Phineas
10-27-2006, 10:42 AM
NY Times ~ 10/27/2006 ~ Adirondacks Are Hot. That's Good. Or Not. ~ By
LISA W. FODERARO
TUPPER LAKE, N.Y. -- Those who love the Adirondacks most are worried
they are being loved too much.
Personal watercraft, all-terrain vehicles and snowmobiles shatter
the stillness, from one season to the next. Nearly twice as many
building permits were issued last year as in 1998, while home prices in
some areas have doubled in less than three years. Two major development
proposals that would resurrect defunct ski areas, one here and another
in North Creek, could create a total of more than 1,000 units of housing
and several hotels in what Peter Bauer, a leading environmentalist,
described as "an unprecedented building boom."
The Adirondack Park, an unusual mix of state-owned forest preserve
and private land that is roughly the size of Vermont, has fallen in and
out of favor for decades. Once a playground for the Vanderbilts,
Rockefellers and Whitneys, who erected fabulous great camps at the turn
of the last century, the park has been alternately viewed as a stunning
refuge from overhyped second-home resorts and a remote backwater with
black flies and bad food.
It has been more than a century since New York State created
Adirondack Park, an expanse of rugged mountains and lakes that was, from
the beginning, recognized for its magnificent scenery. The philosopher
William James wrote to his brother, Henry, the novelist, that the
"sylvan beauty" was "probably unlike aught that Europe has to show."
Today, the park is clearly back in vogue, as shown by a spate of
home building and boutiques peddling twig furnishings. While local
officials embrace the boom for its anticipated tax windfall,
environmental groups and others are anxious that New York's great
wilderness is becoming overdeveloped.
"In other parts of the country where they have 1,000-unit
subdivisions, this may not seem like a big deal," said Mr. Bauer,
executive director of the Residents' Committee to Protect the
Adirondacks, an environmental group. "But that's not what the park is
all about. It's about big, continuous, forested, wild, open spaces."
Michael D. Foxman, the lead developer of one of the two developments
causing concern, the Adirondack Club and Resort here, said he was trying
to ensure that it fits in. Almost 2,000 acres of the 6,300-acre site
would be left untouched, he promised, and the ski lodge, town houses and
other buildings would all be in the popular rustic lodge style.
"We're trying to do everything on a human scale," Mr. Foxman said.
"All of our structures will be classic Adirondack architecture with twig
work and half logs and whole logs. We're trying to recreate the
great-camp feeling in the Adirondacks."
Critics argue that the land-use plan put in place by Gov. Nelson A.
Rockefeller in the early 1970s is ill-equipped to preserve the
wilderness. After studying the zoning densities permitted under the
plan, the Residents' Committee found that it would allow 325,000 new
structures to be added now to the park's current 88,000 buildings, most
of which are single-family homes.
The Tupper Lake proposal is the largest ever to be considered by the
Adirondack Park Agency, a kind of park zoning board. Under the plan,
developers would erect hundreds of houses and carve out two dozen
estates, averaging 90 acres each, on former timberlands, a departure
from past development, which was mostly along lakeshores and roadsides.
Apart from the designs of developers, individual home buyers are
changing the face of the park on their own.
Local officials and business owners noticed a surge of interest
after the terror attacks of Sept. 11. "It was instantaneous," said
Jeanne Ashworth, supervisor of the town of Wilmington, 35 miles from
here. "Within six months, we saw people moving here, looking for a safer
place."
Last year, Wilmington, population 1,131, saw the construction of 24
new homes; Ms. Ashworth believes it was the most in a single year since
the town was established in 1911, and up from about four or five a year
before 2001. In the nearby town of Jay, population 2,300, officials said
most of the newcomers were young families and retirees living there
year-round, not second-home owners.
"We probably had 40 to 50 brand-new houses built last year," said
the town supervisor, Randall T. Douglas. "In 2000, we might have had 10
new houses a year."
Environmental groups are most upset about the Tupper Lake resort,
which they say could establish a harmful precedent, encouraging others
to build in the privately owned backcountry. Those forested lands,
mostly owned by timber companies, make up a quarter of the park. They
give the Adirondacks their look and feel as much as the 2.7 million
acres of state-owned forest preserve.
