SARANAC LAKE — The Saranac Lake Village Board this past Monday voted to authorize a $340,000 payment toward design work on a proposed emergency services complex on Petrova Avenue.

In a 3-2 vote, the board approved the village’s use of $340,000 from its capital reserves as part of a broader contract — estimated at more than $1.78 million — with Wendel Architecture, Engineering, Surveying and Landscape Architecture out of Buffalo. The company will be asked to provide design services related to the proposed emergency services complex, which aims to bring together the Saranac Lake Police Department, Saranac Lake Volunteer Fire Department and the Saranac Lake Volunteer Rescue Squad into one unified compound at 33 Petrova Ave., the site of the former St. Pius X High School.

The contract includes a proposed 8.5% fee for Wendel on the $21 million that it’s expected to cost to build the facility itself — this would amount to roughly $1.78 million for design work. The total estimated cost of the project is $27.5 million.

If this contract is signed as is, Wendel would be tasked with “site development/planning, existing condition surveying, programming, schematic design (Phase I), design development (Phase II), construction documents (Phase III), bidding assistance (Phase IV) and construction administration (Phase V), with fire, rescue and police located at an existing property at 33 Petrova Ave. in Saranac Lake,” the proposed agreement reads. The contract says that the goal would be to have schematic designs done by March 2025, and that the village would be “invoiced at 80% of the fee for items designed and bid but not built and at 100% of the fee for items designed, bid and built.”

The village board was split this past Monday, with trustees Kelly Brunette and Aurora White voting against the measure and trustees Matt Scollin, Sean Ryan and Mayor Jimmy William voting to approve it.

Before voting, Ryan and Williams both referenced the village’s decades-long search for solutions to address its aging emergency services buildings.

Scollin said he planned to vote with his conscience.

Brunette and White both outlined a long list of concerns they had with the resolution before them, with the village’s planning process so far, with what they see as a lack of proper exploration of alternative sites for the complex and with the proposed contract itself. Both also raised concerns about how this vote came about. Both said they were only made aware that this resolution would be on the board’s docket on June 21 — three days prior to the board’s June 24 meeting.

“This was presented to us on Friday, no heads up, no conversations,” Brunette said. “We could’ve communicated as a board better.”

The board decision, which came after more than a dozen residents urged the board to either delay or reject the measure, drew immediate criticism. One resident — Paul Van Cott, a former village attorney and village board member — urged the board to reconsider its vote shortly afterward and highlighted what he sees as a potential legal issue as a result of the board’s process. A second attorney — Molly Hann — also took issue with the board’s process as it pursued this project and said she thought the board “is pretty dysfunctional.”

“I hope that you can spend our money better after tonight and there can be a better process,” she said.

As the village continues planning for this new emergency services complex, the state Adirondack Park Agency has plans of its own that hinge upon the village’s police department finding a new home. The APA has proposed moving into and renovating the historic Paul Smith’s Power and Light Company building at 1-3 Main St., which currently houses the police department and a Franklin County Department of Social Services outreach office.

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Board discussion

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The board’s meeting this past Monday was lengthy, clocking in at nearly four hours long. The majority of the village board’s discussions were about the emergency services project.

White took issue with inconsistencies she saw in a preliminary feasibility study done by Five Bugles Design, a subsidiary of Wendel Companies, for this project. The study notes that there are several details that can’t be ironed out without further research.

White raised concerns about the order in which the village is doing things — she believes that if the village cannot answer the public’s questions about the project, then the village cannot properly advise a design company to put together a plan that meets the village’s needs. She questioned whether the village is prepared for all of the potential costs that may be associated with the project. She believes the village hasn’t properly explored all possible options for placement of new emergency services facilities.

White, reading from the proposed contract, also noted that the contract asks the village to provide Wendel with a variety of studies that she believes the village has not done yet.

“The contract … says we need to provide surveys, we need to provide traffic studies, we need to provide all this information, geotechnical designs,” she said. “We have not done any of that.”

A key concern of White’s was that the village has not yet reviewed the project in accordance with the state Environmental Quality Review Act, or SEQR. SEQR requires “all local, regional and state government agencies to equally examine the environmental impacts along with the social and economic considerations for a certain project, or action, during their discretionary review,” according to the state Department of Environmental Conservation.

“I believe we’re doing this in the wrong order. I think we’ve been put in a deplorable situation,” White said. “If I vote no tonight, then I’m saying that I don’t support the emergency services. … That is not it at all. I know you guys need a new building … you help keep our neighborhoods and our citizens safe and you guys need the facilities to do that. I do not believe that the way we’re going about it is the correct way to go about it.”

White also raised concerns about the possibility that the village may be opening itself up to an Article 78 proceeding, a legal mechanism that allows anyone to challenge a state or local government agency’s actions if it fails to perform its duties by law, or if “a determination was made in violation of lawful procedure, was affected by an error of law or was arbitrary and capricious or an abuse of discretion,” among other issues, according to state law.

