EDITORIAL
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016 was a turning point, but we’re not sure what it’s turning to. This year set us up for the unknown like few others have. No. 1 of our top 10 stories of the year is the manic campaign cycle that climaxed with the election of Donald Trump to the White House. Yes, these top 10 are local news stories, but this election is both local, national and global in its reach and impact. When in our lifetimes have Americans been so divided over a new president? When has a president set out so pointedly to divide us? Mr. Trump’s acceptancespeech promise of unifying the U.S. already looks like hot air. He’s a salesman who tells people either what they want to hear or what will drive them crazy. When a sizable chunk of Americans object to something he says, he doubles down on it — e.g., “The wall just got 10 feet higher.” How can he really work toward unity when many of the cabinet secretaries he’s appointing have spent years opposing the agencies they will now lead? When, before taking office, he uses Twitter to push offlimits buttons in international diplomacy, likely to provoke hostile reactions? He thrives on unsettling opponents and
Into the unknown
being unpredictable to gain leverage for deal-making. What will come of this? The world will find out in 2017. Also unpredictable is the outcome of our No. 2 story. The state has now committed to replacing 34 miles of train tracks with a trail between Tupper Lake, Saranac Lake and Lake Placid. The trail will be geared for bikes and snowmobiles — mostly not at the same time of year — as well as joggers, walkers and cross-country skiers. Track removal is scheduled for this coming year, and state officials and their hand-picked committee are shaping the trail details behind closed doors, for fear of being disturbed by angry railroad supporters. It’s been a divisive issue in the Tri-Lakes area. Many people bemoan sending away two tourism businesses: the Adirondack Scenic Railroad and Rail Explorers, which had a second successful year offering rides on the tracks using pedal cars called rail bikes. On the other hand, many people look forward to the trail as a resource for locals and visitors. Advocates’ predictions have been glowing, but there’s really no way of knowing how much of a tourism draw the trail will be. We’ll see — or maybe we won’t, if the Adirondack
Scenic Railroad’s parent organization is successful in suing the state. That case is scheduled to be heard in court soon. It was also a pivotal year for the Adirondack Forest Preserve. There was unusually strong public interest in the Adirondack Park Agency’s decision on how to classify Boreas Ponds, the last tract of the former Finch, Pruyn timberlands that the state bought from The Nature Conservancy. There were also several terrible tragedies in the backcountry, and attention was drawn to an increasing number of hikers on the most popular mountains, beyond the ability of the state Department of Environmental Conservation and Adirondack Mountain Club to educate them or mitigate their impact. Something will have to be done, and plans are in the works. Weather-wise, the past winter was amazingly warm, except for during the Saranac Lake Winter Carnival parade, and that delivered a painful blow to the tourism economy that season, especially in the Lake Placid area. On the flip side, summer tourism has been stronger than usual, but still, the state Olympic Regional Development Authority has taken steps to make future winters more weatherproof,
such as acquiring snowmaking equipment for the Mount Van Hoevenberg cross-country ski center. Speaking of visitors, it was a heck of a year for two major hotel projects underway in Saranac Lake. The Hotel Saranac is still being renovated, now with a firmsounding May 1 deadline, but it’s suing over the village’s approval of the Lake Flower Resort, which is being reviewed by the APA. Meanwhile, two slowmoving stories progressed in Tupper Lake in 2016. Sunmount, a state institution for people with developmental disabilities, had previously had staff members and residents arrested for allegedly assaulting each other and/or lying to cover it up. Several staff members went to trial over those charges this year, and the results were mixed. Some were acquitted, others convicted, and several people saw some charges dismissed and others upheld. Some staffers got jail time. It’s unknown whether this will prompt management changes or whether this will be looked back on as a shortlived crackdown. The Adirondack Club and Resort has been an annual fixture in our top 10 for roughly 12 years. Again,
almost nothing happened, and that in itself is news since progress is always hoped to be just around the corner. Sadder still, developer Tom Lawson, who has become a fixture in Tupper Lake, started to lose several of his personal business properties to foreclosure. It’s too soon to say whether the project has started to backslide, but if it doesn’t land some big real estate deals quickly, it’s hard to see how it could stay viable. We also lost many, many precious people in 2016, locally and nationally. We all have deaths that hit close to home, but tragic deaths of children hit people especially hard, such as smiley country girl Harlie Rascoe, who died in a snowmobile crash at age 12; brave Gracee Jewtraw, claimed by a rare brain cancer at 10 years old; and Connor McLaughlin, 12, of Greenwich, killed by a rock that fell on him from Roaring Brook Falls in the town of Keene. We keep them and their families in our prayers. While this year had seen some divisive issues, we have faith that mankind will work together on solutions that will benefit us all for many years to come. Onward to what 2017 will reveal. We definitely live in interesting times.
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North Country GOP strengthens in year of Trump
By ANTONIO OLIVERO Staff Writer PLATTSBURGH — Billionaire Republican Donald Trump may have become the president-elect on Nov. 8, but April 15, 2016 will go down as perhaps the most seminal day in the history of modern American politics for the Adirondacks. It was on that afternoon that candidate Trump took his Republican primary tour to the Crete Civic Center in Plattsburgh, just four days before he was a dominant winner across New York. Here Trump was, delivering his latest half-hour “Make America Great Again” speech in front of 3,000 of his closest North Country friends. Atop an astro-turf field that, till hours prior, was supposed to host youth soccer games, Trump gazed into a sea of iPhones held high in the air to capture the celebrity businessman. Two hundred and two days later, on Election Day, he would win four years as the 45th president of the United States, the first native New Yorker to hold the office since Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and eighth ever. “We have great, great people of this state, we have people that are admired all over the world for their energy, for their intelligence, for everything,” Trump proclaimed in Plattsburgh. “And we are going to bring this state back. But we are going to bring this country back
(too). Because everybody, I think, we put our country even before our state.” So went the roller coaster ride that was the 2016 election, a seemingly never-ending real life referendum assessing the U.S.’s permanence in an ever-evolving world conducted by the people of this proud country. The cast of characters featured in this watershed American political drama featured a former reality television star-turnedpopulist savior in Trump, a divisive former Senator who served this state, Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, and a vindicator from nearby Vermont who excited millions, Sen. Bernie Sanders. Trump’s appearance in Plattsburgh was the paramount illustration of the hotbed for political discourse and division the North Country became over the past 12 months. At the presidential level, Trump explicitly spoke of the plight of upstate New York’s economy numerous times deep into the election cycle. It was the collective power of millions of voters across the country concerned with the financial hardship of themselves and their once robust communities that propelled Trump into the White House. Though Clinton won New York, a state that historically holds the darkest shade of blue, the force of Trump’s message here in the Adirondacks was no different. Between Essex and Franklin
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counties, Trump won 47.4 percent of the vote compared to Clinton’s 44.1 percent. In Tupper Lake, Trump ran up an even more impressive margin defeating Clinton with 50.9 percent of the vote (1,138 votes) compared to Clinton’s 41 percent (917 votes). Sixty-year-old Marine veteran Ron Terry of Redford was one of the Adirondackers giddy about Trump throughout this cycle. Terry, a veteran, playfully dubbed his candidate “President Trump” while looking over Trump buttons on display outside of the Civic Center in April. It was the most excited he’d ever been about a political campaign, he said.
