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Roedels were right to drop lawsuit

We’re glad Roedel Companies dropped its lawsuits against the village of Saranac Lake and the developers who plan to build the Lake Flower Resort and Spa.

We did not like to see the company rehabilitating the beautiful Hotel Saranac pick this fight. By backing down on its own, the Roedel family should be able to restore its local reputation, which was sterling before being somewhat tarnished by the lawsuit.

Granted, the Lake Flower Resort project did raise a lot of questions and concerns in the community. We think the village Board of Trustees, seeing that division, should have been more of a referee and less of a cheerleader for the developers in the review process. This big hotel and parking lot were shoehorned into a piece of land that was just a little too small to meet the village’s own Planned Unit Development District rules, but developers, working with village officials, got around the acreage requirement by including part of the lake bottom. They also decided that during big events at the hotel’s conference space, cars can be parked in a nearby neighborhood — never mind what the neighbors think.

We praise the village Planning Board for demanding and achieving major aesthetic improvements, but it could have negotiated harder on size, parking, traffic and setback from the lake shore.

At this point, though, all that is hindsight — lessons for the next project. The due process is done, and we’re happy to wait and see how the Lake Flower Resort turns out.

We have no problem with adding another sizable hotel to Saranac Lake. The Roedel family’s assertion that this village is too small for both the Hotel Saranac and the Lake Flower Resort doesn’t hold water with us.

We wish both projects well.

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