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Lake Flower Resort has 2 owners, not 3

SARANAC LAKE – After naming the owners of the Lake Flower Resort and Spa Friday evening, a lawyer for them cleared some things up Saturday morning.

“Jacob Wright is not an investor in the project,” Matt Norfolk of Lake Placid wrote in an email. “He is just the manager that works for the project to facilitate things. He has no ownership interest.”

A press release Norfolk issued Friday evening listed Wright under the project’s “ownership,” but Saturday’s email corrects that. The release also identified Wright as “managing partner.”

Leland C. “Lee” Pillsbury and Mark Pacala own the project, Norfolk said.

Friday’s release had said Pacala owned a vacation house in the Adirondacks but didn’t specify where. The house is in Lake George, Norfolk said. He is primarily based in Washington, D.C. Pillsbury is based not far away, in Annapolis, Maryland.

Wright was at one time an investor in this hotel project under the prior leadership of Chris LaBarge of Malone. It changed hands last fall, and Wright was a key representative in announcing the new, then-anonymous owners November 2015.

Wright and his family moved to Lake Placid full-time in 2014, having previously been seasonal homeowners. He teaches at Paul Smith’s College, and he has also been involved with a project to buy and redevelop the former National Sports Academy in Lake Placid. He has been CEO of High Peaks Hospitality, a company that had business interests in hotels and restaurants in the Syracuse area.

Norfolk also gave an answer to the question of why the owners took over this project from LaBarge and his investment team.

“Mr. Pillsbury and Mr. Pacala decided to take over the project because they like the area,” Norfolk said.

If approved by state and village reviewers, the four-story building would contain 93 hotel rooms, a spa, conference center and two restaurants on a 3-acre site between Lake Flower Avenue and its namesake body of water. The developers would buy and remove three motels that occupy the site now.

Pillsbury has had a long career as a hospitality industry executive and investor, and is chairman of Thayer Lodging Group, a hospitality investment company he co-founded in 1991 and sold in 2014.

Pacala has focused on health care and senior housing investments, and is an operating partner with Pamplona Capital Management, managing the firm’s health care portfolio. He was a board member of the Adirondack Chapter of The Nature Conservancy for 10 years.

These two men remained anonymous for seven months, and their company, Saranac Lake Resort LLC, was registered in Delaware, a state that does not require public disclosure of LLCs’ principal owners. The press release revealing them Friday said, “Mr. Pillsbury and Mr. Pacala will not be making any further public comments on the proposed project moving forward.”

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