Donald J. Trump
“I just feel that this country needs to get their balls back where they should be,” Terry said, “and I think this man will do that.” Before Trump defeated Clinton in the November general election, though, there was another candidate who excited the people of the Adirondacks just as much, if not more: Bernie Sanders. The Tri-Lakes region hosted several rallies for the progressive foil to Clinton during the Democratic primary. His signs, bumper stickers and Tshirts were more visible here than even Trump’s. And after the final North Country numbers trickled in the night of the Democratic primary, it was the North Country’s 21st
Congressional District that “Felt the Bern” more than any other part of the state. Sanders won by about 10,000 votes, a wider margin than in any of the state’s 26 other districts, though Clinton took the state as expected. He won 63 percent of the vote. No other district in New York saw Sanders eclipse 60 percent. But much like the rest of the country, this was the year of the Republican in the North Country. Aside from Democrat Billy Jones winning the seat of departing Republican Janet Duprey in the 115th Assembly district over Republican Franklin County rival Kevin Mulverhill, Republicans
romped in the North Country. Entrenched Republican state representatives such as state. Sen. Betty Little and Assemblyman Dan Stec easily defeated Green Party challengers. And in the region’s biggest race, incumbent Republican U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik won a resounding return to the Capitol. Stefanik was contested by retired Democratic army colonel Mike Derrick and return Green Party challenger Matt Funiciello, a fiery Glens Falls breadbaker. By defeating the second-place finisher Derrick by more than 35 percent of the vote in the North Country’s 21st Congressional District, and by winning all 12 North Country counties, Stefanik made a resounding statement about her political stronghold here. It’s a GOP foundation that was fortified in the Year of Trump. And as Stefanik and her fellow Republicans celebrated their dominant wins into the early morning hours at the Queensbury Hotel in Glens Falls, it became more and more apparent that the unthinkable was unfolding: At 2:31 a.m. on Nov. 9, the Associated Press declared Donald Trump the next president of the United States. And who knows what the future holds for Stefanik. “We see a great future with Elise,” the state Sen. Little said before introducing Stefanik for her victory speech at the Queensbury Hotel, “running for as long as she wants to be our congressperson, till she moves up to something else, of course.”
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State decides on plan for rail corridor
By JUSTIN A. LEVINE Outdoors Writer After nearly three years of public comments and input, the state decided in February to move forward with a plan to build a trail between Lake Placid and Tupper Lake along the Remsen-Lake Placid travel corridor. In February, the state Adirondack Park Agency board voted to approve the plan to take up the train tracks and build the 34-mile trail. The plan also calls for the state to upgrade the tracks for passenger service between Big Moose and Tupper Lake. The state Department of Environmental Conservation announced in early May that it would go forward with the plan, and on the same day as the DEC announcement, the Adirondack Rail Preservation Society said that it had filed a lawsuit against the DEC and APA to halt the plan. ARPS, which operates tourist trains under the Adirondack Scenic Railroad name, runs trains on the southern end of the line and between Saranac Lake and Lake Placid. As spring turned into summer, Rail Explorers USA, which operates a rail-bike excursion business on the rails out of Saranac Lake, began to run its operation to a residential property in Lake Clear. Several neighbors began to complain about the
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“Rosie,” one of the Adirondack Scenic Railroad’s engines, leaves the Saranac Lake train depot for perhaps the last time in October. operation, even while Rail Explorers expanded its offerings to include day trips to Tupper Lake. In the discovery phase of the lawsuit, it was found that the state did not own fee-title to four parcels of the corridor, though. This gave hope to the train folks, and caused hearings on the lawsuit to be delayed several times. Since then, the state has begun working with the owners of the parcels to come to an agreement that
would allow the trail to move forward. Three of the parcels are around North Country Community College, and the fourth is the train depot in Lake Placid, which is owned by the Lake Placid/North Elba Historical Society. The DEC began holding stakeholder meetings to create a conceptual plan for the trail this fall. The meetings were behind closed doors, and after prodding by the Enterprise, the DEC agreed
to release meeting notes after the fact to the press. However, the meetings remained closed to both the public and the press. Meanwhile, Saranac Lake village Trustee Rich Shapiro has hosted several open meetings to gather public input on amenities the trail should have. In the beginning of October, Rail Explorers told the Enterprise that it would cease its local operations unless the state offered some
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(Enterprise photo — Justin A. Levine)
sort of incentive, like a longterm lease, for them to stay. Rail Explorers also said that it would open an operation in the Catskills and possibly other areas outside of New York. It was also discovered that Rail Explorers had been operating without a necessary permit from the APA this summer. In November, another hearing on the lawsuit was delayed when the state said it needed more time to come
to an agreement with the owners of the parcels in question. The railroad agreed to the delay on the condition that no rail infrastructure be removed before the next hearing, which is scheduled for the end of January. The state had previously said that removal of rail infrastructure could happen as soon as this fall, but the agreement on the hearing delay postponed any removal of tracks until at least next year.
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 30, 2016
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Boreas Ponds classification debate ignites
By JUSTIN A. LEVINE Outdoors Writer In May, Governor Andrew Cuomo came to the Adirondacks to sign the paperwork that officially finalized the state’s purchase of the more than 20,000acre Boreas Ponds tract from the Adirondack Chapter of The Nature Conservancy. The move was long-awaited and much applauded, as the land was the largest piece of property added to the forest preserve in a generation. The state Adirondack Park Agency, at its regular monthly meeting in October, released four possible land classification plans for the property. While all four plans called for at least half of the land to be classified as wilderness, the APA was widely panned for its lack of options. Local governments in the central Adirondacks were happy since three of the plans called for quite a bit of motor vehicle access, while the fourth plan, released the day of the APA meeting, was more restrictive. A coalition of green groups was upset that the APA had seemingly given up on classifying the lands as wilderness, but all lamented the fact that there was not a broader range of plans up for consideration. The APA has held public meetings around the state to take comments on the plans, and large groups of wilderness supporters have been
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A person looks out over the water at Boreas Ponds, the future of which will be decided in the coming year when the APA and DEC determine what uses will be allowed. (Enterprise file photo) vocal about their thoughts. The local governments, or Five Towns plan, known as Access the Adirondacks, calls for vehicle access to the ponds on the premise that the elderly and disabled don’t have many options to enter the backcountry and get the types of views that the
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er, a new group called Adirondack Wilderness Advocates is calling for the entirety of the tract to be classified as wilderness since Boreas is likely the last large addition that could be made to the state’s most restrictive land classification. In the middle is the Be
Boreas property offers. They cite the fact that there are miles of existing logging roads, and therefore at least the southern half of the tract should be classified as wild forest, which would allow vehicles and snowmobiles access to the ponds. On the other side howev-
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Wild NY coalition of eight state and national groups. Be Wild put forth its own proposal that would allow some motor vehicle access, but not all the way to the ponds. The APA did not hold a December meeting this year, but it is possible that a classification decision will be
made in early 2017. Once the APA classifies the land, then the state Department of Environmental Conservation will need to develop a unit management plan that will detail where trails and access points are, along with the overall type of uses that will be permitted.
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Winter takes a vacation, impacting businesses OF THE
By CHRIS KNIGHT Senior Staff Writer It wasn’t a good omen for the rest of the winter when Trish Wickwire of Saranac Lake went stand-up paddleboarding on an ice-less Lake Flower on Christmas Eve last year. The 60-plus degree temperatures that day spurred other people to go kayaking or play golf. It all turned out to be a sign of what was to come. Warm weather, rain and the lack of snow during the winter of 2015-16 hit the area’s tourism- and snow-dependent businesses hard.
ey tournaments helped to somewhat mitigate the impact.
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Ski centers The state Olympic Regional Development Authority took a big hit from the winter that wasn’t. It saw its operating revenues plummet 25 percent from the prior year. “(This was a) direct result of the bad weather across the Northeast, the industry reporting average decreases in visitation of about 28 percent,” reads ORDA’s annual report. Total skier days at Whiteface Mountain Ski Center dropped to 167,501 from 216,219 in 2014-15. The number was the lowest for Whiteface since 2011-12 and the second lowest in the past seven years. Whiteface received just 58 inches of natural snow and more than 17 inches of rain compared to a typical average of more than 100 inches of snow.
