 |
|
|
|
The Green Harbour development overlooking Lake George is visible
from miles away. |
The downside of upland development
Critics say houses on hillsides are spoiling
the scenery around Lake George and the rest of the Adirondacks.
By Phil Brown
Explorer Staff
In the 1980s, a marijuana smuggler on
the lam cleared five acres on a forested hillside overlooking Lake
George and built a hideaway with a gorgeous view of the lake’s
southern basin—and spoiled the view for everyone else.
For years, other residents of the lake grumbled that the A-frame
stuck out like a sore thumb on Pilot Knob Ridge, especially when
the sun reflected off the windows or when the lights went on at
night. It was the only home on the ridge, indeed one of the few
anywhere in the uplands of the eastern shore.
Thirty federal and state agents raided the property in 1984 and
took away the drug dealer, but the eyesore he built stayed behind.
Enter the Lake George Land Conservancy. In 2000, the non-profit
organization bought the house and the surrounding 233 acres for
the bargain price of $575,000. The next summer it demolished the
structure and planted natives trees, grasses and flowers in the
cleared field.
On the first day of the demolition, a flotilla of 50 boats gathered
in Kattskill Bay, just below the ridge, and the occupants cheered
and applauded as the wrecking crew went about its business.
“This was an eyesore for people who love this lake,”
said Lynn Schumann, the conservancy’s executive director.
“It was gratifying to see so much support from those who wanted
the house to come down.”
Today, only a wooden gazebo stands in the field. Now known as the
Pilot Knob Preserve, the land is protected and open to the public.
The conservancy has laid out a half-mile trail to the gazebo. The
views of the lake and mountains in the distance, including Crane
and Gore, are truly spectacular—for the most part.
Looking across the lake, you can see that the hillsides rising above
the opposite shore are losing their natural character. Although
the slopes remain largely wooded, houses stick out of the landscape
in many places—sometimes a single house, sometimes a clump
of two or three. In Bolton, the homes hopscotch halfway up the ridge.
But perhaps the most visible scar on the hillside lies straight
across the lake from Pilot Knob: the Green Harbour development,
a series of duplexes and manicured lawns, accessed by a road (Lakeview
Drive) that winds up the ridge and makes two loops. From a distance,
the whorl of tarmac and buildings resembles one of the roller-coasters
at the Great Escape down the road in Queensbury.
Are all these buildings also eyesores? Many people think so. The
critics aren’t advocating that they be torn down, of course,
but they would like to prevent others like them from going up.
In recent years, the Fund for Lake George, a non-profit conservation
group, has identified upland development as one of the major problems
facing the lake and devoted a substantial amount of time and money
looking for ways to deal with it. “Right now we just have
development running amok,” said Carol Collins, the group’s
chairwoman. “We see it all around the lake. There are some
good regulations out there, but there is no enforcement.”
The problem is not merely aesthetic. If done wrong, development
on slopes leads to soil erosion, which in turn leads to sedimentation
in streams and the lake itself. For example, Collins said a sandbar
has formed at the mouth of Finkle Brook in Bolton. In addition,
she said runoff from yards and roads carries phosphorus, nitrogen
and other nutrients that can alter the lake’s ecosystem by
fostering the growth of algae and plants. At stake is the much-vaunted
clarity of Lake George’s water.
Development of the basin’s uplands has intensified in the
past decade. With the available lakefront already developed, builders
are offering homebuyers the next best thing: a house on a hill with
a view of the lake.
A similar trend is occurring throughout the Adirondacks. Ross Whaley,
chairman of the Adirondack Park Agency, has noted that much of the
land that can be developed easily—whether on lakes or not—has
already been built on. Consequently, developers are exploring other
possibilities. Often, this means building on a slope or ridge.
Peter Bauer, executive director of the Residents’ Committee
to Protect the Adirondacks (RCPA), warns of the creeping “Lake
Georgeification” of the Park. “Over the past 20 years
there have been hundreds of houses built in the uplands,”
he said. “This is a phenomenon you see across the Park—poorly
planned, poorly screened development that mars an otherwise attractive
view of the landscape.”
 |
Photo by Alan Cederstrom |
Residents of Green
Harbour enjoy an open view of Lake George—but the view
cuts both ways. |
Some examples of upland development singled
out by critics:
• On the Northway, just south of Exit 25, motorists looking
east see a forested valley that stretches for miles with no sign
of civilization—except for a house sticking out on a hilltop.
