BETTER THAN HEARSAY - 5 January 2024

Business as Usual or Maybe Not

WINDHAM - It isn’t exactly Wyatt Earp and the OK Corral but a showdown is brewing between the town of Windham and Windham Mountain Club.

Ski slope officials attended a recent planning board meeting, continuing to present details on a housing and recreational development Master Plan which they initially submitted this past summer.

A storm of controversy has swirled since July surrounding how the multi-tiered project will impact the business community and therefore every person and commercial enterprise in Windham.

Ski slope president Chip Seamans spoke during the latest planning board session, on December 21, explaining that initial intentions for an onsite hotel and amphitheater have been scrapped. 

However, the earlier announced plans to draw fresh members at $175,000 a pop and the creation of 60-plus townhouses are still a go, spread out where parking lots for throngs of visiting skiers are now located.

Deep concerns are being raised about the vanishing parking, what appears to be a designed move toward prioritizing wealthy membership exclusivity, and how that all may reduce the number of daily walk-in skiers who frequent downtown shops, restaurants and hotels.

Doomsday scenarios are being imagined even while ski slope officials are saying there is nothing to worry about, that life and the commercial foundation of the community will be bolstered.

All of that will become known in the ensuing months but meanwhile, legal six-shooters are being drawn for a potential regulatory hoedown.

Windham Mountain Club is hoping to break ground this coming summer, a timeframe that could be interminably delayed as the town is expected to demand a thorough State Environmental Quality Review (SEQR).

In simplest terms, any building project, after preliminary review, can be deemed to have insignificant or significant impacts on a community.

If a project is deemed to have insignificant impacts, it receives a “Negative Declaration” (Neg Dec). Contrarily, if it is deemed to have a significant impact, it gets a “Positive Declaration” (Pos Dec).

Windham Mountain Club would love a Neg Dec, meaning they get required permits, as usual, and roll in the bulldozers, starting to make way for the townhouses and whatever else those $175,000 members desire.

Local officials would never say out loud that they would love a Pos Dec but all signs are pointing in that direction, based on a memo delivered to the planning board on December 21 by Delaware Engineering.

Delaware Engineering is the town’s main consultant on the project along with Kevin Young, a well-known environmental attorney, as the planning board takes lead agency status in the process.

Engineers and lawyers for both teams were in the room, letting Seamans and Delaware Engineering senior planner Adam Yagelski do most of the verbal sizing-up of each other’s position.

Seamans, joined by the ski slope’s engineer, Darrin Elsom of Kaaterskill Engineering, said the Master Plan will unfold in various stages.

Those phases will include improvements to their golf course and changes to the Adventure Center tubing park where tennis, pickle ball and skeet shooting will reportedly be introduced.

These concepts are “not far along enough yet for review,” Seamans said, suggesting they were “separate” from the townhouse lands and other everyday improvements being made onsite and in-house.

Yagelski and Young, however, were adamant that all Master Plan elements must be put on the table before proper SEQR decisions can be made or any ground-breaking occurs.

“SEQR doesn’t apply to the mountain. It applies to the planning board and therefore the town of Windham. The local planning board must determine what is or is not part of the Master Plan,” Young said.

“We would need to know what is happening within the whole of the Master Plan for the public good,” Young said, not have it presented segmentally.

Young said the planning board and the town are basing their perspective on what the Windham Mountain Club is already offering in advertising to prospective members as part of the total membership package.

Nobody on either team wanted to go on the record with what the near and/or distant future of the Master Plan will look like.

But lines are definitely getting drawn in the dirt of the OK Corral where it isn’t exactly the Earps and the Clanton Gang but much is at stake.

A lengthy memo was issued by Delaware Engineering to the planning board and Windham Mountain Club at the December 21 meeting.

The memo states that the planning board “is not in receipt of all information it may reasonably need to make the determination of [negative or positive environmental] significance.

“We recommend that the planning board provide [Windham Mountain Club] time to provide said information, and consider issuing a determination of significance at your January 18 [2024] meeting,” the memo states.

Much could happen between then and now in terms of the ski slope and planning board reaching common ground, allowing the Master Plan to begin manifesting in some form this coming summer.

Or a years-long, knock-down, drag-out fight could play out, stopping short of Colt 45’s being drawn but forever altering the business landscape.

A preliminary SEQR report is listed on the town website. Virtually every box is checked “yes”… that the ski slope Master Plan will have a significant impact on groundwater, flooding, consistency with community plans, consistency with community character, etc.

The ski slope and its new majority ownership have been put on notice that it isn’t business as usual for anybody anymore.