Snow and ice in and around Pontiac Bay on Lake Flower melt on this warm day in late January, as the Saranac Lake Winter Carnival Ice Palace was draped in blue tarps to protect it from the weather. Lake Placid’s cross-country skiing venues also suffered. Mount Van Hoevenberg, which ORDA runs, was forced to close numerous times throughout the season. The annual Lake Placid Loppet cross-country ski race at the mountain was canceled. At Cascade CrossCountry Ski Center, Manager Jennifer Jubin said the center operated at about 50 percent most of the winter. In the Saranac Lake area, Mount Pisgah Ski Center was only open 51 days compared to the usual 80. Crews
at the area’s cross-country ski areas, Dewey Mountain Recreation Center and the Paul Smith’s College VIC, also battled rain and icy conditions, struggled to stay open and canceled some of their programs. In Tupper Lake, Big Tupper Ski Area, which has been run by volunteers and has no snowmaking capacity, didn’t open at all. Businesses hit “Never had a year like this, never,” said Dick Freeburg of Gabriels, who’s been renting
William Smith, MD
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snowmobiles and providing snowmobile tours in the area for 20 years. “President’s week, in February, all of that was canceled,” he said. “We lost all of that. Christmas week, we lost half of that. We couldn’t start until three days after Christmas.” Seventy percent of winter business at Charlie’s Inn in Lake Clear comes from snowmobilers, so the lack of snow had a “tremendous” impact, according to owner Jill Brockway. “It has impacted us a lot,” she said in late February.
Daniel Bullock, MD
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(Enterprise photo — Peter Crowley)
“People are canceling their reservations. We had only two good weekends so far for snow.” Heidi Schuller, whose son owns the 18-room Tupper Lake Motel, said in late February that the lodging facility was empty every weekend there had not been an event in town, like the Northern Challenge Ice Fishing Derby. Businesses in Lake Placid also reported a decline in revenue, but they said events like the Empire State Winter Games and CAN/AM hock-
Carnival The lack of cold temperatures and winter weather in December affected the size of the blocks cut from Pontiac Bay to build the symbol of the Saranac Lake Winter Carnival, the Ice Palace. Instead of the nearly 2foot-thick blocks cut last year, this year’s were about 12 inches thick, meaning volunteers and crews of state prison inmates had to cut more blocks and pile up more rows to get the palace to the necessary height. Work on the palace stalled for four days the week before Carnival, and the palace was draped in blue tarps until the day before it started to protect it from rain, wind and mild temperatures. Shaved ice from Lake Placid’s Olympic Center had to be trucked in to build the obstacles for Artic Golf in Prescott Park. Some on-ice first weekend events had to be rescheduled or modified due to concerns about the safety of the ice on Lake Flower. By the time the parade rolled in, however, the weather had turned dramatically colder, with temperatures of 10 to 15 degrees below zero, and even colder wind chills. “This winter has seen some crazy weather,” said Dean Baker, who leads the palace construction effort each year. “I hope to never have another one like it.”
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FRIDAY, DECEMBER 30, 2016
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Saranac Lake hotel projects advance
By CHRIS KNIGHT Senior Staff Writer SARANAC LAKE — The two major hotel projects that have dominated much of the news in this village for the past three years will likely continue to do so again in 2017. As 2016 came to an end, neither a proposed shoreline resort on Lake Flower nor a renovated and reopened Hotel Saranac had been realized. However, both projects moved forward. They also crossed paths in the courts, courtesy of a lawsuit brought against the village by Roedel Companies, the owners of the Hotel Saranac. When the year began, it had only been about a month since Saranac Lake Resort LLC, a new group of investors, had taken over the proposed Saranac Lake Resort and Spa, a 93-room, four-story hotel that would also include a shoreline restaurant and conference center space. Their identities remained a secret until July 1, when they were finally named: Leland C. “Lee” Pillsbury, a hospitality industry executive and investor, and Mark Pacala, whose work has focused on health care and senior housing investments. About a week later, the village Planning Board ended several months of deliberation over the project, approving it on a 4-0 vote with one abstention and
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5 The Hotel Saranac’s new rooftop sign is hoisted up the side of the building on Academy Street in September. (Enterprise photo — Chris Knight) a long list of conditions. Board member Molly Hann said she wasn’t comfortable with 203 River Street still in the Lake Flower Planned Unit Development District, a new zoning district the village created for it in 2015. The new developers said they no longer needed 203 River St. for off-site parking for the resort, but opponents of the project said its removal requires Saranac
Lake Resort LLC to submit a new PUDD application to the village board. Nevertheless, the Planning Board signed off on the project, and the developers moved forward with their application to the state Adirondack Park Agency. A month later, however, Roedel Companies revealed it had purchased 203 River St. months earlier under the
name Malone Real Estate LLC. The company filed a lawsuit challenging the Planning Board’s approval of the Lake Flower Resort and Spa. Fred Roedel III said the decision “violates existing land use codes” and should have been sent back to the village board “given the numerous modifications to and the lack of specifics contained in the proposal during (the) site plan review
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process.” Saranac Lake Resort LLC was also named in the lawsuit. Critics of the Lake Flower hotel supported Roedel’s move, but others, like village Mayor Clyde Rabideau, rebuffed him for what he called an “obvious” attempt to stop or delay the potentially competing Lake Flower project. He went further, chiding Roedel for spending money on a law-
suit instead of on the restoration of the Hotel Saranac, the planned opening date of which continues to be moved back. A few weeks later, Roedel Companies filed another lawsuit against the village board for denying access to a confidential memo that contained legal advice to the Planning Board regarding 203 River St. Both lawsuits are still pending. In the meantime, renovation of the Hotel Saranac plodded along, with some stops and starts. Roedel Companies revealed in July that it had signed a franchise agreement to have the Hotel Saranac be part of Hilton Worldwide’s select Curio collection of independent hotels. Around the same time, work began on the hotel’s two-story parking garage. In September, the letters for the hotel’s new rooftop sign arrived and were installed, creating a buzz of excitement about the project. In November, the Enterprise revealed that Roedel Companies had received a massive $35 million, part of which was to help finish the renovation, but it came with a big deadline. The loan documents say the project has to be complete and the hotel reopened and operating by May 1, 2017. Fred Roedel acknowledged that there’s a lot of work to do, but said at the time that he believes May 1 is a “reliable” completion (Continued on Page 9)
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By JUSTIN A. LEVINE Outdoors Writer There was a spate of tragic deaths in the outdoors this past year, with some of the fatalities garnering national attention from media outlets like the New York Times and Washington Post. The first in a series of eight untimely deaths in the Adirondacks was a man from Schroon Lake who went out for a snowshoe on the night of Jan. 27 and didn’t return home. Sixty-six-year-old Edward Vandercar, of Schroon Lake, was found dead after a state trooper noticed a set of snowshoe tracks heading out into Schroon Lake. The trooper followed the tracks to a patch of open water, where they disappeared. A state police helicopter located Vandercar’s body in the lake, and his cause of death was listed as drowning. In March, a 61-year-old Chinese immigrant from Wilmington, Delaware, perished on a solo hiking trip up MacNaughton Mountain in the High Peaks. Hua Davis set out to climb “MacNaughty” in midMarch, and didn’t return from her day trip in time to meet up with a group of hikers. When she failed to arrive, the rangers were notified and began a search. Davis was found near the summit of MacNaughton dead from exposure and hypothermia. She was wellknown in the hiking community, and her death served as a reminder of how dangerous the Adirondacks can be. Continuing the trend of tragedy in March, a 12-yearold boy was killed in what can only be described as a freak accident when he was hit by a falling boulder at Roaring Brook Falls near Giant Mountain.
