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Planning board approves ACR subdivision map

TUPPER LAKE — The Joint Planning Board approved a final “plat,” or map, of Section 1 of the Adirondack Club and Resort project at a special meeting Wednesday night.

A plat is a to-scale map outlining the boundaries of saleable lots within a subdivision — in this case Section 1 of the future ACR, a planned 6,200-acre luxury housing development. Section 1 is a collection of 18 so-called “great camp” lots, eight of which are classified as “large” and 10 as “small.” The sizes vary from around 30 acres to over 700 acres.

The land these lots sit on is currently owned by the Oval Wood Dish Corporation Liquidated Trust. Preserve Associates, the corporation behind the resort, plans to buy these lots and sell them to home builders around the same time.

The town’s approval came with 16 conditions, including provisions concerning signage, utilities and road work. Also spelled out in these conditions is the amount of money Big Tupper Ski Area would see: 7.25 percent of the gross sale price of each of the 18 lots in Section 1 will be used for operation and maintenance of, and capital improvements to the ski area, which the developers own. Volunteer efforts reopened Big Tupper in late 2009 after more than 10 years of being closed, but it has operated sporadically since then, not opening this winter or last.

The town approval of the map represents one step in what has been a long road for Preserve Associates. From 2012 to 2014, the developers were embroiled in a protracted legal battle with environmental groups. Now that this subdivision map is filed with the county and approved by the town, they can move forward in acquiring the other permits they’ll need in order to proceed with development.

Preserve Associates still need permits from the state Department of Environmental Conservation, state Adirondack Park Agency and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers before it can begin work. The APA approved the resort plan in early 2012, but there’s still work to do to obtain the permits that let construction begin.

“The APA and DEC, they do their job, and we’ll do ours,” Preserve Associates attorney Robert Sweeney said Wednesday night. “We’ve been working with them, and we’ll continue to do so.”

One of the first things the developers will tackle is the construction of Pond Road, which would run 5.5 miles from the Lake Simond Road extension to the Moody Pond lot, the development’s largest parcel at over 700 acres.

“The DEC and (Army) Corps (of Engineers) are looking at the culverts to be built on Pond Road,” Sweeney said. “They’re going to have to be better than logging roads.”

Once the meeting was adjourned on Wednesday night, the standing-room-only crowd broke out into applause.

“We hit the ground during the Great Recession, and we survived that, and we’re very enthused.” Sweeney said. “We plan to get the project underway this spring.”

Lawson, a principal partner in Preserve Associates, was less talkative.

“Big step,” he said. “Real happy.”

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