"Forest slopes would be clear-cut to make room for new roads,
driveways, parking areas, houses, lawns and accessory buildings," John
F. Sheehan, a spokesman for the Adirondack Council, an environmental
group, said in an Op-Ed piece earlier this year in The Albany Times
Union. "The resulting fragmentation would devastate native plants and
wildlife that depend on undisturbed habitat."
Mr. Foxman, the developer, said his company, Preserve Associates,
planned to construct the great-camp residences on five-acre sections
within the sprawling properties, which would limit fragmentation of the
forest.
The plan's 461 town houses, 238 single-family houses and 40-room inn
are within the permitted density limits for the site, which was once
owned by a manufacturer of wooden bowls. Because of the project's scale
and complexity, the project is subject to approval by the Adirondack
Park Agency.
Such enormous parcels are available for development because of the
global competition facing big paper companies. Some have sold off
forests that they had harvested for a century or more, while others
sought to reduce their taxes by giving up development rights. The trend
has created a rare opportunity for conservation, and Gov. George E.
Pataki took it, protecting 575,000 acres since taking office in 1995,
but other tracts have gone to developers.
Many residents support the building proposals as a way to ease the
tax burden in an area that has pockets of poverty and high unemployment.
Tupper Lake, for example, was once a thriving mill town, but a series of
fires in the first half of the last century wrecked the streetscape. In
recent years, residents -- and the business district -- have suffered
from the loss of the Big Tupper Ski Area, as well as a department store
and supermarket.
"I want it -- definitely," said Lynn Bishop, who lives here and owns
Al's Taxi with her husband. "It will bring more jobs and commerce to
Tupper Lake."
In North Creek, a hamlet in the town of Johnsburg 50 miles from
here, the town supervisor, William H. Thomas, backs a developer's plan
to build 160 units of housing, 294 rooms in five hotels, 102,000 square
feet of retail space and a golf course next to a town-operated ski bowl
that closed in the 1970s. State and local officials have agreed to
reopen the ski area eventually, making it part of nearby Gore Mountain,
the state-run ski center.
"We could do nothing and try not to enthuse visitors to move in, and
in a few years the taxes would be so high that nobody could afford to
live here," Mr. Thomas said. "I would rather go down fighting than do
nothing."
Mr. Thomas acknowledged that renewed interest in the Adirondacks had
driven up real estate prices, making home ownership elusive for young
year-round residents. A house next door to his recently sold for
$162,500; three years ago, it went for $75,000. Twenty low-income
housing units are now rising in town, reflecting the robust market.
Concern about overdevelopment of the Adirondacks is nothing new.
It was worry about clear-cutting the mountainsides that led to the
park's creation in 1892, along with the forest preserve. But the private
lands remained largely unregulated.
Then, in the 1960s, after construction of the Northway, an extension
of Interstate 87 that runs clear through the park to the Canadian
border, new fears emerged over the fate of private timberlands and the
potential for second-home development.
In 1971, under Governor Rockefeller, the Adirondack Park Agency was
created to control future development. It undertook an elaborate -- and
fiercely contested -- classification of all the private lands in the
park, based on existing development, proximity to forest preserve and
natural features like slopes, soil types and wetlands.
The six classifications, from the least restrictive (hamlet) to the
most restrictive (resource management), laid out the permitted densities
on every private parcel. The large swaths of backcountry -- timberlands
classified as resource management -- require a generous 42.7 acres per
structure.
In a study of recent housing development, the Residents' Committee
to Protect the Adirondacks found that from 1990 to 2004, about 13,500
new houses and buildings went up in the park. Of those, about 4,700
required permits from the Adirondack Park Agency. The pace has picked
up, from a low of 724 permits issued in 1998 to about 1,200 permits last
year.
"Our goal is to strike for balance," said Keith P. McKeever, an
agency spokesman, describing a constant tug of war between development
and preservation. "We have to protect the natural resources of the park,
but the act clearly states that we have to balance that with the needs
of local government and the thousands of people who live here year-round."
A poet from Johnsburg, Jeanne Robert Foster, echoes the fears of
many who live here and love it: "And the way things are going there
won't be woods very long, or wilderness; it'll be imitation ranches, and
ski runs, and places called by names that the folks who lived there
years and years ago never heard of."