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JoAnn Restko
Hua Davis, center, smiles at her family's last gathering before Davis perished on MacNaughton Mountain in the High Peaks in March.
(Photo provided by the Davis family)
Connor McLaughlin, of Greenwich, made a stop at the falls with his uncle on a day trip to the area. The boy was standing at the base of the falls when a boulder dislodged and struck him, pinning the boy in place. McLaughlin’s uncle was injured trying to push the boy out of the way, but it wasn’t enough to save the child. The next day, a man was reported missing at Union Falls Pond when he didn’t return from an ice fishing trip to a camp he owned there. Forest rangers and state police discovered the man’s UTV partially submerged in
open water, but the man was not there. Gregory Manchester, a 57-year-old from the Capital Region, had been driving the UTV on the ice when it broke through. Rangers and police followed tracks from the UTV to a nearby camp, which Manchester had broken into after going through the ice. He was taken by ambulance to Adirondack Medical Center, but was pronounced dead later that same day. Roaring Brook Falls was the scene of another death in June of this year. On June 18, an avid hiker and New York City fire department EMT named JoAnn Restko
climbed to the top of the falls. Restko, a 37-year-old from the city, was with a friend. She walked out on a rock for a better view, and when the friend turned around, Restko was gone. Rangers found Restko in the water at the base of the falls, and an investigation revealed she had fallen between 80 and 100 feet. In August, a 43-year-old man from Geneseo suffered a fatal heart attack while hiking Cascade Mountain. Michael Sawyer had climbed to the summit of the mountain with his wife, and stopped for a short break on the way down. He collapsed, and despite the best efforts
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Connor McLaughlin
Harlie Rascoe
of rescue personnel, Sawyer died. On Nov. 19, state forest rangers began searching for a missing hunter in Ellenberg Center, just outside of the northern end of the park. Ira Munn Boardman had been at a hunting camp he owned but didn’t return when expected. A massive search occurred during Thanksgiving week, with hundreds of volunteers racking up more than 6,000 hours of search time in the effort. Boardman’s body was located about a mile from
his camp the Sunday after Thanksgiving. Just this month, the TriLakes suffered a tragedy of its own when a 12-year-old girl from Lake Clear was killed in a snowmobile accident. Harlie Rascoe was riding a snowmobile around her house with her best friend Christina “Tina” Harvey when the pair crashed into a truck that was parked in Rascoe’s driveway. Harvey survived, but is in the hospital in Burlington. Rascoe was pronounced dead from multiple trauma injuries.
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 30, 2016
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Sunmount faces several trials in 2016
By KELLY CARROLL Staff Writer Sunmount Development Center was busy in the court system this year with seven convictions and four acquittals of employees in 2016. In February, former employee Jimmy J. Beaulieu of Ogdensburg reached a plea agreement for a January 2015 incident between Beaulieu, employee Robert C. Kennedy of Tupper Lake, and a 22-year-old Sunmount male resident, who told police Beaulieu and Kennedy punched him repeatedly. Beaulieu, who was fired from Sunmount, pleaded guilty to first-degree endangering the welfare of an incompetent or physically disabled person, a felony, in Franklin County Court in November 2016 and was sentenced to five years probation with the first 180 days in Franklin County Jail, starting Dec. 31, 2016. Kennedy, who voluntarily resigned, pleaded guilty to a third-degree assault charge, a misdemeanor, in Tupper Lake town court and was sentenced in May 2015 to a one-year conditional discharge. In March, a jury found another employee Thomas M. Vaillancourt, 53, of Malone, not guilty of first-degree endangering the welfare of an incompetent person, a class E felony, for an incident that occurred in July 2015.
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Vaillancourt and other staff members responded to a fellow staff member’s distress alarm involving a 28year-old male resident, who claimed Vaillancourt struck him in the face. In September, Franklin County Judge Robert Main Jr. sentenced Jerry W. Bush, 41, of Star Lake to an indeterminate sentence of oneand-a-third to four years in state prison, Franklin P. Mussen, 37, of Tupper Lake to a sentence of one to three years in state prison and Todd G. LaValley, 37, of Tupper Lake to a flat sentence of one year in Franklin County Jail. Bush and Mussen, were also sentenced to three years of post-release supervision in regard to the assault, which took place in October 2014 when the staffers took down a male resident in the dining hall of Sunmount’s Center for Intensive Treatment. “OPWDD takes the safety and security of the individu-
Joe Garso of North Woods Engineering outlines plans for the Lake Flower Resort and Spa during a Saranac Lake Planning Board meeting.
(Enterprise photo — Chris Knight)
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 30, 2016
als we serve very seriously and we work closely with the Justice Center to ensure that instances of abuse and neglect are investigated and if substantiated, appropriate action is taken,” said Jennifer O’Sullivan, director of communications at the state Office for People with Developmental Disabilities, at the time. “Any abuse of individuals in our care is completely unacceptable.” The Franklin County jury found all three guilty in June
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of endangering the welfare of an incompetent person in the first degree; a class E felony, assault in the second degree; a class D felony and official misconduct, a class A misdemeanor. Mussen was also found guilty of assault in the third degree, a class A misdemeanor. Howard A. Shorette, 49, of Colton, was also arrested with the men for the assault but was later found not guilty in a separate trial in May. He was fired from Sunmount after the incident,
along with the other three workers. Most recently, former employees Jessica Rice, 29, and Suzanne Decheine were sentenced to jail in December in Franklin County Court stemming from an October 2013 cover-up. Rice, of Tupper Lake, was sentenced to 60 days in jail with five years of probation, and Decheine, 51, of Tupper Lake was sentenced to 30 days in jail with three years of probation. In September, a jury found Rice guilty of one count of first-degree offering a false instrument for filing, a felony, and one count of second-degree offering a false instrument for filing, a misdemeanor. While in October, a jury found Decheine, a registered nurse, guilty of including false information on medical reports, a misdemeanor charge of seconddegree offering a false instrument for filing. Decheine was the last of five defendants to go on trial in regard to the incident, in which the Justice Center claimed Sunmount worker Corey Casciaro, 30, of Tupper Lake assaulted an 18-year-old resident and gave him a head injury, a seizure and a concussion. Prosecutors said neither Casciaro nor his co-workers, Rice and Scott Norton, 37, of Tupper Lake, sought immediate medical assistance for the victim and allegedly intentionally covered up the facts and circum-
stances surrounding the victim’s injuries along with coworkers Jeff Defayette, 30, of Piercefield and Decheine. A jury acquitted Casciaro of all charges in August following a five-day trial. “This consumer punched (Casciaro) in the face, and (Casciaro) was able to gain control of his right arm,” attorney Brian Barrett said at the time. “He put him in an authorized SCIP takedown with another employee and held him in a supine restraint on the floor. Then at some point, to determine that there may be a medical emergency, they released him and they called for a medical emergency, and the Tupper Lake rescue squad took him to the hospital.” Norton’s case was dismissed in December by St. Lawrence County Court Judge Jerome Richards, sitting in for Judge Main. Defayette, however, was convicted in May of seconddegree falsifying a written instrument for filing, a class A misdemeanor and sentenced to an intermittent four-month jail sentence to be served on weekends and three years probation in June by Judge Richards. All of the employees were fired following the incident with the exception of Norton who was suspended without pay. As of September, he was seeking to be reinstated at the facility. Sunmount residents have also been arrested, either for assault or falsely reporting incidents.
