Outdoor recreation park on Mt. Morris in the works

by Dan McClelland

The Town of Tupper Lake and the Tupper Lake Business Group are working together with Preserve Associates partner Michael Foxman to open up the Mt. Morris lands the company owns for the creation of a four-season outdoor recreational park.

Last week County Legislator and Mayor Paul Maroun, four members of the Tupper Lake Business Group- Rick Dattola, Mark Moeller, Rob Gillis and Dan McClelland- and Supervisor Patti Littlefield, in three separate telephone calls, spoke at length with Mr. Foxman about the plan to have the town lease the former Big Tupper Ski Center lands for a new non-commercial recreational park.

In each conversation Mr. Foxman told the local leaders he was very willing to make those lands available to the town for non-motorized recreation as early as this winter- providing he and his company were protected by town insurance coverage.

The activities the Tupper Lake Business Group would like to see permitted in any lease agreement between Preserve Associates LLC and the town would likely be hiking and biking all four seasons of the year, cross-country skiing and snowshoeing in winter months and possibly back-country skiing where people walk up the mountain, what fans call “skin up,” and then ski down.

One of the six main goals the Tupper Lake Business Group has advanced in its first phase plan is to have the town re-acquire the Mt. Morris lands for back taxes through an upcoming Franklin County tax sale. In town hands the business group members would work to attract a developer to lease and operate the ski center again.

Under no circumstances, however, do the members of the local business group want the town to operate Big Tupper Ski Center for alpine skiing again.

However, developing the former ski center lands on Mt. Morris into a four-season outdoor recreational park is another piece of the business group’s plan.

Supervisor Patti Littlefield is a member of the business group’s Big Tupper committee, and she met with the volunteers last Tuesday to discuss the recreation plan. Mayor Paul Maroun has also met a number of times this past year with the business group’s eight-member steering committee. He last met with them on August 26.

The first phase of the development of a recreational park on Mt. Morris would be to extend the lease the town currently has with Mr. Foxman and his associates that permits cross-country skiers and snowshoers to use their land immediately adjacent to the town-owned golf course. The extension of that lease would permit skiers to use the old nordic trail up the mountain to the Big Tupper gate, allow them to cross the parking lot and ski down the old Ranger trail to Sugar Loaf Mountain and then to the golf course.

The existing cross-country skiing lease between Preserve Associates and the town has been in place for a number of years. It has been renewed annually, most recently this past summer. There has never been a charge for the town to use those lands.

Town officials have said many times in board discussions in recent years that Mr. Foxman has been both accommodating and amenable to town suggestions in all their lease discussions with him.

Supervisor Patti Littlefield briefed her board Thursday evening that on the day before when Senator Betty Little was at the town hall to be honored, Mayor Paul Maroun, Betty's former counsel, told her that he had spoken with Mr. Foxman recently.

“He told John (Quinn) and I that after meeting with the business group the week before he called Mike Foxman to discuss the Mt. Morris lands. He said Mr. Foxman told him he would consider an extension of the lease with the town for the Big Tupper property.”

She said the Tupper Lake Business Group quickly picked up on that and on Wednesday, September 1 Dan McClelland and three other business group members called Mr. Foxman.

“He was very supportive of our ideas and thought it was a great project,” Mr. McClelland told the town board Thursday night.

He said too on Tuesday night’s business group call was Gull Pond resident Scott Brandi, who has attended past meetings of the committee. Mr. Brandi is a ski industry insurance broker who is heavily involved in the state and national ski industry, representing ORDA and other major clients.

On that call were committee members Rick Donah, Rob Gillis, Matt Ellis, Dan McClelland, Rosie Littlefield and Charlie Frenette. Sally Hart of Big Wolf also joined them.

Mrs. Littlefield continued. “The discussion that night came down to should the town ask Mike Foxman to lease the Mt. Morris lands, because when I spoke with him a few months ago he wasn’t interested.”

“When Paul told me that he talked with him and that Dan and the business group talked with him, I learned that things had changed a bit.”

The supervisor said she then reached out to Mr. Foxman that day (Thursday) and he was open to leasing the Mt. Morris lands.

She said at the Tuesday night business group meeting “we went round and round on all the options for the mountain,” if Mr. Foxman agreed.

She said one option was just leasing enough land to extend the existing trails to the Big Tupper gate and across the parking lot and then back down to the golf course, via Sugar Loaf or on the new road Nick Brunette built. Another was continuing the cross country trails up the mountain. “-And do we want access to the mountain for people to skin up and ski down...and hike and bike and snowshoe and do all that?”

“Would we want the town to take responsibility for the entire property?” she asked as food for thought for her board members.

