup with him.  I did get the first round of questions off to him yesterday.  

I focused on PILOT, the environmental impact of ACR and potential alternate solutions to the issues facing Tupper Lake.

As I'm relatively new to this issue, it's likely that there are important questions I've missed.  In my experience, multiple rounds of questions can lead to a more in-depth Q/A.  But if anyone would like to propose additional questions please post them here, or PM me at the email address below.

Clearly our Tupper Lake/Northwestern Adk audience has grown significantly over the last month. Let's hear from you.

News stories from 10/21/10:

Resort hearing restarts

Second chance at Big Tupper

Wastewater woes

 A little recent background info on the APA. This may explain the APA's attempts to pencil whip this project thru against the DEC's objections at the recent pre hearing conference.

http://www.wnbz.com/October2010/102110/WastewaterPlan.htm

The DEC wants a chance to reexamine the plan before proceeding to the hearing because substantial changes have been made to Waste treatment etc. Normally, one would expect the APA to agree with this. Now, they have a damn the torpedoes attitude. VERY uncharacteristic of the APA. Perhaps this explains why....

The Pulitzer Prize winning Post Star newspaper of Glens Falls, New York ran a very indepth investigative series on the APA this year. The writer, Will Dolittle, won a very prestigous National Investigative Journalist Award for this work on the APA. Among other things, it painted a picture an out of control agency that bullied people, arbitrarily extended it's jurisdiction without Legislative approval, ignored Constitutional principles like Ex Post Facto and likely due process. The APA would allow something and then years or decades later say it was not permissible and then require people to tear down buildings and infrastructure that they had built years earlier without APA objections! If they didn't comply, they faced years of hearings and tens of thousands of dollars in Legal bills. Some of them had close to $100,000 in defense of their property and Constitutional Rights. This happened to many people. Like a third world dictator, the APA arbitrarily grabbed jurisdiction over areas it was not legally entitled to do. They also seemed to have bullied people out of their property so others could gain it's ownership. There's a very long list of their egregious behavior. Much of it against long established American Constitutional principles.

Politicians,State and local are starting to rumble about doing away with the APA and it's obnoxious behavoir. It is a redundant agency. The arguement is we have the DEC and local Gov's that provide more than adequate enviromental protection for the rest of New York and they do a much better job - Why do we even need the obnoxious APA? That makes sense.

The next Governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo has vowed to do away with 20% of NY's Agencies and Authorites. It could be the APA is hearing footsteps and now wishes to show itself a good neighbor by quickly approving the ACR project, which, after the Post Star Series, they recently announced they wished to do.

a slight digression first. 9/28/10 Jim LaValleys response to comments on the blog..  Heard some ad from ARISE on the radio that Jim has out and states that people shouldn't pay any attention to "wrong information" posted on blogs. Kind of ironic isn't it? especially when it's his wrong info on the blog that is out there.  I particularly like the question, "Can you site any examples of developments on a similar scale to the ACR project that ACR and ARISE consider to be successful"? I notice his response did not list even ONE!! Wonder Why?  He's been looking at the failed ones and there are enough of those around.  Check out the most recent article in the poststar.com 10/21/10. Ski Bowl Village in a "holding Pattern" Or he could look to his own ski-i ski-out project on Titus MTN. 2 units have been built and have sat vacant for 5 years now. Another article on ncpr.org reports that the development could be seriously hindered because of a DEC notice of incomplete application. the ususal suspects will be crying foul saying the DEC is way behind in the application process when its actually the developers fault for not filing the application until mid august 2010, 5 yrs after they said they were going to file.  

endoftheline wrote

Or he could look to his own ski-i ski-out project on Titus MTN. 2 units have been built and have sat vacant for 5 years now.

That's is very interesting, Endoftheline. You're one of several people who have said that. I recently read somewhere a statement by those involved with the Titus project that the Titus project was completed and only 2 units remained to be sold. They painted a picture of a successful project. I really don't doubt you End, but I wonder where we could find more supporting evidence ?

Here's another thing. These economic developement corporations are far from failsafe or beyond corruption. I've dealt with them before in another State. Millions of public dollars flow through these groups with little to no real scrutiny. They can be secrective, self serving, self enriching groups. I've seen them bar all public inspection, keep the public and the press from all meetings even though that's against the Law and IRS Not-for-profit rules.  Local Political leaders usually back that illegal behavior because......

Don't think it could happen? Think they are all wonderful public servants, pure of heart groups? Think their accountants and submited audits prevents fraud? Think again. Enron, Bernie Madoff and a whole host of others had all those "Safeguards" and yet Billions were stolen. Billions.

Here's more evidence of the problems these groups sometimes have. It's a project that NY State has 1.3 billion invested in and even though it's just getting started, the economic developement group in charge is failing on it's responsiblities, putting the whole project at risk and not paying it's debts even though it's been supplied with huge amounts of cash.