Saranac Lake hotel projects
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date. A budget included with the loan documents showed the projected cost of the Hotel Saranac’s restoration has ballooned to more than $35 million. That’s more than two-and-a-half times the $13 million Roedel Companies
said it would cost to buy and renovate the hotel in August 2013. Roedel blamed the increases on a spike in construction costs and his company’s effort to make sure the Main Street landmark becomes “the very best product possible.” The Lake Flower hotel project, meanwhile, was back before the
¯ YEAR IN REVIEW 2016 ¯ LAKE PLACID NEWS
Planning Board in December, when the board OKd several changes to the plans and conditions it had required. Project manager Jacob Wright said he hoped to have a complete APA application and win approval from the agency soon so construction of the resort could begin by spring 2017.
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ACR project at a standstill
TOP 10 STORIES
By KELLY CARROLL Staff Writer The Adirondack Club and Resort, a planned 6,200-acre luxury housing development, has continued to face financial challenges, not moving forward in the building process this year. After 12-plus years in the process, the ACR began 2016 by getting an 11th extension to its permit from the Joint Planning Board in March since February 2013, when the board first gave approval to Planned Development District 1, a 3,200-acre section of the resort that contains 18 “great camp” lots. At the time, ACR attorney Bob Sweeney told the board the developers were working on obtaining the approval of the Army Corps of Engineers and the state Department of Environmental Conservation to construct “Pond Road,” running 5.5 miles from the Lake Simond Road extension to the 1,200-acre Moody Pond lot, the development’s largest parcel, and the other 17 “great camp” lots. In addition, the great camp lots are currently owned by the OWD Corporation’s liquidated trust. Develepors of the proposed land, Tom Lawson and Michael Foxman as well as real estate partner Jim LaValley, were still waiting on the two permits to construct the road as of August and still need to buy the land they’re selling, pay off $290,000 in back taxes on the ski area and get water, sewer and electrical lines to the lots. They did, however, form five binding agreements of sale this year with an escrow balance of $15,750,000, which should help with the financial strain from its legal battles. The developers cannot make those sales until they have received the proper permits and purchased the land. “We’ve been bled dry for millions of dollars,” Foxman, head of Preserve Associates, said in August. “We had about $10 million worth of lawyers and planners and engineering approval delay costs. I think that no one, including me, could’ve imagined the complexity of trying to develop in the Adirondacks with objections from the preservation groups.” At the time, Lawson estimated investments made by Preserve, the project’s leading corporation formed by a small group of investors, to be around $30 mil-
lion. Well-known golfer Greg Norman’s company, Great White Shark Enterprises, was still involved with branding and marketing the resort as well. But Lawson also admitted in August he was financially stretched for cash, having three mortgage foreclosures initiated on personal properties and two liens filed for outstanding contractor bills totaling $117,801.33, according to Franklin County legal records. Lawson asserted he would not let the properties go to foreclosure. “He’s an investor in the ACR project, and I guess the fact that he’s tight would certainly make it hard for him to put more money in the project,” Foxman said. “But he’s by no means the only source of money for the project. I don’t think it will really affect us except in the way of perception.” “I wish them all the best, but for right now, we have to pretend like there is no ACR,” town of Tupper Lake Supervisor Patricia Littlefield said in August. “Of course, if we’re successful as a town now, then the ACR will benefit greatly from that later, if it does come to fruition.” The ACR is expected to feature a renovated Big Tupper Ski Area as its centerpiece. The area has not fared well in the past years, remaining closed for the 2014-15 ski season and considering not opening in the 2015-16 ski season, despite the best efforts of Adirondack Residents Intent on Saving their Economy volunteers. The facility has no snowmaking equipment, which makes the area dependent on the weather. In 2014-15, the season’s limited snowfall and warm weather forced it to stay closed. “It’s certainly a decision that did not come lightly, but we were feeling like everybody has been swimming upstream this winter, literally and figuratively. It’s unfortunate that the winter is what it is, but Mother Nature made the call and we had to answer,” LaValley, who is the ARISE chairman, said at the time. The group, which has about 200 volunteers, also struggled with the mountain’s operating costs, which run about $130,000 to $150,000 annually. A core group of 40 to 50 people generally handle the bulk of the workload.
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Vacant chairs dangle over the disappearing snow in December on the slopes of the Big Tupper Ski Area in Tupper Lake.
¯ YEAR IN REVIEW 2016 ¯ LAKE PLACID NEWS
(Enterprise photo — Kelly Carroll)
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 30, 2016
Hiking traffic soars to new heights TOP 10 STORIES
By ANTONIO OLIVERO Staff Writer LAKE PLACID — Labor Day weekend 2016 was the perfect storm for crowds the size and scope of which the Adirondack High Peaks had seldom seen before. It was a sunny stretch of vacation days perfect for thousands of people to drive to the area to hike for the first time, or one last time before the start of the school year. Some were finishing their summiting of the 46 highest mountains in the Adirondacks and some were falling in love with the High Peaks for the first time. After a dry and warm summer where picture after picture was posted to social media from popular summits such as Cascade Mountain, heavily used trails like Cascade’s were battered one last time before autumn cleaning. Adirondack Mountain Club summit stewards said they spoke to more than 1,500 hikers on Cascade alone over Labor Day weekend. ADK Executive Director Neil Woodworth didn’t mince words when describing the amount of people hammering the High Peaks, as he said it was too much to handle. Julia Goren, ADK’s Summit Steward coordinator, was even more direct. “Cars were parked illegally up and down Adirondack Loj Road. Waste of all kinds piled up on the trails,” Goren penned in an Enterprise Guest Commentary on Sept. 10. “Labor Day weekend brought more people to the Adirondack High Peaks than ever before. The situation was dangerous for drivers, hikers and wildlife.” The stories from busy weekends such as Labor Day weekend suggest the Adirondack High Peaks are at a critical juncture. On most every summer weekend this year, hundreds of cars
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Dozens of cars park along state Route 73 near the trailheads leading to Pitchoff, Cascade and Porter mountains in Keene on Labor Day weekend. (Enterprise photo — Justin A. Levine) were parked along miles of roadside throughout the Lake Placid and Keene area. Parking lots at The Garden in Keene Valley and the High Peaks Information Center were jampacked before the sun rose. And at the end of the trails these droves of people signed into, enormous parties of hikers crowded the state’s highest summits. Possibly the largest group was organized on August 25 through a post on the online social networking portal Meetup.com by a Montreal man. Two days later, the state Department of Environmental Conservation ticketed the group’s leaders after they led 67 people to the top of Algonquin Peak. Through it all, wilderness leaders across the state expressed concern about the amount of people not practicing proper Leave No Trace principles.
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 30, 2016
Hikers prepare for a hike at the trailhead of Cascade and Pitchoff mountains.
(Enterprise photo — Antonio Olivero)
“We’re seeing so many people who just don’t know what’s going on, and it’s frightening,” Woodworth said. “It’s like a trickle against a flood.” Both the numbers at the DEC’s trail registers and the numbers online bear out this
latest, and largest, explosion the Adirondacks has seen. Goren said six ADK summit stewards were on duty Labor Day weekend, atop Mount Marcy, Algonquin Peak, Wright Peak and Cascade. They counted talking to more than 3,000 people.