• Hikers on Baxter Mountain in Keene Valley used to enjoy
a pristine view looking southeast toward the Giant Mountain Wilderness
Area. Now they’ll see a big house in the middle of a ridge.
• A massive white house on Mount Pisgah, near the village
of Saranac Lake, can be seen for miles by paddlers on Lower Saranac
Lake.
• An architect has built his house on the very top of Corliss
Point, a small mountain in Keene overlooking the valley. Drivers
heading north on Route 73 find it hard to miss.
• A popular canoe trip is to paddle across Jones Pond and
down the outlet to Osgood Pond. The hills overlooking Jones Pond
are forested except for one conspicuous house.
• If motorists driving from Jay to Wilmington on Route 86
look up, they’ll see a house on top of Bassett Mountain.
So far, the issue has received little attention. At the APA’s
30th anniversary in October, at which various speakers assessed
the problems of the Park, upland development was barely mentioned.
In fact, “upland development” remains undefined. The
term appears nowhere in the APA law or agency regulations (nor does
a synonym).
The APA law does regard any land above 2,500 feet as a “critical
environmental area,” which means the agency has jurisdiction
over any project proposed above that elevation. Nearly all development,
however, takes place below this contour line. Lake George, for example,
sits at 320 feet, and the summit of the lake’s highest peak
(state-owned Black Mountain) is not much more than 2,500 feet.
Thus, the APA usually lacks jurisdiction over upland development
per se unless something else triggers the agency’s involvement.
In most cases, the approval of building permits is left up to towns
and villages, which usually are eager for development.
APA attorney John Banta acknowledges that building on slopes and
ridges is “an emerging problem,” but he sees no cause
for alarm. He said about 50% of the Park’s private land is
zoned Resource Management, where APA law permits only one house
every 43 acres, and about 40% is zoned Rural Use, where the law
allows one house every 8.5 acres. “Ninety percent of the private
land is pretty well protected,” he said.
Banta also points out that the APA has jurisdiction over most subdivisions
in Resource Management and Rural Use lands. And if the APA has jurisdiction
over a project, he said, it does take into consideration the effect
on soils, runoff and scenery. “These are issues we’re
very cognizant of,” he said.
 |
Corliss Point in
Keene. |
Bauer, however, does not share Banta’s
optimism. “Even if we had a vigilant Board of Commissioners
and leadership at the APA, the current rules are not strong enough
to do the job,” he said. “Given that we have a fairly
weak board and leadership at the agency, we’re in trouble.”
One of the knottiest difficulties facing those who want to control
upland development is that it takes only one house on a hillside
or ridge to mar the view for miles around. Within a viewshed there
may be a mix of state and private land and a mix of zoning classifications.
Often, a house approved by one town will impair the view from a
neighboring town.
Bauer’s solution is twofold. First, he thinks the APA should
map all the scenic resources in the Park and assume jurisdiction
whenever a project, even a single house, could impact the scenery.
(Currently, the agency reviews only 40% of the new development in
the Park, he said.) Second, the APA should adopt building standards
that ensure upland development will not be visible.
The sort of standards Bauer and others have in mind would require,
for example, that buildings be painted natural colors, that enough
trees be left standing to screen the structure from view, that windows
be made out of non-reflective glass and roofs out of non-reflective
material, that light pollution be minimized and that the size of
lawns be limited.
In 1990, when the state’s Commission on the Adirondacks in
the 21st Century recommended adopting standards to reduce visibility
of development, opponents seized on this as an example of governmental
intrusion, complaining that the state wanted to tell people what
color to paint their homes.
Newcomb Supervisor George Canon still feels that way. “I’m
resentful when people say I have to hide my house because they don’t
want to see it,” he said. “When they say I have to paint
my house brown or green, that’s even worse.”
 |
Photo by Mike Storey |
Mt. Pisgah from Lower
Saranac Lake. |
Canon, who heads the Adirondack Association of Towns and Villages,
dismissed fears that the Adirondack Park’s uplands will someday
look like the built-up slopes around Lake Tahoe out West or Lake
Como in Italy. He notes that about half of the region’s 6
million acres are in the “forever wild” Forest Preserve
or are protected by conservation easements that prohibit development.
“I can’t imagine we are going to see the hills dotted
with homes,” he said.