“But not for conventional alpine skiing, not to operate a ski area, not to use the buildings, not to use the lifts. Just to let people have the freedom to go up there and the town would take on the liability for it.”

In that event, Mr. Foxman and his group would be named as additional insureds in any existing insurance or additional insurance coverage the town would have to secure, she stated.

She said like the town’s lease for the trails near the golf course, there would be no fee paid by the town for the extended lease.

Mrs. Littlefield said there could be considerable costs, however, with the new insurance coverage the town will have to buy which is still an unknown at this point.

“That were many ‘what ifs, how do we do it, what are the best ways to do it’,” she said of the conversations at the Tuesday night business group meeting.

“My agreement to the group was I would reach out again to Mr. Foxman which I did” today at 2p.m. “We talked for a good 45 minutes!”

“I enjoy my conversations with him,” she told her board members. She said she took copious notes during their conversation.

“I explained to him in detail everything that was mentioned at the meeting Tuesday night with the business group committee, and he was very interested in all of the things we were talking about.”

“He told me he is inclined to do anything the town would like to do with the lease, with a 30-day notice for cancellation and no liability faced on his part. That’s the big risk for the town...for liability on property that we do not have constant observation of!”

She said for all other town facilities- the beach, the golf course, the Rod and Gun Club- there are town staffers and volunteers keeping eyes on them.

She expressed some concern the new leased property on Mt. Morris would be completely unsupervised.

“We did talk about bikes and I told him we permit bikes on our cross-country trails, particularly in the winter when they are all snow-filled and packed down.”

He said we could use bikes on the Mt. Morris trails, she told her board.

Since that was the case, Councilman John Quinn suggested the town could remove signs they posted after a golf course trail lease was signed this summer which stipulated no use by bike riders, as Mr. Foxman had asked in his earlier conversation with the supervisor.

“He was worried about the erosion bikes can cause and damage to the property” in his earlier concerns, Mrs. Littlefield explained.

“Mr. Foxman was very amenable to all they things I asked him about today.”

She said they agreed there would be no snowmobiles, no ATVs, no motorized vehicles of any kind.

She said Mr. Foxman didn’t know if the permit the Adirondack Park Agency issued to the Adirondack Club and Resort for the development of the ski center and adjoining lands would come into play in this new lease agreement. “He said he would check into that.”

“So my recommendation to the business group and its committee for Mt. Morris is that we (the town) will take on the job of investigating the insurance needed. The business group will have to take the job of defining exactly what they would like to do and what they want the town to do before any agreement is even drafted for Mr. Foxman to execute.”

“Is it cross country just up to the mountain? Is it cross country skiing up to the mountain, across the parking lot and down to the golf course. Is it a free for all at Big Tupper, excluding the use of the buildings and lifts or amenities of any kind?”

“What if someone breaks into a building and we have no one up there?” Councilwoman Tracy Luton asked her.

She said unlike the trail network at the golf course there are people nearby all the time to watch out for it. “There will be nobody up there,” she said of the former Big Tupper lands.

“There are people using it now, walking up and skiing down. What if someone gets killed up there?” Ms. Luton asked.

Mrs. Littlefield said that until the business group defines all the uses it would like to see at the mountain facility, it will be difficult to obtain an accurate insurance quote.

“We envision a Mt. Morris Recreational Park with open access to the community,” Mr. McClelland told the board. He said the business group understands that sufficient insurance coverage is a prerequisite for the protection of everyone.

Mr. McClelland said the business group leaders would like to see the town lease the land for at least the first phase this year- to cover the trails from “the Big Corner” to the Big Tupper gate, across the parking lot and down Sugar Loaf. “We’d also like to see ‘skin up, ski down’ skiing if insurance costs are affordable.”

He said his group didn’t expect the trail grooming committee members to start building new trails up the mountain this year. “The new trails have to be worked on, obviously.”

John Quinn, a member of the trail grooming committee, said the trail from the big corner to Big Tupper was open and used when the ski center was operating. “It's not a big deal to re-open that trail!”

“We see this as an incredible attraction to the community” in very raw form. “We’d like to see the extension of the cross-country trails to Big Tupper as a first step. -And then we’d like to see hiking and snowshoeing up the mountain and then we can work out the details of back country skiing.”

“One of the issues Scott Brandi raised was there needs to be an operation in place where if someone got hurt, there was a way to get them off the mountain.”

“I talked with Mike about that and he’s fine with an emergency evacuation procedure using motorized equipment like a snowmobile or ATV to do that, but for that purpose only,” Mrs. Littlefield said at that point.

“I would propose to do this in phases. For the first year maybe- and it may not happen this year- let's do the easiest things first,” she said referring to opening the existing trail up the mountain.

“We’d like to see an agreement soon for that first phase to the parking lot,” Mr. McClelland told her. “Thereafter we can work out the logistics of all that other stuff.”