Luther Forest Technology Campus being built near Saratoga is one of the largest economic development projects in NY's history. NY has AT LEAST 650 million in cash invested plus millions more from various other incentives, 1.3 billion total. Global Foundries will build a 4.6 billion dollar computer chip manufacturing plant there for AMD. Now there's a just breaking story of trouble with the local Economic Development group handling this huge project. The State had to step in and seize complete control from the local Economic Development group.

The nonprofit Luther Forest Technology Campus Economic Development Corp  operates as an affiliate of the Saratoga Economic Development Corp., which manages the county's economic development efforts. The organization has close ties to Saratoga County political and business leaders.

The problems include failing to make deadlines on building infrastructure that " GlobalFoundries spokesman Travis Bullard said Friday that that schedule  and the entire future of the project  could be in jeopardy if changes do not occur. There's a few critical infrastructure projects that have gotten to the point that we're very concerned about bringing up Fab 8 successfully," Bullard said. "Unfortunately, it could put the project at risk."

Also there's suspicious money problems with Luther Forest Economic Development Corp. " it had defaulted on repayment of more than $1.75 million in loans from the state that were due earlier this year, essentially setting the stage for foreclosing on Luther Forest."

With the State giving them their money, you gotta wonder why this is happening. It's not like their sales/business went bad, they're completly funded on this project by the Government. How can they be missing important deadlines at the project's beginning when the planning has been going on for years? Notice there's "no beyond their control", no plausible excuses why they're late building or missed their payment(s). Also notice " Neither Michael Relyea, president of Luther Forest, nor attorney N. Robert Hayes, chairman of the Luther Forest board of directors, returned calls seeking comment Friday." Bad signs considering the enormity of this project.

http://www.rr.com/news/topic/article/rr/4473267/24762937/State_aims_to_seize_Luther_Forest_site/1

I post this as an FYI for those communities involved with the Tupper Lake project. Sometimes there's more to consider than what is presented by the Leaders of these projects, especially when what they say doesn't add up or make sense. It may work out all well and good, but be fully informed and cross examine what they say carefully.

Harper wrote

I've been looking forward to seeing what  Alex Haddad has to add to the discussion about ACR and Big Tupper..
Does it look like there will be some more dialogue in the near future? Still a lot of unanswered questions regarding the developers claims and questionable promises...

We received a short note this morning from Alex Haddad:

"I think it is premature for me to comment on the current ACR matter as I am involved in the Adjudicatory hearings.  There is a great deal of information available on the web at www.TupperLakeLandOwners.com."

Poor future if resort isn’t built

November 16, 2010 - By Michael D. Foxman, Preserve Associates

I have been reluctant to respond to Mr. Sheehan's last letter because, after seven years, I am tired of reacting to baseless claims and imaginary dangers put forward by people who are paid to prevent economic development in the Park.

My partners and I have spent seven years and millions of dollars and used the most experienced professionals in the region to design the Adirondack Club to be eco-friendly, i.e., approvable. The project is entirely consistent with the Park land development plan. We have the support of the community and local government. We have persevered despite the fact that the preservationists have done everything they could to delay our progress and increase our costs in the hope we would go away.

Full Letter in Adirondack Daily Enterprise

Planning board gives ACR preliminary approval

November 20, 2010 - By JESSICA COLLIER, Enterprise Staff Writer

TUPPER LAKE - The town-village planning board granted the proposed Adirondack Club and Resort preliminary approval with a list of conditions at its Wednesday night meeting.

In a unanimous vote, board members gave preliminary approval of a planned development district for the proposed 650-home resort on and around Mount Morris, complete with ski area and marina. They also approved a list of 13 conditions.

The final condition ensures that the Big Tupper Ski Area will be open for public use for at least 50 years, as long as it remains open and in operation.

Full Story from the Adirondack Daily Enterprise

If Preserve Associates can meet the thirteen conditions as stipulated by the planning board this is extremely good news for Big Tupper and it's advocates. Tupper Lake has been a ski town forever and has proven it will go to great lengths to provide a challenging and exciting venue for folks of every ski level and skill set. If they are able to restore the old-time amenities and atmosphere that is historic here, then Big Tupper will regain it's deserved reputation as a unique personality in Eastern skiing circles.

Congratulations are due the planning board, A.R.I.S.E., the hundreds of volunteers and the village-town taxpayers for their perseverence and hard work. Y'all come see us soon and ski us, Tupper Lake-style!

http://www.adirondackdailyenterprise.com/page/content.detail/id/522549/APA-commissioners-worried-about-time-with-ACR-materials.html?nav=5046

Interesting exchange. Jessica Collier showing some attitude:

http://adirondackdailyenterprise.com/page/blogs.detail/display/1516/Doolittle-calls-Sheehan-letter-shrill.html

...about an opinion expressed by the Post-Star:

http://poststar.com/news/opinion/columns/wdoolittle/a-shrill-response-to-a-reasonable-letter-on-a-large/article_83330e26-11f3-11e1-9741-001cc4c03286.html

I can't claim that I follow either that closely but both seem a little unusual. JC seems to stay in the middle of the road, and I haven't seen any Post-Star editorials on ACR.

Endo or anyone ... when is the review supposed to be complete?