Groups sue over proposed Adirondack project

Two environmental groups and three landowners have sued the Adirondack Park Agency, the Department of Environmental Conservation and a developer over the largest development project ever approved for the Adirondack Park.

Filed late Tuesday in state Supreme Court in Albany County, the lawsuit by Protect the Adirondacks and the Sierra Club seeks to overturn APA's January approval of the Adirondack Resort & Club project in Tupper Lake.

Among those behind the lawsuit are two former state officials whose lineage goes back to the creation of DEC and APA, setting the stage for a legal showdown between those who helped to first protect the 6-million-acre Adirondack Park and those who are now responsible for it.

"This project was greased for approval by the executive staff," said Bob Glennon, a lawyer with Protect the Adirondacks and an APA director from 1988 to 1995 who worked for six different APA chairmen. He later worked for the state attorney general's office.

"We are concerned that the executive staff may have been too deferential to the developer, but we are not going to speculate on whether that came from directions from above," Glennon said. "It is now up to Gov. [Andrew M.] Cuomo, who has often visited the Adirondacks with his family, and who has proved he can get things done in Albany, to give the agency a badly needed backbone implant.

"We expect that we will get a fairer shake from the courts than from the APA," he added.

Another member of Protect the Adirondacks and the Sierra Club is Charlie Morrison, a former top aide to the first DEC commissioner, Henry Diamond.

"The APA failed to protect the backcountry," said Morrison. "This project is just sprawl on steroids, the worst ever to hit the Adirondacks."

Nearby Tupper Lake landowners Phyllis Thompson and Robert and Leslie Harrison also joined the lawsuit, which is due back in state Supreme Court in Albany on May 11.

The 6,200-acre resort project calls for about 700 new homes, 29 luxurious so-called great camps on large forest tracts, a 60-room inn, and miles of new roads, plus sewer and water lines.

Developer Michael Foxman spent seven years in APA review before the January approval, given by a 10-1 board vote.

DEC spokeswoman Emily DeSantis said the lawsuit was being reviewed and declined further comment.