Community Split on Potential APA Move to Saranac Lake

This is the building at 1-3 Main St. in Saranac Lake, owned by the village of Saranac Lake, where the Adirondack Park Agency may move. (Enterprise photo by Andy Flynn)

While Some Support Project & Others Say Site Would Be Better for Housing

Adirondack Daily Enterprise article by Aaron Marbone - July 27, 2023

"A set of three letters — two from village advisory boards and one from 19 former Adirondack Park Agency staff and board members — shows a growing divide in public opinion over the APA’s proposed move to Saranac Lake.

At the same time as the Saranac Lake Police Department plans to leave its space at the village-owned building at 1-3 Main St., the APA is looking at leasing and renovating the historic structure, which also houses several Franklin County offices. The APA plans to construct a new three-story building in the back of the lot, expand the existing parking lot and renovate the existing structure to bring the historic Paul Smith’s Power and Light Company building up to date.

While the village’s Downtown Advisory Board, or DAB, gave its “enthusiastic support” for the relocation project in an open letter to the public, the Saranac Lake Affordable Housing Task Force co-signed a letter one of its members sent to Gov. Kathy Hochul showing “strong opposition” to the plan. A group of 19 former APA employees and board members have also written a letter to Hochul expressing opposition to the move from the agency’s current headquarters four miles away in Ray Brook.

The DAB says the move would have a significant economic impact in town. The housing task force contends that the proposed space would be better suited for much-needed housing. Former APA staff and board members questioned the transparency and ethics of the process that led to this site being chosen for the new headquarters.

The APA has met in a 1950s-era log cabin for the last 50 years on a shared campus in Ray Brook with State Police and the state Department of Environmental Conservation. The APA is trying to raise its 44-person staff up to 55 staff and has $29 million in the 2022 state budget for a new state-of-the-art, energy efficient headquarters, in part, to accommodate the increased staff level.

“We believe that this relocation would align with our mission to improve economic vitality by enhancing the experience, image, and lifestyle of Downtown Saranac Lake,” DAB members wrote in their letter. “The relocation of the APA headquarters to this iconic building would not only breathe new life into its rich history but also enhance its accessibility to the public.”

DAB predicts an “immense economic potential” in the project that would “undoubtedly inject vitality into the local economy.” The construction alone would create numerous job opportunities, they said, and “the increased foot traffic would provide a significant boost to our local businesses.” DAB members also said they appreciate the energy efficient design, and said relocating the offices to downtown Saranac Lake, where a majority of APA staff already reside, reduces reliance on cars and promotes a walkable community.

An Enterprise straw poll asking the community’s thoughts on the plan in June received 552 responses and had a two-vote gap between the number of respondents who said they liked the plan and those that didn’t. While 7% of respondents were undecided, 46% liked the plan and 47% did not. This poll was not scientific and its results represent only the opinions of Internet users who chose to participate.

Housing

Steve Erman mailed a letter to Hochul in May saying the downtown land would be better suited for apartments. He spent 28 years as the APA’s economic advisor from 1982 to 2010 and is a member of the Saranac Lake Affordable Housing Task Force. When the eight-member board discussed this letter at their June 15 meeting, they all found his “reasoning to be sound,” according to task force Chair Ben Douglass. “The village board should take his concerns into consideration,” Douglass wrote in a letter to the village board included in this past week’s meeting agenda.

In his letter, Erman tells Hochul that putting the offices in Saranac Lake would “undermine” her administration’s goal to address the affordable housing shortage. There’s only so much room to build in the hamlet. It’s much easier to build densely inside of the hamlet than outside, where restrictions from the APA limit density and strongly regulate construction. “There are only a few remaining sites in the Hamlet of Saranac Lake where sorely-needed multi-family housing projects can be developed,” he wrote. “(And) a limited number of parcels (are) available for development of multi-family housing in Saranac Lake’s hamlet.”

The proposed new three-story APA building would have a 28,000 square foot total footprint. A 72-space parking lot would be built behind the existing historic three-story building at the intersection of Main Street, Lake Street and Kiwassa Road, on the Lake Street and Petrova Avenue hillside.

Erman said if it is feasible to construct such a large building there, it should be done for housing. He estimates that 15 apartments could fit in a building that size on the 2.3-acre parcel. Erman estimates that to build 15 apartment units outside of the hamlet, in a “moderate intensity” zone, it would require 19.5 acres of land. A 20,000 square foot office building outside the hamlet, he said, could require as few as 1.3 acres. “Clearly, the law favors the retention and use of suitable hamlet sites for multi-family development over office buildings which could be easily developed on sites, with infrastructure, beyond hamlets,” Erman wrote.

Also, the APA headquarters in Ray Brook could never be used for housing.

It is a good place for housing with its proximity to downtown and the bulk of village businesses and amenities, he feels, and claims apartments in this location would “far exceed” the spending of the 44-staff APA on workdays.

Erman questions the move on a whole, saying the justifications for it are “weak” and claiming they will not be clear to a “vast majority of local citizens. The proposal is poorly conceived and not in the long term best interest of the agency or the village,” Erman wrote. He says the state has invested millions of dollars in additions to the APA’s log cabin over the past 20 years — a new first floor conference room, a basement records center and a new maintenance center. “With these relatively new investments in place, why would the state not simply connect these modern elements with a newly constructed structure to replace its core ‘log cabin’ which was moved to the site in the early 1970s?” he wrote.