DEC statistics cited by the Adirondack Explorer magazine showed Cascade trailhead registrations more than doubled over the past decade, from 16,091 in 2006 to 33,149 in 2015 — and mostly in the last five years. The increase at the Van Hoevenberg trailhead, which leads to Marcy, Algonquin and other peaks, was 62 percent from 2005 to 2015’s total of 53,423. More people have officially completed their 46 in each of the seven years since 2009 than any other years prior. And in each year since 2009, that number has increased successively, to a record high of 560 inducted into 46er club in 2015. The social media age of Facebook and Instagram has seemingly only accelerated interest, the biggest example of which is a Facebook group called Aspiring Adirondack 46ers.
¯ YEAR IN REVIEW 2016 ¯ LAKE PLACID NEWS
The difference between the total number of official Adirondack 46ers through the end of 2015 and the more than 9,000 current members of the Facebook group is fewer than 400, as of Dec. 16. And on the Facebook group’s page, there are more than 27,500 photos posted. All those trends have some wondering if the traffic the High Peaks saw this summer was just the start of a bigger boom. “This summer it was like drinking out of a fire hose,” said Michael French, the administrator of the Facebook group. Efforts were made this year. Portable toilets were placed at five popular hiking trailheads in time for the summer season, thanks to a Volunteer Stewardship Agreement led by the AuSable River Association. In the days after Labor Day weekend, multiple state agencies worked together to launch a new website, www.adkalert.com, that focuses on alerting hikers about important information. And Christine Bourjade and her husband, Alex Radmanovich, put up $10,000 in August to start a Summit Steward Program endowment through the Adirondack Foundation. After a month, $42,000 was raised. These and other small steps may only be a band-aid for the larger problems the High Peaks Wilderness is withstanding in a time of unprecedented growth. With a new year, much discussion abounds about how much the state can help increase funding to provide adequate staffing, parking and perhaps even a permit system. But, most importantly, wilderness experts desire help to properly educate people as the numbers have become too large to handle. “We don’t want to stop people from coming to the Adirondacks,” Goren said.
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Two young lives lost too soon TOP 10 STORIES
By CHRIS KNIGHT Senior Staff Writer SARANAC LAKE — Local residents have suffered through tragedy before, but this year brought a new level of grief with the death of two young girls: 10year-old Gracee Jewtraw and 12-year-old Harlie Rascoe. Both were students in the same Saranac Lake Central School District building. Jewtraw had just finished fourth grade at Petrova Elementary School when she died on July 22 after a long battle with brain cancer. Rascoe, a seventh grader at Saranac Lake Middle School, was killed earlier this month in a snowmobile crash on her family’s property in Lake Clear. Her friend, 12-year-old Christina Harvey of Saranac Lake, was seriously injured in the same crash and remains hospitalized with a broken neck. Gracee Gracee was 8 years old and attending Lake Placid Elementary School in the fall of 2014 when she was diagnosed with a brain tumor. An initial surgery removed about 40 percent of it, then she started chemotherapy and radiation treatments. Spaghetti dinners and bake sales were held to raise money for her family’s expenses. By the spring of 2015, the cancer was in remission, and Gracee and her twin brother Noah moved to Saranac Lake to attend Petrova Elementary School. In September of last year, Gracee started fourth grade at Petrova. Unfortunately, however, the cancer returned over the winter in a new, more aggressive form. “It had changed drastically, to the point where, eventually, there was really nothing they could do,” said family friend Melissa Strack. Another round of chemotherapy treatments ensued, and the community rallied behind Gracee again. A Go Fund Me page was
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Members of the Harlem Globetrotters meet with Gracee Jewtraw, center, and her twin brother Noah Jewtraw in February at the Herb Brooks Arena in Lake Placid. (Enterprise photo — Antonio Olivero) started. There were more bake sales. In February, around Gracee and Noah’s 10th birthday, the kids were treated to front-row seats and a meet-and-greet with the Harlem Globetrotters at a game in Lake Placid. In May, a spring dance at Petrova turned into Gracee’s prom after her friend, Carsyn Maroun, asked her to be his date. Gracee wore a pink prom dress, and the pair were crowned king and queen of the dance. The last few weeks were incredibly difficult, Strack said, but Gracee kept fighting until she passed away peacefully with her family at her side. “I think she held on so long because she was so worried about others, mostly her mom, Andrea,” Strack
Petrova Elementary School student Phoebe Glennon holds up the luminary bag she decorated Sept. 9 in memory of Gracee Jewtraw. said. “One way I put it to Andrea was, she was put here for a reason. She had a job to do, and she more than did it. Her job was to teach us all about being humble and kind, courage and brav-
(Enterprise photo -- Chris Knight)
ery. Now she’s needed elsewhere. She’s too good for this earth.”
Harlie While Gracee’s passing was sad and tragic, at least
¯ YEAR IN REVIEW 2016 ¯ LAKE PLACID NEWS
her family and friends were able to say goodbye. That wasn’t the case for Harlie Rascoe, whose sudden death sent shockwaves of grief through the community. State police said Harlie was driving a 2002 SkiDoo sled in her driveway with her friend Christina as a passenger when the snowmobile struck a Ford F-350 that was parked in the driveway and then hit a tree. Harlie was rushed to Adirondack Medical Center in Saranac Lake where she was pronounced dead. An autopsy later found she died of multiple traumatic injuries. Christina, who reportedly broke every bone in her neck, was airlifted to the University of Vermont Medical Center in Burlington. Friends and family
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remembered Harlie as “always smiling” and a “beautiful soul.” “I never saw her without a smile,” wrote Sue Van Nortwick, Harlie’s teacher for two years. “She was one of the kindest young ladies I have ever known. I will miss seeing her beautiful, smiling face in the hallways.” “She was just like the sweetest person,” said Kailey Kipping, an eighthgrader who was on the school’s modified volleyball team with Rascoe. “She was always smiling, and she was always just really, really happy.” School officials assembled a crisis team and made counselors available to students when they returned to class. Sudents made cards containing get-well messages for Christina and condolences for Harlie’s family. GoFundMe pages launched for Harvey and Rascoe’s family quickly surpassed their initial goals. As of Dec. 15, they had raised a combined $26,000. Funeral services for Harlie were held Dec. 16 and 17. A fundraising dinner for both families was scheduled for Dec. 21 at the Bloomingdale Volunteer Fire Department. As of Dec. 15, Christina was in critical condition in UVM Medical Center’s Pediatric Intensive Care Unit. Her medical team was still weighing whether to attempt spinal surgery, put her through traction, or some combination of both, according to her aunt Melissa Kline. “We’re hopeful,” Kline said. “That’s the spirit we’re feeling right now.”