Ms. Foster was born in 1879.
LISA W. FODERARO
TUPPER LAKE, N.Y. -- Those who love the Adirondacks most are worried
they are being loved too much.
Personal watercraft, all-terrain vehicles and snowmobiles shatter
the stillness, from one season to the next. Nearly twice as many
building permits were issued last year as in 1998, while home prices in
some areas have doubled in less than three years. Two major development
proposals that would resurrect defunct ski areas, one here and another
in North Creek, could create a total of more than 1,000 units of housing
and several hotels in what Peter Bauer, a leading environmentalist,
described as "an unprecedented building boom."
The Adirondack Park, an unusual mix of state-owned forest preserve
and private land that is roughly the size of Vermont, has fallen in and
out of favor for decades. Once a playground for the Vanderbilts,
Rockefellers and Whitneys, who erected fabulous great camps at the turn
of the last century, the park has been alternately viewed as a stunning
refuge from overhyped second-home resorts and a remote backwater with
black flies and bad food.
It has been more than a century since New York State created
Adirondack Park, an expanse of rugged mountains and lakes that was, from
the beginning, recognized for its magnificent scenery. The philosopher
William James wrote to his brother, Henry, the novelist, that the
"sylvan beauty" was "probably unlike aught that Europe has to show."
Today, the park is clearly back in vogue, as shown by a spate of
home building and boutiques peddling twig furnishings. While local
officials embrace the boom for its anticipated tax windfall,
environmental groups and others are anxious that New York's great
wilderness is becoming overdeveloped.
"In other parts of the country where they have 1,000-unit
subdivisions, this may not seem like a big deal," said Mr. Bauer,
executive director of the Residents' Committee to Protect the
Adirondacks, an environmental group. "But that's not what the park is
all about. It's about big, continuous, forested, wild, open spaces."
Michael D. Foxman, the lead developer of one of the two developments
causing concern, the Adirondack Club and Resort here, said he was trying
to ensure that it fits in. Almost 2,000 acres of the 6,300-acre site
would be left untouched, he promised, and the ski lodge, town houses and
other buildings would all be in the popular rustic lodge style.
"We're trying to do everything on a human scale," Mr. Foxman said.
"All of our structures will be classic Adirondack architecture with twig
work and half logs and whole logs. We're trying to recreate the
great-camp feeling in the Adirondacks."
Critics argue that the land-use plan put in place by Gov. Nelson A.
Rockefeller in the early 1970s is ill-equipped to preserve the
wilderness. After studying the zoning densities permitted under the
plan, the Residents' Committee found that it would allow 325,000 new
structures to be added now to the park's current 88,000 buildings, most
of which are single-family homes.
The Tupper Lake proposal is the largest ever to be considered by the
Adirondack Park Agency, a kind of park zoning board. Under the plan,
developers would erect hundreds of houses and carve out two dozen
estates, averaging 90 acres each, on former timberlands, a departure
from past development, which was mostly along lakeshores and roadsides.
Apart from the designs of developers, individual home buyers are
changing the face of the park on their own.
Local officials and business owners noticed a surge of interest
after the terror attacks of Sept. 11. "It was instantaneous," said
Jeanne Ashworth, supervisor of the town of Wilmington, 35 miles from
here. "Within six months, we saw people moving here, looking for a safer
place."
Last year, Wilmington, population 1,131, saw the construction of 24
new homes; Ms. Ashworth believes it was the most in a single year since
the town was established in 1911, and up from about four or five a year
before 2001. In the nearby town of Jay, population 2,300, officials said
most of the newcomers were young families and retirees living there
year-round, not second-home owners.
"We probably had 40 to 50 brand-new houses built last year," said
the town supervisor, Randall T. Douglas. "In 2000, we might have had 10
new houses a year."
Environmental groups are most upset about the Tupper Lake resort,
which they say could establish a harmful precedent, encouraging others
to build in the privately owned backcountry. Those forested lands,
mostly owned by timber companies, make up a quarter of the park. They
give the Adirondacks their look and feel as much as the 2.7 million
acres of state-owned forest preserve.
