SARANAC LAKE — The village is eyeing a potential housing development at the 10-acre sand pit it owns off of Will Rogers Drive.

For years, the pit has been mined for sand and stone for village projects and road safety during the winter. But Department of Public Works Superintendent Dustin Martin said it’s expected to run out in around two years.

As it nears the end of its life, the village is exploring the possibility of turning the land into apartments or single-family homes.

The property — a long strip of land behind Aldi, McDonald’s and Carcuzzi running along the Adirondack Rail Trail and McKenzie Brook — presents what trustees called “a rare opportunity” for a new large-scale residential development.

The idea has kicked around for many years. Recently, the village partnered with the Northern Forest Center, which is doing free “due diligence” and “predevelopment” work on the possible project, through grant funding.

NFC Adirondack Program Director Leslie Karasin, a Saranac Lake resident and employee of the New Hampshire-based nonprofit, said she’s been working with Trustee Matt Scollin and the Saranac Lake Housing Task Force on this and now they’re ready for the next step.

If the village continues with the possible project, the plan would be to seek interested developers and present them with the property and idea.

The NFC completed its due diligence report in November. Now, it is collecting information for the predevelopment phase.

The report called the sand pit “a promising location” with “no significant barriers” to residential housing.

The sand pit is in the Saranac Lake hamlet, the easiest land classification in the Adirondacks to build in. It has public infrastructure nearby,

And it’s in a good location. It has several stores nearby in the southern end of the town’s business district, and being right on the Adirondack Rail Trail makes a walk or bike into town quick. Scollin said the rail trail is used as a “conduit” to and from town. On top of its recreational use, he said he sees people walking to work on it, or pulling carts with their laundry to the laundromat.

Karasin said there are no obvious red flags in the housing plan right now.

There are some hurdles, though. The DPW uses the 10.5 acres of land for snow storage in the winter. With everyone digging out of the more-than-a-foot of snow that fell Sunday and Monday, Karasin said they’d need to create a new plan for snow storage.

The DPW has a new sand mining pit ready near the wastewater treatment plant, around a mile-and-a-half outside of town, heading toward Bloomingdale. But because the village tap water is sourced from wells near that site, Martin said they cannot store snow there because of the possibility of salt contaminating the wells.

Martin also said his department stockpiles the sand and stone they mine on-site at the current pit, too. Right near the heart of town, he said, this makes collecting stone or sand a lot faster when they’re repairing water main breaks after midnight or refilling on sand during a winter storm. The wastewater treatment plant is more out of the way.

Martin said, last year, they filled the pit around half-full with snow throughout the season. Village Manager Bachana Tsiklauri said this is typical. But there have also been years when it’s been filled with snow. Martin said in 2011, they had to call in other towns to bring over blowers to make more room by stacking the snow even higher.

“Unfortunately, there’s not many other options to get rid of the snow around here, other than an area like (the sand pit),” Martin said. “I don’t think we’re going to find that around here.”

Scollin called these “solvable problems.”

“It seems like it’d be easier to find another spot to store snow than it would to be to build housing on this scale,” he said.

From 2006 to 2012, the village was in talks with Walmart, Hannaford and Tractor Supply to turn the sand put into retail space, but waited to get the full potential out of the mine and chose to not rezone it. In 2013, the village discussed turning it into mixed housing and commercial space.

Karasin said the NFC is a regional investment partner that has ended up acting as a housing developer, after recognizing the need in the four-state area it covers. Currently, it has active housing projects in Tupper Lake and Elizabethtown.

The affordable housing shortage in the Adirondacks is exacerbated by the limited amount of developable land, as the Adirondack Park, which makes the region so naturally wild, also constrains where homes can be built.

Mayor Jimmy Williams said it is rare right now for a group to be working on so many housing projects as NFC is. He also said it’s exciting.

On Park Street in Tupper Lake, the NFC is building a nine-unit apartment building and restoring a single-family home it bought in 2022. Karasin said they plan to finish construction in the summer and accept new tenants in the fall.

In Elizabethtown, the NFC is preparing to start a restoration of a historic building into five apartment units.

For the sand pit, Karasin said NFC doesn’t intend to be a developer, rather, to bring the experience it has in housing development to help the village.

The NFC got funding through a state Department of Environmental Conservation’s Adirondack Smart Growth grant, an Adirondack Community Foundation’s Generous Acts grant and private donors for a program to supply due diligence and predevelopment support to housing projects.

Scollin applied for this support through the village and suggested the sand pit as a housing project.

He said the village does not want to develop housing itself. The village could sell the land to a developer, partner with a developer, subdivide the land and could build either houses or apartments there.

Trustee Aurora White asked if the village could get several smaller local developers to each build homes, instead of having the project taken on by a larger, out-of-area developer. Karasin said this is a possibility.

One of the next steps will be determining where wetlands are with the Adirondack Park Agency. The report states this may reduce the developable area of the 10-acre lot.

There are suspected wetlands along the northeast side of the property, according to the report.

The report says the center of the site is a long, relatively flat open area, about 5.5 acres in size.

The report also says the scale of the project makes utility extensions economically viable. The village can apply for grants to do infrastructure for the “last mile” utilities, Karasin said, and the NFC can provide a list of grants they can apply for to make finding developers more likely.

Karasin said they’d like to commission a landscape architect in the next few months and that the NFC could potentially pay for their services with grants.

She also recommended that the village form a local committee to do public outreach and project planning. White said there’s lots of public interest in this project and she knows of a couple of key community members who’d like to be on the committee.

After delineating wetlands, hiring a landscape architect and forming a local committee, the report recommends having the village attorney look for red flags on the deed, holding public meetings, figuring out how many units would fit there, deciding what characteristics they should have, commissioning engineers and determining how much the village should be involved.

“This sets the table for whatever comes next,” Scollin said. “There’s a lot of unknowns right now in the village, and regardless of what happens in six weeks, the sand pit’s still going to be here.”

The village election cycle is in full swing, with the mayor’s seat and two trustee seats up for election on March 18.

There are currently three definite candidates running for trustee — Jeremy Evans, Josh King and David Trudeau — with Scollin considering if he will run. Trustee Kelly Brunette is running for mayor, with Williams’ spot in the race still uncertain. With a trustee running for mayor in a year her seat is up, this election is set to definitely change the makeup of the board.

Karasin said the potential sand pit project would likely be similar to one NFC is working on in Greenville, Maine.