The only independent, nonprofit news organization solely dedicated to reporting on the Adirondack Park.
By James Odato
The closure brings the latest round of job uncertainties for a mine that New York voters in 2013 agreed to support by amending the state constitution to allow an Adirondack land swap that has yet to happen.
By Melissa Hart
Research revealed there are 45,633 businesses in the 14-county Adirondack North Country region, which spills out of the park on its northern and western flanks. Taking into account demographic trends, at least 10,000 of those business owners could be getting ready to retire in the next few years.
The good news is that overall unemployment is low, meaning that a lot of park residents have jobs. The bad news is that economic growth is almost impossible without additional workers to perform the work.
By Mike Lynch
In the mid-1970s, the McClelland family built The Mountaineer gear store in Keene Valley out of local hemlock and spruce. “I pounded the nails into this thing,” Vinny McClelland said.
The November election removed a GOP roadblock in the Senate that has stopped several conservation measures in the past, advocates said.
Hamlets to Huts's goal is to connect Adirondack villages and outposts via people power in all seasons, allowing them to experience the backcountry without lugging all the gear. It’s patterned after European hut-to-hut systems, and the yurt trails of Vermont and Colorado. In the Adirondacks, the emphasis is community-based lodging, in part because new structures are prohibited in the state Forest Preserve.
Need proof that getting universal high- speed broadband internet access in the Adirondacks is a vital piece of the region’s economic jigsaw puzzle? Just ask Suzanne Hurtado, who lives on Lost Pond. Within days of getting fiber-optic access in 2017, she was able to live video chat several times a day with students she teaches in China.
By James Odato
Seven workers at the wollastonite processing plant in Willsboro were laid off by owner Imerys on Friday. It’s the latest setback for workers at a mineral operation where a state land swap approved by New York voters has failed to materialize.
Federal authorities have halted consideration of whether the 30-mile rail line from North Creek to the former Tahawus mine in the central Adirondacks should be declared abandoned, ordering the current owner and a potential buyer to file a status report by Jan. 22, 2019.
The original 1999 easement, for which the state paid $1.7 million, allowed six hunting camps in perpetuity, requiring removal of 30 others from the tract in Colton within 15 years. That deadline fell three years ago.