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Public hearing is needed

Within the Adirondack Park Agency there is an institutional momentum toward the approval of permit applications. This may be at work in the permit application of the Lake Flower Resort and Spa, and it’s all the more reason for the APA to subject this proposal to a formal public hearing.

First, a bit of history.

In 1974, my first job at the APA was to work with the state Department of Transportation to bring its highway and other projects into conformity with the travel corridors section of the recently adopted State Land Master Plan. Although a court ruled that the SLMP had the force of a legislative enactment, the DOT engineers were already subject to state and federal laws and regulations as well as professional highway design standards and financial constraints.

Asking the DOT engineers to rethink their proposed projects gave them a mighty challenge. They rose to that challenge and found ways to adapt their proposals to fit the character of the Adirondack Park. Yellow-on-brown signs, limits on vegetation clearing, distinctive guardrails and other changes followed.

After months of give and take with DOT, with the assistance of APA’s technical experts, I felt that a proposed project was as good as we could make it. The engineers found flexibility that they didn’t know they had, even though it was not easy, and I appreciated that. On some level, their project became my project.

The review of the Lake Flower hotel falls under a different section of the APA law than my review of DOT’s proposals, but the dynamic is similar.

A developer submits a project; APA staff deems the application incomplete and asks for further information. I have not followed the back-and-forth between the hotel developer and APA staff, and don’t know how many notices of incompletion were given or whether they required the developer to redesign his proposal. To do so adds additional expense, and a developer has only so much money and flexibility. The unspoken assumption is, if you change the proposal as the staff wishes, the APA will approve it. By tweaking a project so it incorporates staff requests, the APA begins to own it. After a lot of hard work, staff feels the project is as good as it’s going to get.

A fair amount of time transpires from the developer’s first approach to the APA until a project application is deemed complete, and then a clock starts requiring either approval or a public hearing within a fixed period. The developer and APA staff have been in conversation, and the developer has, at significant expense, submitted a permit application the APA is finally satisfied with. So much work has already gone into the application, the developer has been responsive to APA staff concerns, and it’s taken so long. At this point, it seems inappropriate to call for a public hearing. It’s almost insensitive, even churlish, to put the developer through much more. There is an institutional momentum for approval.

Despite this institutional momentum, the staff may recommend that the APA proceed to a public hearing. By itself the staff can only achieve those changes in the permit application that the developer finds acceptable. It cannot require the developer to materially change the project by, say, greatly reducing its size. Nor can the staff deny a permit for a completed application. Only after a public hearing can the APA make such decisions.

The level of public interest in the Lake Flower hotel is high, and that is among the criteria for APA to call for a public hearing (APA Act 809 3 d). Despite what I’m sure is the APA’s staff excellent work, a public hearing will bring more information and fresh insights to those who must approve or disapprove the project, the agency commissioners. A proper public hearing is important for the work of the APA in making the right decision on the permit application but also necessary for the APA’s credibility so the agency can be seen as taking all information into account.

Mayor Clyde Rabideau says that only residents of Saranac Lake village should be taken seriously when they comment on the proposed hotel. Sorry, Mr. Mayor, but the village trustees chose to rest the decision with the APA. They did so when the trustees voted to approve a project that did not conform to the village’s zoning, created a Planned Unit Development District now subject to litigation and, crucially, triggered APA jurisdiction for the Lake Flower hotel as a Class A regional project. The trustees could have done otherwise and did not.

Thus the APA is responsible for evaluating the project from a Parkwide perspective.

The question now is whether the project, as currently envisioned, is appropriate for the Adirondack Park. The inescapable fact is that something of this size and potential impact requires much more than some last-minute adjustment. It requires a searching examination leading to the right decision.

To do this, a formal public hearing is called for, where the Lake Flower Hotel and Spa can be publicly scrutinized from every angle and by every interested party.

George O. Nagle lives in Saranac Lake and was an APA staff member from 1974 to 1981.

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