Emotions High at Resort Hearing
By Leigh Hornbeck, Times Union, Albany, N.Y.
Jan. 11–TUPPER LAKE — Residents in this Adirondack town desperately want their hometown ski area to reopen.
But they are divided over whether a 700-unit development should be part of the rebirth of Big Tupper.
More than 400 people packed the auditorium of Tupper Lake High School to ardently support — and oppose — the Adirondack Club and Resort, a high-end development proposed for the woods surrounding the ski trails at Big Tupper.
The Adirondack Park Agency will decide if the project goes forward. The commissioners held the hearing Wednesday to help them decide if they should subject the proposal to a second, months-long hearing before an administrative law judge.
In February, the board will vote to schedule the hearing, or the commissioners will approve or reject the plan on their own.
“I would like to speak in favor of this project, as someone wearing four hats,” said Don Dew Jr., president of the Tupper Lake Chamber of Commerce and general manager of the Timber Lodge motel, identifying himself also as a taxpayer and an adjoining property owner.
Dew’s position drew applause from the audience, and other speakers echoed his sentiments. Tupper Lake was a bustling community when the ski area was open, they said, but now many businesses are closed.
It is drained of its young people who have no hope of careers in their hometown, they say.
But others said they were put off by, as town residents Jack and Susan Delahanty described it, the “slick, top-of-the-world production” pitched as Tupper Lake’s salvation by Philadelphia developer Michael Foxman and his company, Preserve Associates LLC.
“Our passion makes us vulnerable,” said Susan Delahanty.
Middle ground can be found through a hearing by the APA, she said.
The project, if approved as submitted, would include 6,300 acres, but LA Group, planning consultant for Preserve Associates, said the buildings would occupy only 900 acres, or 14 percent.
To pay for $45 million of infrastructure — power lines, roads, sewer and water line — Preserve Associates has applied to the Franklin County Industrial Development Agency for bonds.
Critics have assailed this move because of its use of taxpayer money, and because once the IDA is involved, the property is taken off the tax rolls. The developer plans for a homeowners’ association to sign a payment-in-lieu-of-taxes agreement.
Brad Jackson, a member of the IDA board, said no one in the county, town or village was at risk if the Adirondack Club fails, only the people who buy the bonds. Jackson urged the APA to approve the project and “make a world-class resort accessible to all.”
Residents in Tupper Lake are living in poverty, he said, and the Adirondack Club could change that by providing jobs and increasing the tax base.
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