Williams said that “this is the first time a SEQR has been mentioned,” and that people he has consulted have told him that the village is following the proper steps.

“If you don’t have a building, if you don’t even know what the footprint of the building is, how are you going to measure environmental (impact)?” Williams told White.

“I will forward you the SEQR document we have that says that we’re right in line with where we’re supposed to be,” he added later.

The village also doesn’t have a lot of information that the public is requesting, according to Williams.

“We need more information to answer a lot of those questions,” he said. “Until we know what we’re building, we don’t know a lot of information.”

Williams’ comments made clear that he sees this contract with Wendel as a step that will give the village the information it needs to move forward and that it will give the village information it needs to satisfy requirements of grant funding it has already received.

“This study … will get us shovel-ready,” Williams said.

“It’s not at a point where it should be shovel-ready,” White told Williams.

Williams pushed back against public comments — and comments from White — suggesting that if this $340,000 capital expense were approved, the village would be committing itself to spending the full $1.78 million outlined in the contract.

“It is 100% guaranteed that we don’t authorize the next phase of design until we say we are satisfied with the last,” Williams said. “If we don’t like what we’re seeing at the end of the schematic design, there are four phases of design, we don’t have to move on. We’re not on the hook for $1.78 million. We could say, ‘Hey, thanks but no thanks,’ and then we would be responsible for 80% of that and get 20% back.”

Brunette said she felt the village needed a variety of things before moving forward, including “comprehensive” environmental and traffic studies; an independent financial review of the contract; a third-party structural inspection of St. Pius X; a full accounting of what this project will cost; a full exploration of alternative sites and possible other solutions, such as combining fire and rescue in one location and keeping police in a separate location; and written notification from the state Department of Transportation that it will authorize the village to connect the property to state Route 3, assuaging concerns about emergency traffic so close to an elementary school.

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Public comment

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More than a dozen community members attended Monday’s meeting and, ahead of the board’s vote, called on the board to pump the breaks on the project, to do more to fully explain the details of the plan and to explore all options before committing to building a new complex on Petrova Avenue.

Nearly every speaker underscored their support for each of the emergency services departments and recognized their need for updated facilities, but questioned the village’s process to get to this point.

Multiple speakers expressed concerns about what they see as a lack of planning on the village’s part.

Saranac Lake resident Tamara Van Ryan expressed concerns over the unknowns of the project, primarily whether the existing St. Pius X building can actually be rehabilitated because of potential hazardous materials there.

“We know the Petrova building has lead,” she said. “It’s likely that that building has mold, but there’s been no assessment of that.”

She noted that Five Bugles Design, in its feasibility study, said the building does have asbestos, likely has lead and there’s water running in the basement.

“The village has done a good thing, we’ve purchased a building … it could be a toxic building,” she said. “We don’t know the remediation costs.

“We have a potentially hazardous building that we all now as a community own, we’re planning to rebuild that to house people, that we have no idea how we’re going to pay for, and we have a capital improvement plan committee that’s just been set up to try and figure out how all of these various expenses that we have in this town are possibly going to get paid for,” she added. “But this is committing a minimum of $340,000 … potentially more, if you look at the budget and you include the full scope … without actually knowing if that building is useable. … I think the more prudent approach is to do a competitive bid process and find someone who can tell us whether that building is feasible to remediate at a feasible cost because of the lead, the asbestos, the potential mold, and whatever it is that’s leaking blue goo into the street.”

Williams said later that a hazardous materials study was completed before the village purchased the property.

“There was a remediation done years ago. There’s a few asbestos-containing tiles. No risk to the village as far as that is concerned,” Williams said. “That was done a year and a half ago.”

Williams also said the village already has a structural integrity study, too, which he said shows that the building is structurally sound.

Saranac Lake resident Lou Reuter noted that none of the plans he’s seen for the emergency services complex explore the possibility of allowing the SL Hot House, a long-standing garden center on the village’s Petrova Avenue property, to continue operating in its current location. After the village initially purchased the property from Citizen Advocates, it allowed the SL Hot House to continue operating there through a lease agreement.

Reuter, who is now the manager of the SL Hot House, has worked at the garden center since 1988. He said that the garden center is a part of Saranac Lake — it’s food for the community, provides jobs and generates sales tax revenue. It would be “very, very difficult to relocate,” he said.

“We appreciate the village working with us and allowing us to use the space. I’ve never seen a plan with keeping the Hot House going,” Reuter added.

Black Mountain Architecture Principal Architect Jesse Schwartzberg said that in his experience, it would be very difficult to design a building of the scale proposed and make it “joyful, to make it functional in a way that it’s a nice place to go to work everyday.”

“I don’t think I could do a good job, I don’t think I would be satisfied with it,” he said. “I just think it’s a really tough thing to design well.”

Schwartzberg offered to help the village board and provide his expertise.

