The town of North Elba/village of Lake Placid will be holding open houses on May 14 and 16 to display Lake Placid/North Elba Land Use Committee findings and get feedback from residents about proposed changes to the town and village STR laws and proposed updates to the land use code. On the village’s web site, they detail committee data on the area’s STR locations in neighborhoods and how it has affected the community. They break down area maps into neighborhoods such as main corridor, countryside, Ray Brook and more. The maps are color coded to match a columned legend with current regulations and their recommendations of what should be done with STRs in that area. I commend the town, village and land use committee for being transparent with their findings and giving residents an opportunity to learn and give feedback.

My wife and I purchased a home in Saranac Lake (North Elba side) in October of 2014 with the intention of retiring to the area. We are not investors, nor are we wealthy. We don’t own multiple properties. We decided to do short term rentals before moving to the area full time to offset the costs of ownership. We love the area and are invested in the community. We believe in being good neighbors by not allowing house parties, insisting our guests respect the neighborhood and addressing the neighbors’ concerns. We maintain our permit and follow all the rules to a T. I fully agree the with most residents who feel that the STR business has proliferated a bit too much and needs to be controlled. The permit system was a great idea, along with limiting rental days and holding owners accountable for violations. It is completely reasonable to look at the regulations periodically after being recently implemented to see how it is working out.

It seems like the mayor, trustees and many residents are hellbent on eliminating all STRs. This would be a major mistake. We should take a step back and look at the changing world around us to see the importance of STRs to the area. Recent statistics show that upstate New York has continued to lose population to other regions. Take a look around at the many small towns that have no economy or sustainability. Without tourism, Lake Placid would be in the same situation. We owe our vibrancy to visitors. It seems ironic to me that the town would want to discourage modern tourism when the Regional Office of Sustainable Tourism and the state Olympic Regional Development Authority work so hard to create it. Maybe the mayor and the trustees think all the visitors should be handled by hotels. And maybe Mayor Art Devlin and Trustee Peter Holderied could think that because they own local hotels. Clearly, them deciding on the fate of STRs could be a conflict of interest. Like it or not, the younger generations are doing business differently now. Gen Y and Z no longer use banks, they Venmo. They shop on Amazon, not in a physical store. They don’t hail a cab, they Uber. And many book travel through AirBNB not at a hotel. The town can adapt to that, or the town will be left behind. Travelers will just go elsewhere.

The concerns of a lack of affordable housing, neighborhood noise, businesses in residential areas and transient neighborhoods are real. Regulation can fix some of those issues, but banning STRs won’t. Romantic memories of a time when this was a quiet close-knit neighborhood may be exaggerated, because fact is, Lake Placid has been a tourist destination for almost 100 years and owes its success to it.

The land use committee findings shows a strong preference to allowing rentals with owners who live here full time, while flat-out banning rentals in properties where the owner is not there at the time of renting — the color-coded maps the committee has created show some neighborhoods will continue to permit an unlimited number of rentals while others won’t have any at all. This proposal seems to target specific people instead of spreading out the volume of permits. One could argue that the proposed changes are arbitrary and capricious.

I think a continued permit system with each permit allowing 120-150 days a year of renting is best. Permits should be granted without concern of who the owner is. Rather, the concern should be how many permits are on each block and street. Code enforcement should continue to go after violations and bad actors should have their permit yanked. If the people of Lake Placid feel there are too many permits out there, then the total number should be reduced through “attrition” by grandfathering in a permit holder until the property is sold. A permit should never be removed from a homeowner who has money invested in the community and followed all the rules. When the town issued permits in 2020, it was an acknowledgement of the validity of STRs and their place in the community. To reverse course now is to be left behind.

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Jason Coryell is a short-term vacation rental owner and a member of the Gold Medal Hospitality group. He lives part-time in Saranac Lake and in Merrick, New York.