 |
Development Could Tame a Land Forever Wild - 18 July, 2005
 |
In what could be a scene from a Monet painting, waterlilies float on wetlands in Sterling Forest, in Tuxedo, N.Y., where a developer hopes to build 107 minimansions.
------------------------
By GLENN COLLINS
TUXEDO, N.Y., July 17 -"Today's historic announcement will forever preserve Sterling Forest," New York Gov. George E. Pataki said seven years ago when he - along with Christine Todd Whitman, then the governor of New Jersey - proudly proclaimed the land deal that transformed a vast region of woodlands, rugged ridges and crystal streams into one of the largest state parks in New York.
But forever, these days, could amount to seven years, give or take.
On Monday night, at a public hearing in Tuxedo's 1928 Town Hall, residents are prepared to vent over the prospect that a developer could build 107 minimansions on a 575-acre tract of land within the borders of the 20,400-acre forest that New York, New Jersey and private donors spent $78.2 million to assemble.
The proposed development, to be called Sterling Forge Estates, has been debated for years in this community of 3,694 in Orange County, roughly an hour and 10 minutes' drive from Midtown Manhattan.
The parcel of land is a half-mile west of the border of rustic Tuxedo Park, the exclusive gated domain that was one of the country's earliest planned communities. The legend is that by wearing a short dinner jacket to a fancy ball there in 1886, one Griswold Lorillard inspired a new American fashion: the tuxedo.
The development "is the hole in the doughnut," said Carol Ash, the executive director of the Palisades Interstate Park Commission, which administers Sterling Forest as a park preserve and watershed. "This parcel is critical because it is completely surrounded by forest land. We are extremely concerned that this development could fragment what is now a cohesive environment."
But Louis Heimbach, the president of Sterling Forest L.L.C., the property owner, countered that "this is a very modest development," adding, "We want to build houses on large lots with minimal impact."
At Monday's hearing before the Town Board, the public will get a chance to comment for the first time on a supplemental environmental impact statement for the project. According to that document - submitted by the developer - the homes would sell for $1.2 million to $2.2 million, and annual property tax revenues to the town would be $390,355.
That revenue is needed, said Tuxedo's town supervisor, Ken Magar, because two years ago the town lost $7 million in taxable assessments. It had to shed police officers as well as highway workers to meet its $5.9 million budget, he said.
Mr. Magar said he favored building Sterling Forge "because financially it would help the town and the school district."
But Mary Yrizarry, a longtime Tuxedo resident who is chairwoman of the conservation committee of Sterling Forest Partnership, a group opposing construction in the forest, disputes the developer's positive tax projections. "There is no demand on the public coffers when you have a state park here," she said, "but the houses would demand services."
The second-growth trees in Sterling Forest mark the site of a thriving iron industry in the 19th century; in the 20th century the land became the home of a botanical garden, and later the site of the annual New York Renaissance Faire.
The original acquisition of the land - the largest by the New York State park system in 50 years - was announced in 1998, after New York, New Jersey, the federal government, foundations and private donors paid $55 million to preserve much of Sterling Forest.
An additional $23 million was spent to buy additional woodlands in the area, which straddles the New York-New Jersey border and provides a source of water for more than two million people in northern New Jersey.
That same year, Sterling Forest L.L.C., an American subsidiary of the Swiss company Zurich Insurance, retained the 575-acre tract in the complex transaction, and the parcel's development value is high, given its envelopment by a state park.
Preservationists often rally to oppose the threat of bulldozers in the region, "but the impact of this development is unique, thanks to the federal and state money that has already been spent to preserve this land," said JoAnn Dolan, an advisory board member of Sterling Forest Partnership.
Predictably, the development has sparked disagreement in Tuxedo. "It would be a tragedy if they built these houses," said Ms. Yrizarry.
But Christian R. Sonne, a real estate agent in Tuxedo who has been the town's appointed historian since 1996, said: "We are talking about 100 houses. That's not a very high-density use. But the environmental groups are chipping away, and want it all.
"I think the town has given enough for permanent open space, far more than most towns," he added, saying that more than 70 percent of Tuxedo's land surface is protected parkland.
Other townsfolk want more information. "I haven't made up my mind," said Noel Jablonski, who owns Angelheart Antiques. "I'm not sure that the development is going to help us, but the question is, would it hurt us? My rent could go up because the new people would require more town services."
Ms. Ash, of the park commission, which oversees 24 parks including Sterling Forest, said that "each incremental piece that is lost doesn't seem like much, but it all adds up." She said that the current proposal intruded into a massive, mountainous corridor of more than 100,000 acres of generally contiguous woodland that stretches to the east of Sterling Forest across Route 17 into Harriman State Park, to the north toward West Point, and to the south and west in the New Jersey Highlands.
Runoffs of fertilizer, pesticides and oil slicks from the proposed development "could pollute the watershed," Ms. Ash said.
She added that the land parcel also "has an extraordinarily rich history, considering the role that mining played in the Revolutionary War." According to a 1966 history of ironworks in the region, ore from the Long Mine on the Sterling Forge parcel was used to create links in the great chain across the Hudson River during the Revolutionary War.
But Mr. Heimbach said of his project's critics, "It is not unusual for them to mount this kind of attack - it's normal in trying to delay or thwart a development."
The Sterling Forge property, he added, "is not pristine," since it is dissected by power lines and a county road, and is near an I.B.M. office park, a New York University research facility and the town's highway department. "It's not valid to say it is like the Adirondacks, with thousands of acres of forest and nothing else," he said.
Nevertheless, a visitor standing on the two-lane blacktop that bisects the property, County Route 84, could take in a lily-pad-filled vista that Monet might have wanted to paint. If the development goes ahead, the woodsy, rolling ridge behind the lily pads would be populated with eight of what Ms. Dolan of the partnership called "McMansions."
Currently, the property is dense with red and black oaks, maples, hemlocks and white pines, and its wildlife includes black bears, bobcats, coyotes and, yes, poisonous snakes.
Indeed, the wild tract could owe its survival to Crotalus horridus: the timber rattlesnake. In New York State, rattlers are protected as a threatened species (one level below endangered), and the existence of their dens and habitats has stopped construction in Dutchess County.
The developer originally planned to build 93 luxury homes and an 18-hole golf course at Sterling Forge, but in April 2003, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation said that golf would interfere with rattlesnakes, and the course was dropped from the plan.
Stephen M. Gross, an environmental consultant for the partnership, said that large, deep road cuts, as well as an encroachment into the buffer zone shielding the state-protected wetland, were diagrammed on the developer's supplemental environmental impact statement but not addressed in the text.
Especially abhorrent, Ms. Dolan said, is a proposed 98-foot-tall rock cut on what is now a tree-covered ridge. It would be part of a new road "that would create a 310-foot scar as big as a football field," she said. "A new impact statement to address all the issues is needed."
Mr. Heimbach said the impact statement was complete, and added, "We will meet every regulation that is required of us."
After the public hearing, the developer must respond to the comments, and then the board can accept or reject the development proposal. The state's Conservation Department will also review the supplemental impact statement. Michael J. Fraser, a spokesman for the department, commented that "we will be actively involved in the process."
Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
The Scott Mine hoist tower, a historic iron mining site on land where a development has been proposed, rises from grasses and wildflowers.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
BACK
BACK TO TOP
|
|
|
|
A View for Generations
Palisades Interstate
Park System
MAP
Bear Mountain
Attractions
MAP
Bear Mountain
Suggested Hikes
MAP
|
|