Ren Davidson Seward, of Saranac Lake, noted that full funding for this project hasn’t come through yet. She mentioned that of the more than 200 questions about the project submitted by residents ahead of a public hearing that has not happened, only 13 have been publicly answered as of this week. She called this a “profoundly weak response.”

Davidson Seward, who has experience as a designer on hundreds of projects, also questioned how many design phases will be covered under this contract between the village and Wendel. Rarely are projects done with just one design phase, according to Davidson Seward.

“It’s negligent to proceed without due process and without considering the merit of alternative plans that have been put forward and those that haven’t — and to use professionals in our community to review it before we spend so much more money,” she said.

Van Cott, of Saranac Lake, detailed a variety of concerns, underscoring one specific concern that he felt could be “legally flawed” if the board were to make a decision before rectifying it.

If the project could have potential impacts to the environment, an environmental impact statement will need to be prepared as part of the SEQR process, which requires a laundry list of analyses, including “a description and evaluation of the range of reasonable alternatives to the action that are feasible,” according to the DEC. It also means the village would need to look at things like traffic impacts and consistency with community plans.

“You cannot make this commitment to a project without evaluating all of the potential impacts of the project,” Van Cott said.

“If you take a vote before you do your SEQR, before you do your hard look, that decision is legally flawed,” he added later.

Saranac Lake resident and Franklin County Legislator Lindy Ellis asked the village board if they’ve sat down together as a board and really looked at the designs, discussed what is in them, what other communities are doing, how other communities have designed comparable facilities and how the necessary facilities could be adapted for other locations. She implored the village board to think deeply about this project.

Saranac Lake resident and former village board member Rich Shapiro, who recently called for the mayor to resign because he believes state law bars him from serving if he doesn’t live in the village, lambasted the board’s alleged “secretive, closed door discussions that have even been excluding board members” and called on the village board to vote no.

Elizabeth Kochar, a neighbor of the Petrova Avenue property, asked the board to consider the complex’s impact on the character of the neighborhood. She invited the village board to visit her home, sit on her porch, drink tea and eat her “famous chocolate chip cookies,” so they can get a feel of the neighborhood as it is now and better understand how it may change with this project.

“I know we need emergency services, we need expansion, but not on that site,” she said.

Saranac Lake resident Mark Wilson took issue with the potential size of the proposed complex — roughly 67,233 square feet. He said he believes it’s “too big for our community.”

Aaron Marbone, speaking in his capacity as a resident of the region and not on behalf of the Enterprise, criticized the village board’s communication style and urged the board to communicate with one another more effectively.

“Everyone’s talking about communication. Talking alone is not communication,” he said. “Communication is connection; there’s a major disconnect.”

Doug Haney, of Saranac Lake, urged the village board to table the resolution and delay their vote. He said the village board speaks about teamwork often, but he feels like that’s not happening.

“Putting something on the agenda that pushes a project where the board itself doesn’t have enough information to make an educated decision on if it’s the right step forward, seems a little bit out of touch with that teamwork theme,” he said. “I think that does a disservice not only to the board, to the community, but I also think it does a disservice to the emergency services folks … because, I think anything that is going to move forward in a positive light has to be done in that transparent way with community members involved, with all of the board involved. When that just hasn’t happened at all, I think it’s ultimately going to delay the success of anything that you try to move forward.”

Haney said his fear is that “we’re having this same discussion 10 years from now and nothing has been done for the emergency services.

“Which, we all agree in this room, needs to happen,” he said.

Julie Harjung, president of Saranac Lake Volunteer Rescue Squad, underscored her department’s need for more space.

“Saranac Lake Volunteer Rescue Squad answers the call for this community over 1,500 times a year and that number is growing,” she said. “What you don’t see is the many thousands of hours we spend waiting and preparing for that call, whether it be checking and restocking trucks, training, or just waiting. It impacts sleep, free time and family time. SLVRS has been in existence since 2010 and we have already outgrown our facility.

“We have two trucks parked outside and need to turn sideways to get past the truck mirrors to get into our meeting room. We need more space. We’ve done well with what we have, but we need more space,” she added.

She called the proposed complex a “dream come true.”

“New housing is great,” she said, referencing calls for a housing complex to be built on the Petrova property. “But not if you don’t have the infrastructure to support it.”

Former Saranac Lake Fire Department chief Brendan Keough — who was behind the village’s purchase of land at 400 Broadway, when the village considered expanding the firehouse there — said that emergency services leaders have been more involved in this process now than ever before. He explained some of the issues with 400 Broadway and the armory, two properties mentioned as possible alternative locations for the complex. He noted that he felt the village had explored a lot of properties and missed a lot of opportunities. He offered some background on how the village identified Petrova Avenue as a potential site. He said if given the opportunity, emergency services personnel would “be great neighbors.”

Everyone involved is “just trying to get it right,” Keough said.

“We’ve been trying to get it right for 30 years,” he added.