He offered that if the high cost of insurance became an obstacle, maybe the business group could fundraise to pay part of the insurance premium.

“We feel that now is the time to get a basic agreement in place, because we don’t know what’s going to happen with the county (and the tax sale).

Mrs. Littlefield said she spoke with County Treasurer Fran Perry in recent days and learned “nothing is happening now with the foreclosure process” relating to the Mt. Morris lands.

“Could we work with Kirk (Town Attorney Kirk Gagnier) about drafting a lease agreement?” Mr. McClelland pressed.

The supervisor told him she would brief the town attorney on that night’s discussion and her discussion with Mr. Foxman.

Mr. McClelland said Scott Brandi had also forwarded to the business group a copy of New York’s Recreational Trail Use statute which gives private land owners immunity from liability associated with dozens of recreational uses (horseback riding, canoeing, boating snowmobiling, cross-country skiing, hunting, fishing, hiking, bike riding, hand gliding, etc.)

He said Mr. Brandi further researched the state law after Tuesday's meeting with the business group and learned that alpine skiing was also covered.

Mr. McClelland presented the board with a copy of the statute to provide their attorney.

The ten year old law was a way for New York State to get its residents into the outdoors for all sorts of recreation, he told town officials.

“This will go hand in hand with any kind of liability insurance plan the town secures for our project,” he explained.

Town Councilwoman Mary Fontana, who now directs the One Group branch on Park Street, said the immunity law should be discussed with the town’s insurance agent, Belleville and Associates, which represents the New York State Municipal Insurance Reciprocal, which insures the town.

Lidia Kriwox, town Republican chairwoman, who was in attendance that evening, speculated the state statute may help the town reduce its existing insurance coverage on the lands it currently leases from Preserve Associates.

Mrs. Littlefield said the insurance coverage to lease the cross-country trail land adjacent to the golf course fell under the town’s umbrella coverage, so there was no extra premium associated with the lease agreement.

“So I guess we’re at the point of exploration and the business group would be willing to define the uses of the Mt. Morris recreational lands,” noted Mr. McClelland.

“So how do we keep snowmobilers and four-wheelers off those lands?” Mr. Quinn asked.

“Like you do with any prohibited uses. You post the property. You put up signs telling people those things are not allowed,” Mr. McClelland told him.

“One thing I was thinking about,” continued Mr. Quinn. If you add more trails, and a lot of the trails we are talking about are existing, maintaining those trails by our small group of groomers, especially after a big dump of snow, “will be difficult!”

“If you double or triple the number of trails that just compounds the amount of work you are asking volunteers to do!”

“How do you know you will not generate more volunteers?” incoming supervisor Clint Hollingsworth asked him.

“We only have a certain amount of grooming machines,” was Mr. Quinn’s response.

The town is in the process of acquiring a second tracked ATV for grooming.

“We figure just to get people on the mountain to hike it and enjoy it will be a big deal,” Mr. McClelland told the board.

“One of the big discussion points we had at Tuesday’s meeting was what insurance will be needed for going up the mountain and down the mountain which creates alpine skiing...that’s not cross country skiing, its downhill skiing,” Supervisor Littlefield stated. “That’s a whole other issue when it comes to insurance,” Scott Brandi told us.

“We’re now putting the ball in the business group's court and to ask its members to give us a specific proposal that we can go to Mr. Foxman with, because we don’t know all that is being proposed.”

“And then we can look into the insurability of what they are proposing!” she added.

The business group is working on the plan this week.

“As a general proposition, however, speaking for myself,” said John Quinn, “I support this in principle! I think all these issues can be resolved.”

“So I guess we’ll work on it,” suggested the supervisor.

“I would just hate to see someone die up there if something happens,” worried Ms. Luton.

“But if this state statue is covering it,” it shouldn’t be our concern, Mike Dechene told her.

Mr. Hollingsworth said it is the same situation if someone is riding a snowmobile on private property and gets injured. “The state statutes protects the land owner!”

“The simple answer,” Mr. McClelland said is to put up a sign saying this activity or that activity isn’t permitted. “Would that stop people? No, but it offers some protection to the landowner!”

He said if the back country skiing becomes a stumbling block to advancing the plan for an outdoor recreation place for everyone, then it can be prohibited. “But we don’t want to see that happen...we want the Mt. Morris lands to be open for as many recreational things as possible!”

“Of course, we do,” agreed Tracy Luton. “But we want to be able to do it as safely as possible!”

“If you’ll explore the insurance issues, then we’ll come up with a detailed plan for the new park,” Mr. McClelland told the board.

The board members all supported that suggestion.

“-And hopefully the plan will work,” Supervisor Littlefield offered.