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Awosting land battle mirrors Marriott case
By Jeremiah Horrigan
The Times Herald-Record, February 10, 2003

New Paltz - As both sides sharpen their arguments and gird their loins for what promises to be a long battle over the fate of the proposed high-end housing development known as Awosting Reserve, perhaps it's time for a look backward.

Today, a sophisticated corporate developer, Chaffin/Light Associates, wants to build an enclosed community of 349 high-priced private homes on land abutting Minnewaska State Park along the Shawangunk Ridge. Twenty-five years ago, another sophisticated corporate developer, the Marriott Corp., wanted to create a public resort and 300 private condominiums at what is now the state park.

Today, as before, the principal arguments against Awosting Reserve are environmental in nature. The land, opponents say, is delicate and can't withstand the sort of development being proposed. Opponents say endangered species will be further threatened and a pristine landscape will be despoiled for the benefit of a wealthy few.
Chaffin/Light, as Marriott before it, insists the ridge and careful
development go hand in hand. Awosting Reserve, they say, will be a
"conservation community" that will "honor the rural lifestyles and mountain values of its host town."

Opponents of the new proposal can't help but take comfort in the legend of the Marriott battle. That legend has it that a small band of intrepid Davids put the kibosh on a corporate Goliath, thus saving the ridge from his predations.

But although Marriott's opponents proved to be both intrepid and
resourceful environmental guerrillas, their ultimate victory came as the result of a combination of forces, not all of which were on the
environmentalists' original order of battle.
Issues such as tax abatements and casino gambling, for example.
Marriott opponents were vastly outnumbered, from Gov. Mario Cuomo to the Rochester Town Board, under whose auspices the state DEC conducted lengthy public hearings under the then-new SEQR environmental review law. These were inflationary economic times, and anyone who came to a community offering jobs and tax revenues was seen as a potential savior. With deep pockets and many friends in high places, Marriott may have been surprised at the depth and quality of the opponents' arguments during the seemingly interminable SEQR review. The hearings were all business, but not
devoid of humor. In an apparent bid for a position as spokesman for an under-represented group, an audience member asked, "Who speaks for the plankton in Lake Minnewaska?"
New Paltz Grants Administrator Glenn Gidaly has fond memories of those days. It was there he met his wife, Laura Walls, who until recently was the town supervisor of Gardiner, the crucible in which Awosting Reserve's fate will be determined.
Gidaly believes it was the opponents' extensive water studies, showing insufficient supplies at the site, that finally got Marriott out of Ulster County.
Peter Ford, another organizer of the opposition, had a more succinct
description of what sent Marriott packing: "Hubris," he said from his home in Vermont. "Marriott was unwilling to compromise. If they had gone small scale, they would have gotten a foot in
the door. But they had no flexibility." New Paltz resident Sally Rhoads, who was then president of the New Paltz school board, has a different recollection. The school board had been required to rule on whether to grant a graduated tax abatement to the company. Marriott made it clear that the abatement was vital to the development; unless it was forthcoming, the project was dead. After several raucous and emotional public meetings, the opponents' hopes sank when the board approved the abatement. Rhoads voted in favor of the abatement. She believed then - and still believes - that the Marriott development would have provided significant
long-range tax revenues to the school district, which would have enabled it to provide a "premier" educational program.
But the issue that derailed Marriott's project had never been discussed in the SEQR hearings: casino gambling. At Rhoads' insistence, the school board stipulated in a separate agreement that, in the event that casino gambling was approved by the state, the agreed-upon abatements would no longer be available to Marriott. Unlike the present political landscape, the possibility of casino gambling ever happening seemed as likely then as significant environmental damage occurring from a meteor shower.
Marriott signed off on the stipulated abatement agreement and for a while it looked like the battle was over.
But far from the public battlefield, Marriott opponents challenged the
legality of that sidebar agreement and won the decision. Shortly thereafter, with no tax abatement, Marriott pulled up stakes and left the Shawangunk Ridge, providing a happy ending to a legend that continues to warm the hearts and minds of environmentalists, if not educators and former school board members like Rhoads.