Likewise, former APA Chairman Robert Flacke, a Lake George businessman,
believes that existing APA and local regulations are sufficient
to control upland development in the Lake George region and calls
those urging tighter rules “Bananas”—short for
“build absolutely nothing anywhere near anybody.” He
argues that if the Bananas have their way, landowners will be deprived
of their property rights.
“With all these tough regulations in place,” Flacke
said, “what is the person who wants to build going to do with
the property he owns or purchases?”
Rolf Ronning, a Bolton developer who has built many homes on the
west side of Lake George, also argues that existent regulations
are tough enough—as well as expensive. He estimates that it
now costs $10,000 in legal and engineering fees to develop a single
lot, two or three times as much as just a few years ago.
As to complaints about visual blight, Ronning remarked: “Who’s
complaining? It’s the people who own property on the lake.
Go out on the lake at night and what do you see? Lights on all the
shorefront that has been developed. Now these people are complaining
about a few lights on the mountainside. That’s case of ‘I’ve
got mine, but you can’t have yours.’”
Much of the upland development these days is taking place in Bolton,
located just north of the town of Lake George. Opinions differ as
to whether the town is doing a good job protecting the scenery.
Former Bolton Supervisor Deanne Rehm, who now sits on the APA Board
of Commissioners, acknowledges that the town was caught unawares
when developers clear-cut some upland lots in the early 1980s, but
she feels the town learned from those mistakes.
“The town was aghast,” she said. “At the time
we had no regulations against that sort of thing, and we really
hustled to come up with something.”
Since then, she said, Bolton has adopted controls for regulating
erosion and runoff. The town also can require builders to take steps
to hide development through vegetative screening, using earth-tone
paints and non-reflective materials, and restricting light pollution.
Over the past two decades, Rehm said, more than 100 homes have been
built in the town’s uplands, “and outside the first
few, it’s hard to tell most are there.”
Chris Navitsky, who holds the title of waterkeeper at the Fund for
Lake George, concedes that Bolton has some good regulations on the
books, but he said the Planning Board seldom requires developers
to do the things necessary to hide buildings from view. “They
have had a hands-off approach to screening,” he said.
Navitsky added that the proof is in the pudding: Several developments
in the uplands of Bolton are visible from the lake and from the
state-owned summits on the eastern shore.
Some say the environmentalists are exaggerating the extent of the
basin’s visual blight, but it’s not only the “Bananas”—as
Bob Flacke calls them—who have noticed a deterioration in
the scenery.
“Take a boat ride on Lake George and look up at the west shore.
Every year you can see more and more houses,” said Joseph
Rota, who represents the normally pro-development Local Government
Review Board at the APA meetings.
A councilman in Dresden, on the less-developed east side of Lake
George, Rota cites a light-colored house in Hague, on the west shore,
as an example of a jarring eyesore. “You can see it from four
or five miles away,” he said, “and yet there are houses
on both sides of it that don’t stick out at all.”
Rota, however, said he would be reluctant to call for tougher APA
regulations to rein in upland development (though he allowed that
“the issue could be revisited”). He would prefer to
see good development encouraged through other means, such as public
education.
But the RCPA’s Peter Bauer said upland development needs to
be controlled by Park-wide regulations, arguing that the Park’s
scenic resources are too precious to be left in the hands of the
region’s 103 towns and villages. Ideally, he said, Gov. George
Pataki would offer legislation to amend the APA Act. Pataki has
given no hint that he plans to do so. His press office did not return
phone calls.
Ross Whaley, the APA chairman, said he fears a major overhaul of
the APA Act would only serve to alienate Adirondack residents and
“undo the shared vision of the Park.” Whaley agrees,
however, that the law “probably needs some tweaking”
to address upland development and other failings.
One man working hard to change the status quo is Lionel Barthold,
a Lake George resident who has been toiling for months on model
regulations for upland development. He got interested in the issue
while fighting a development on Lockhart Mountain at the southern
end of the lake.
“It’s not an anti-development effort,” he said,
“but it’s an effort to get any development that is done
to be done in a way that respects the view that others have of the
mountainside.”
Barthold expects to finish the regulations this summer and present
them to the Fund for Lake George, but it’s unclear what will
happen next. One option is to ask the towns around the lake to adopt
them voluntarily.
Another is to ask the Lake George Park Commission, a state agency,
to impose them throughout the basin. Barthold hopes his proposal
could serve as a model for the whole Park.
“The same problem exists throughout the Adirondacks,”
he said. “People in Keene Valley are just as concerned when
they look up and see housing developments instead of wooded summits.”
|
