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Hashing out plan for inn at old school

Review board tells Magro parking, stormwater are issues at former NSA

Local businessman Paolo Magro presents his plan for a 42-room boutique hotel at the site of the former National Sports Academy school, 821 Mirror Lake Drive, at Wednesday’s Lake Placid-North Elba Joint Review Board meeting at the North Elba Town Hall in Lake Placid. (Enterprise photo — Antonio Olivero)

LAKE PLACID — Local businessman Paolo Magro presented his plans for the former National Sports Academy building at 821 Mirror Lake Drive for the first time to the Lake Placid-North Elba Joint Review Board on Wednesday.

Magro, who lives in Saranac Lake, intends to build a 42-room boutique hotel called the Lake Placid Inn at the site of the 28,000-square-foot building. Magro and his Magdi Lake Drive LLC purchased the property this summer for $1.13 million.

“I think it’s good for us and good for the community,” Magro said when he addressed the board, “something fresh and brand new.”

The biggest question still lingering for any reconstruction at the site of the former NSA building is parking, and Joint Review Board Chairman Bill Hurley said though the proposal for 33 parking spots on site meets state code, he was unsure if it would work practically. He said when the board did a site visit a year ago with previous purchaser Walnut Woods LLC, a similar parking plan wasn’t workable. Walnut Woods hoped to turn the site into a 24-unit hotel with office space.

Hurley also said the plan lacked requisite green space under Magdi Drive’s initial proposal. Enzo DiCiocco, who accompanied Magro for the presentation, asked the board if the Lake Placid Inn could use a reinforced grass parking system to meet those demands, to which the board said yes.

The board also told Magro the grading of the driveway to Parkside Drive must be reduced.

“The traffic flow is going to be the big issue,” Hurley said, “and how are your engineers going to handle that parking lot?”

“You gotta keep it where those people are not zooming right out into a public road,” Hurley later added. “That’ll be another concern.”

Magro said he intends to solve the parking problem by doing two things. The first is to have employees of the Lake Placid Inn park down at another property of his at 2050 Saranac Ave. The second is to purchase about a dozen parking permits from the village to meet the minimum number of parking spaces.

The board reiterated to Magro that to meet code, those spaces would need to be located within 200 feet of the property. Magro said he discussed with Mayor Craig Randall that village parking spaces in the lot next to Stewart’s Shop could work. The Haus Lake Placid, a boutique hotel on Main Street, already has this parking agreement with the village, and it prints pamphlets for guests telling them where they can park.

The board also told Magro there are lingering stormwater concerns at the property. He said he’d work in the coming weeks to address those.

“You’re trying to do a nice thing on a really tiny postage stamp,” Hurley said.

Magro’s purchase came after a previously agreed-upon sale of the property fell through early this year. In February, the U.S. Bankruptcy Court’s Northern District of New York approved a settlement between NSA and Walnut Woods LLC/Parkside Inn LLC and Jacob Wright of Lake Placid. In January, those LLCs informed the former school they were terminating the contract. Walnut Woods contracted with NSA to buy the property for $1.14 million last July.

NSA had filed for bankruptcy in January 2015, and the school closed on June 1 of that year after several years of sagging enrollment and debt. The building was put on the market for roughly $1.4 million. The private school for winter sport student-athletes included 23 Olympians in its 38 years.

The Walnut Woods-Parkside Inn sale was delayed for months, largely due to concerns from local officials and other business owners about the limited amount of parking. The Joint Review Board also expressed concern including traffic circulation patterns, snow storage and removal, screening of the parking area, stormwater management control and green space.

In Saranac Lake, Magro also owns Little Italy Pizzeria, Nonna Fina restaurant, the Saranac Lake Shopping Center, the Wholesale Furniture building and its adjacent parking lot that he leases for public use. In Lake Placid, he owns the Lake Placid Inn at 2050 Saranac Ave., a renovated former motel that is now vacation suites.

The sale enabled NSA to shed some of its outstanding debt to lenders and contractors. In July, a July 2013 tax lien against NSA for nearly $70,000 was released by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service. Adirondack Bank also withdrew a claim in Bankruptcy Court in July against NSA for a mortgage loan in an undisclosed amount. When the school filed for bankruptcy in January 2015, Adirondack Bank submitted a claim against the school for more than $545,000 it said it was owed from a $1.13 million mortgage.

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