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 30, 2016
O
ur daily lives are made up of myriad little routines and commonplace incidents, most of which never make it into the newspapers or news broadcasts. In a small town like Keene, it sometimes seems as if nothing much happened at all in 2016. “I’m putting together a year in review story for the Enterprise, about Keene and Keene Valley,” I tell people. I explain that I’m looking for things that make a difference in their lives, but haven’t been in the news. “What?” people say, looking as if my question has thrown them off balance. “Did you put in about Joe Pete Wilson Jr. being appointed the new town supervisor? Oh never mind, that’s right, I read about that in the paper.” They proceed to hem and haw. “Let me get back to you on that,” they suggest, but then they don’t. Of course, there have been exceptions. Patrick Walsh, owner and barista of SubAlpine Coffee,
Mount Van Hoevenberg starts making snow LAKE PLACID — The Olympic Sports Complex Cross-Country Ski Center at Mount Van Hoevenberg made history on Dec. 1 when it manufactured its first pile of artificial snow. In late November, the state Olympic Regional Development Authority began leasing a machine called the Snow Factory, made by TechnoAlpin, a European company that pioneered the technology to make snow at cross-country ski facilities. In short, this is a game changer for ORDA and the village of Lake Placid as they market the ski center and region for community skiing, tourism and competition. That’s because the Snow Factory was designed to make snow at abovefreezing temperatures, which means Mount Van Hoevenberg officials — if they wanted — could make snow for about 7 kilometers of trails and open the same day as the Whiteface
Change comes slow in small towns Martha Sez
By Martha Allen
next to Keene Fitness in Keene Valley, gave me lots of ideas. His coffee shop opened in July 2015, and this past year has been establishing its own clientele and earning great reviews from Yelp, Sprudge, TripAdvisor and other critics who like good coffee. This year, Patrick has invested in a solar electric system, and he told me that a lot of other people in town have too, both for residences and businesses. Adirondack Realty is going solar. As it happens, Apex Solar Power, a solar energy provider, is even now setting up shop next door to Big Crow Trading in Keene, and will be holding their grand opening Jan. 3. I could see how solar energy
Mountain Ski Center. Until now, Mount Van Hoevenberg did not have snowmaking capabilities and relied solely on Mother Nature’s good graces to open its doors. Last winter was the breaking point. With aboveaverage temperatures for most of the season, the trails were only open for 37 days and skiers and competitions were directed to the trails at the Olympic Jumping Complex, which has snowmaking. The Snow Factory has taken the unpredictability aspect of weather out of the equation for cross-country skiing in Lake Placid. That, in itself, gives Mount Van Hoevenberg an edge over other ski centers that have traditional snowmaking systems, which require temperatures of 28 degrees or below to work. This is the only system of its kind in New York state and only one operating at a nordic ski center in North America. While the Boreal Mountain Resort in California installed a Snow Factory this past sum-
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 30, 2016
would be great in a place like Colorado, but looking out the window I didn’t see many hopeful signs for the Adirondacks. I learned that the solar energy collected during the summer goes to the power company NYSEG, and then NYSEG gives credits for it to be used against your electric bill during the year. Change is gradual — sometimes so gradual you can’t see it, kind of like watching grass grow — but there has been change. The Bark Eater Inn in Keene has reopened under new management. No horses anymore, but nice accommodations and trails. Speaking of trails, the hiking trails in Keene’s High Peaks have been visited by record numbers of visitors to the area, and there is controversy about harm to the environment versus the bonus of tourist dollars for the area. Also, there is talk about the need to educate people who want to explore the wilderness but underestimate its vicissitudes, rapid weather
MORE STORIES
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mer, it’s being used for the Woodward Tahoe summer camp. — By Andy Flynn
Leadership changes, big projects for Ad’k Health SARANAC LAKE — Adirondack Health ended 2016 with a new CEO and two big projects in the works. Chandler Ralph retired in June after 21 years leading the Tri-Lakes area’s network of hospitals, health care clinics and nursing homes. Her replacement, Sylvia Getman, was hired after a nationwide search. Most recently, Getman was the president and CEO of Aroostook Medical Center in Presque Isle, Maine. The changeover came as Adirondack Health prepared to start work on two new facilities at a combined cost of $33 million: a new medical health and fitness center in Lake Placid, on the Uihlein nursing home campus, and a new surgical services wing at AMC-Saranac Lake.
changes and other dangers. In 2016, the town of Keene had very little snow, until now, which suited some people but didn’t do much for our tourist economy. This winter is shaping up to be snowier. The summer of 2016 was warm and dry, and the wild berry crop was not good. Keene Valley was rife with black bears seeking food. They are hibernating now. This fall a little dog in Keene was grabbed by a coyote at 7:30 one morning while out for a walk with its owner. The owner tried to retrieve the dog, to no avail. This is one of the saddest pet stories I’ve heard. The bridges in Keene and Keene Valley are now usable and free of obstacles, which is great for motorists and particularly for The Mountaineer store and its employees and customers. I wrote about Lila, a Keene Valley dog who was a neighbor of the Mountaineer store until her recent death when she was hit by a
YEAR, IN BRIEF
This year Adirondack Health also finalized the sale of the Uihlein nursing home to Post Acute Partners, a Buffalo-based nursing home company. —Chris Knight
Tupper Lake finishes road construction projects TUPPER LAKE — The state Department of Transportation completed its $16.2 million reconstruction of Routes 3 and 30 in November this year, much to the excitement of businesses on Park St. in Tupper Lake. The project, which was started in the spring of 2015, included full reconstruction of the highway as well as replacement of water and sewer lines, storm drainage, curbs and sidewalks. It ran a mile long, beginning near the intersection of Route 30 and Queen Street, going through the intersection of Routes 3 and 30, and ending near 3/30’s intersections with McLaughlin and Pleasant avenues. The renovations led to
car. I have now learned that Lila was friends with the bridge workers who parked their vehicles and ate lunch across the state road from her house. This surprised me somewhat, since Lila was protective of what she considered to be her turf. The workers called her “the Mayor,” according to Lila’s owner. They said, “You can’t put down your lunch with the Mayor around,” but they liked her, even though she stole their food. Here are some comments about Lila from townspeople who knew her. “I’ll miss seeing her! She was not really friendly, but I was able to make friends with her to some extent.” “I was greeted with apathy every time I went to visit. She will be missed.” All the best to everyone in 2017, and next year I want you to keep a diary, so when I ask for the year in review next December you’ll be ready.
torn up portions of the road, causing traffic delays and detours as well as temporary business loss for some owners on the main street. Other challenges included flooding in May and early June on the Park Street hill by Chaney Avenue due to heavy rain and a lack of drainage, and finding and removing nine underground fuel storage tanks, each large enough to hold 1,000 gallons. “Now that (the community) sees the finished product, I think they’re pretty happy,” DOT Engineer Tom Maroun said, in November. “There were some inconveniences to everybody, but I think it came out pretty well with all the new lighting and all the aesthetic work that we did.” While Tupper Lake worked on their road construction, state DOT Commissioner Matthew Driscoll and a contingent of DOT managers and workers continued renovations to state Route 73 to guard against the next hurricane
¯ YEAR IN REVIEW 2016 ¯ LAKE PLACID NEWS
Irene. The department is building a $7.25 million bridge over the west branch of the AuSable River to be open for traffic next spring. It is one of eight bridges along the state Route 73 corridor that have received millions of dollars for upgrades to better handle storms and flooding. The bridge, which is across from the Olympic ski jumps, will be raised higher than where the previous bridges currently sit and are engineered to withstand storms and flooding caused by tropical storms. “The lessons learned (from Irene) is this,” Driscoll said at the time as he pointed to the ski jumps project. “People were stranded, access was cut off, water lines were broken because of the torrent of water. So when you’ve got so much hydrology activity going on the funneling of that coming into a confined space really is a recipe for disaster. That’s why we’re rebuilding.” — Kelly Carroll
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Highs and lows of North Country sports in 2016
By LOU REUTER Senior Sports Writer Sports is a big deal in the North Country, and 2016 provided another wealth of memorable and significant events. There were many accomplishments, and a few losses too. January brought significant success to members of the United States bobsled and skeleton team as Jaime Greubel Poser, Steven Holcomb and Annie O’Shea slid to gold medals on the same day as the World Cup tour made its annual stop at the mile-long run at Mount Van Hoevenberg, outside of Lake Placid. O’Shea kicked off two days of racing on Friday, Jan. 6 with a breakthrough triumph, as the 10-year veteran in the sport of skeleton notched the first World Cup win of her career. Following O’Shea’s victory, the Americans went on to a gold-medal sweep as Greubel Poser and Holcomb won the women’s and men’s two-person bobsled competitions. “I’ve won titles on the lower circuits, I’ve done all those things, but this is new to me,” said O’Shea, whose only other World Cup medal was a silver at La Plagne, France back in 2011. “It’s an amazing rush when you go through it. I’ve seen my teammates win, but I’ve never had that before. “Every single teammate was so happy for me,” O’Shea continued. “And then watching Jamie and Steven win, it’s just amazing. I’ve never been a part of a sweep like this.”