"Forest slopes would be clear-cut to make room for new roads,
driveways, parking areas, houses, lawns and accessory buildings," John
F. Sheehan, a spokesman for the Adirondack Council, an environmental
group, said in an Op-Ed piece earlier this year in The Albany Times
Union. "The resulting fragmentation would devastate native plants and
wildlife that depend on undisturbed habitat."
Mr. Foxman, the developer, said his company, Preserve Associates,
planned to construct the great-camp residences on five-acre sections
within the sprawling properties, which would limit fragmentation of the
forest.
The plan's 461 town houses, 238 single-family houses and 40-room inn
are within the permitted density limits for the site, which was once
owned by a manufacturer of wooden bowls. Because of the project's scale
and complexity, the project is subject to approval by the Adirondack
Park Agency.
Such enormous parcels are available for development because of the
global competition facing big paper companies. Some have sold off
forests that they had harvested for a century or more, while others
sought to reduce their taxes by giving up development rights. The trend
has created a rare opportunity for conservation, and Gov. George E.
Pataki took it, protecting 575,000 acres since taking office in 1995,
but other tracts have gone to developers.
Many residents support the building proposals as a way to ease the
tax burden in an area that has pockets of poverty and high unemployment.
Tupper Lake, for example, was once a thriving mill town, but a series of
fires in the first half of the last century wrecked the streetscape. In
recent years, residents -- and the business district -- have suffered
from the loss of the Big Tupper Ski Area, as well as a department store
and supermarket.
"I want it -- definitely," said Lynn Bishop, who lives here and owns
Al's Taxi with her husband. "It will bring more jobs and commerce to
Tupper Lake."
In North Creek, a hamlet in the town of Johnsburg 50 miles from
here, the town supervisor, William H. Thomas, backs a developer's plan
to build 160 units of housing, 294 rooms in five hotels, 102,000 square
feet of retail space and a golf course next to a town-operated ski bowl
that closed in the 1970s. State and local officials have agreed to
reopen the ski area eventually, making it part of nearby Gore Mountain,
the state-run ski center.
"We could do nothing and try not to enthuse visitors to move in, and
in a few years the taxes would be so high that nobody could afford to
live here," Mr. Thomas said. "I would rather go down fighting than do
nothing."
Mr. Thomas acknowledged that renewed interest in the Adirondacks had
driven up real estate prices, making home ownership elusive for young
year-round residents. A house next door to his recently sold for
$162,500; three years ago, it went for $75,000. Twenty low-income
housing units are now rising in town, reflecting the robust market.
Concern about overdevelopment of the Adirondacks is nothing new.
It was worry about clear-cutting the mountainsides that led to the
park's creation in 1892, along with the forest preserve. But the private
lands remained largely unregulated.
Then, in the 1960s, after construction of the Northway, an extension
of Interstate 87 that runs clear through the park to the Canadian
border, new fears emerged over the fate of private timberlands and the
potential for second-home development.
In 1971, under Governor Rockefeller, the Adirondack Park Agency was
created to control future development. It undertook an elaborate -- and
fiercely contested -- classification of all the private lands in the
park, based on existing development, proximity to forest preserve and
natural features like slopes, soil types and wetlands.
The six classifications, from the least restrictive (hamlet) to the
most restrictive (resource management), laid out the permitted densities
on every private parcel. The large swaths of backcountry -- timberlands
classified as resource management -- require a generous 42.7 acres per
structure.
In a study of recent housing development, the Residents' Committee
to Protect the Adirondacks found that from 1990 to 2004, about 13,500
new houses and buildings went up in the park. Of those, about 4,700
required permits from the Adirondack Park Agency. The pace has picked
up, from a low of 724 permits issued in 1998 to about 1,200 permits last
year.
"Our goal is to strike for balance," said Keith P. McKeever, an
agency spokesman, describing a constant tug of war between development
and preservation. "We have to protect the natural resources of the park,
but the act clearly states that we have to balance that with the needs
of local government and the thousands of people who live here year-round."
A poet from Johnsburg, Jeanne Robert Foster, echoes the fears of
many who live here and love it: "And the way things are going there
won't be woods very long, or wilderness; it'll be imitation ranches, and
ski runs, and places called by names that the folks who lived there
years and years ago never heard of."
Ms. Foster was born in 1879.