Last month, APA spokesman Keith McKeever told the Enterprise this building is “beyond its safe, useful life, and is structurally deficient. Load-bearing structural beams are rotting. The cinder block foundation is deteriorating. The 18-year-old HVAC system cannot be repaired without removing walls,” McKeever wrote. To repair all this would require closing the building for several months and would not address all the structural and mechanical deficiencies there, he added. “APA could build onsite but that would require clearing forested land which APA would like to avoid,” McKeever wrote.

Erman feels the agency should keep the easy access to the DEC headquarters across the parking lot at a site colloquially referred to as “Little Albany,” since it houses offices for three state agencies, including State Police. He argued that the move poses a safety concern for APA employees. “The Adirondack Park Agency has been the target of people, some inclined toward violence, who strongly resent land use controls in this very rural area,” he wrote. While the APA has been a success, he said, it “remains controversial and less than fully embraced.”

The long walkway from the parking lot and proximity to State Police barracks have long been deterrents, barriers and comforts from violence, he said. The Saranac Lake Police Department is currently in the 1-3 Main Street building, but has plans to move into a joint emergency services building the village is planning to construct on Petrova Avenue. That project itself has been controversial, and the village has still not officially purchased the land.

Erman noted that the Agency has a memorial forest — a series of 19 trees and plaques — planted outside the Ray Brook offices, which each year have been dedicated to people who have died after making significant contributions to the Adirondack Park and its protection. To abandon these memorials, he said, would be “highly offensive and disrespectful to the memory” of the people they represent.

He said he finds this happening on the 50th anniversary year of the Adirondack Park Land Use and Development Plan to be “sad and ironic.”

Erman isn’t the only APA retiree who feels this way. On Tuesday, 18 former APA employees and board members joined him in signing an open letter they sent to Hochul opposing the plan.

“Frankly, the current proposal to move the agency headquarters is not in the best interest of the agency, its staff, other state agencies or the public,” they wrote.

The group told the governor it did not make sense to them that the APA chose a new location without reaching out to other communities and considering alternatives. They cite Tupper Lake and Gabriels as local towns with existing state buildings in need of improvements. “If alternative sites away from Ray Brook were to be identified, first consideration should have been given to other state-owned properties,” they wrote.

The letter says without a public analysis of the costs and feasibility of constructing new headquarters at the current location, the process lacks transparency. The former APA staff and members said not doing this with a transparent selection process “has an appearance of impropriety,” pointing out that APA Executive Director Barb Rice was raised in Saranac Lake, sat on its village board and has family with a business there.

The process of building in the village will require negotiating with the village board at the same time as the village is proposing a new emergency services building, a project that will likely require APA approvals, including for wetlands. This “raises ethical concerns,” they said.

The APA staff and members also brought up other potential issues, including costs, eliminating local public parking spots, increasing traffic, asbestos remediation, safety in the hold building, if there is adequate parking. “We are simply looking for a transparent, common-sense approach … an approach that is respectful of public input,” they wrote.

Mayors Former and Current

Former Saranac Lake village mayor Clyde Rabideau wrote a letter to the public published in the Enterprise on July 13 voicing his support of the move. “Something this profound does not often happen in the Adirondacks and we Saranac Lakers will be the beneficiaries,” he wrote. On top of putting more jobs downtown, he said it would remove an “albatross” from the necks of village taxpayers — handing the restoration of the village-owned building to the state. The building, he said, is “underutilized” and operates in a “taxpayer-funded deficit.” Rabideau also opines that moving APA offices inside a hamlet is consistent with its goals. Developing in Ray Brook, in state land, he said is the opposite of what the APA Act intended. He also feels that though housing would be good at this location, “the money is not there for these pursuits and is not likely to ever be there.”

Tupper Lake’s village Mayor Paul Maroun opposed this move in a letter to Hochul he sent in April, in which he also pitched the idea of putting the new headquarters in the vacant buildings on the state Office for People with Developmental Disabilities’ Sunmount campus in his town. “There should be a true selection process,” he wrote.

But APA officials say Tupper Lake is not an option and indicated Sunmount would not be considered. It’s Saranac Lake or Ray Brook.

In any case, the state will likely not make a decision for quite a while. The agency is conducting an ongoing feasibility study with the New York State Office of General Services through the Bergmann engineering firm to determine if the Saranac Lake site will meet their needs. This report likely won’t be completed until early 2024.

McKeever said until the Bergmann study is done, it is “premature” to discuss possible lease terms and rates with the village of Saranac Lake.

The Housing Task Force’s letter to the village board and Erman’s letter to Hochul can be viewed at https://bit.ly/43MSXhY starting on page 6.

The Downtown Advisory Board’s letter can be seen at https://tinyurl.com/mr28ntvt.

The former APA staff and board members’ letter to Hochul can be viewed at https://tinyurl.com/yc4pvabv and on page 4 of today’s Enterprise.

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Photo below: This is the building at 1-3 Main St. in Saranac Lake, owned by the village of Saranac Lake, where the Adirondack Park Agency may move. It is seen here on April 11.

(Enterprise photo — Andy Flynn)