Bombers run with the big dogs February was a great month to be a Blue Bombers sports fan, as the the little school of Lake Placid was the biggest dog on the snow when the New York State Public High School Athletic Association nordic championships wrapped up two days of skiing on Tuesday,
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Dome in Syracuse, playing once in a game before there was a state championship and then returning to the dome to compete for a state title in 1995. Raymond’s final season was in 1998, when he guided the thenRedskins into the state semifinal round at Kingston’s Dietz Stadium.
The Lake Placid high school nordic ski team celebrates its state championship title in February at the Olympic Ski Jump Complex in Lake Placid. From the left are coach Bill Frazer, Henry McGrew, James Flanigan, Jesse Izzo, Scott Schulz and Patrick Broaderick. (Enterprise photo — Lou Reuter) Feb. 23 on the Olympic Ski Jump Complex trails. And at the same time, the small school of Saranac Lake took a pretty big bite out of the competition too. Sophomore Scott Schulz couldn’t have found a better way to celebrate his 16th birthday, as he nailed down the boys two-day combined nordic championship to lead the Blue Bombers boys to a successful defense of their state relay and team titles. Meanwhile, Saranac Lake’s Jackie Garso won the girls overall crown, and the Red Storm boys finished runner-up in the boys relay in an exciting sprint to the finish line. Schulz and Garso both won Monday’s individual races, and their combined titles were based on their performances in Tuesday’s relay. With a chance to win the 7.5-kilometer relay for the second straight year, the Blue Bombers made sure the race wouldn’t even be close. Schulz skied the first leg to give Lake Placid a slight edge, and Patrick Broderick and Henry McGrew fol-
lowed to lift their team to victory by nearly a minute and a half. Lake Placid topped the 17-team field with a finish time of 21 minutes, 15.6 seconds. As the Section VII A representative, Saranac Lake skiers Bryce Hartman, Witter Swanson and Ethan Wood were runners-up in 22:42.6, coming in less than a second ahead of third-place finisher Honeoye Falls. More Lake Placid studentathletes also had the opportunity to shine a week after the school earned the state ski title, as the Blue Bombers boys hockey team skated to its second consecutive Section VII title on March 1, and eventually went on to advance to the state final four tournament for the second year in a row. A few days before the Section VII ice hockey championship game, Lake Placid head coach Butch Martin said the title belonged to his team until somebody could take it away. Trailing 3-0, top-seeded Beekmantown did everything it could to snag that
crown from Lake Placid, but the Blue Bombers wouldn’t let that happen. On the ice sheet at SUNY Plattsburgh, the Blue Bombers scored three times in the first period and then held off the Eagles to claim a 3-2 victory and their second straight Section VII championship. Legendary football coach, teacher dies The sports world lost a legend on March 18 when John Raymond, a beloved football coach and longtime educator and administrator in the Saranac Lake Central School District died at his Saranac Lake home at the age of 73, after a battle with cancer. Raymond’s varsity head coaching career spanned 24 years over three different eras, and in that time, he established Saranac Lake as one of the most storied football programs in New York state. During Raymond’s coaching run, his teams racked up 13 championship seasons, including two years when Saranac Lake made appearances at the Carrier
¯ YEAR IN REVIEW 2016 ¯ LAKE PLACID NEWS
Golfing glory In May, golfers again brought glory to Saranac Lake, as the Red Storm captured the team title on the first day at the Section VII championships held on May 27. Saranac Lake head coach Chris Stevens said he really didn’t need to say much to his veteran golfers before they started playing in the opening round of the Section VII golf championships. The only words he told them were “Good luck,” and “You’re on your own.” As it turned out, Saranac Lake’s golfers did just fine in both respects as they captured the team title by an impressive 14 strokes over their next-closest competition — the Lake Placid Blue Bombers. In a team event that takes the lowest four scores posted by six players competing for each school, the Red Storm finished with a first-place total of 322, with the Blue Bombers taking second with 336 and Peru landing in third with a 340 total. The sectional title was the second in three years for Saranac Lake, which was paced by three seniors, an experienced junior and a ninth-grader who turned in the round of his life. That freshman, Zach Ellsworth, fired a three-over 75 on the layout at Saranac Inn to finish tied for first place heading into the second round of competition. Farrell races to more triathlon success On June 26, Tupper Lake’s Amy Farrell added another stellar result to her
impressive resume as a world-class triathlete. When it comes to shining on a big-time stage in the triathlon world, Farrell’s accomplishments are quite impressive. Two years ago, she won her age group at the Ironman World Championships in Hawaii, and last summer, Farrell won the overall women’s title racing in the Ironman Lake Placid. So it’s pretty hard to believe that the Tupper Lake resident who travels across the country for all kinds of endurance events had never claimed a 70.3 title in the race that has been held every summer in her hometown since 1983. Farrell was finally able to capture that crown, topping the women’s field in the Toughman Tupper Lake Tinman Triathlon. Racing on the same swim, bike and run courses where she has trained for years to prepare for other events, Farrell was the first women to reach the Tinman finish line, winning in 4 hours, 41 minutes and 29 seconds. “It’s been 15 years since I’ve done the full Tinman. I’ve always done the sprint,” Farrell said. “The last couple of years have been kind ºof high pressure for me and I haven’t been able to fit this 70.3 in. This year, I don’t really have any big, big races on my schedule, and that’s why I was able to be out here today. I’ve been planning to do the Tinman for a while but I didn’t sign up until a week ago. I wanted to win this, and I’m so happy that I did.” Competing in the 35-39 age group, Farrell turned in the fourth-fastest swim time in the women’s field, and then blew away the competition on the bike and run. She finished 11th overall among the 307 participants taking on the Tinman’s 70.3-mile distance, and crossed the line with almost 28 minutes to (Continued on Page 15)
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 30, 2016
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spare over Liverpool’s Kerzia Marchant, who was the women’s overall runnerup in 5:08:13.4. Another area triathlete made the most of her opportunity to shine as Elizabeth Izzo did more than just reach the finish line competing in her first attempt at the Ironman Lake Placid’s 140.6-mile distance on July 22. Izzo turned in an incredible performance in her first Ironman-distance triathlon, finishing in 11:15:09. That time was good enough to win the 18- to 24-year-old age group, which came along with an automatic qualification for the iconic Ironman world championship race in Kona, Hawaii. A little more than two months later, Izzo went on to finish the course in Hawaii in 12 hours, 32 minutes. “Hawaii is an incredible place, the scenery is incredible, the whole landscape is so unique,” Izzo said of her first trip to Hawaii. “I’d love to go back again some day. My goal was to finish feeling good, and I was feeling good. I felt good the whole race, despite the winds on the bike, being stronger than I ever have experienced in my life.” More Ironman to come July also brought one of the biggest sports stories of the year to the North Country with the announcement that a 70.3 Ironman race will be coming to Lake Placid beginning in September 2017. The official announcement was made that the Olympic Village will host an
Ironman brand 70.3-mile race on Sept. 10, 2017, in addition to the full Ironman triathlon that spans 140.6 miles. Jim McKenna, CEO of the Regional Office of Sustainable Tourism, which took the lead role for the area in working out a deal with Ironman, said an agreement was put in place to hold Lake Placid’s newest triathlon annually through 2021. He also said the full distance Ironman Lake Placid had been signed up for another five years. That race has traditionally been held each year in Lake Placid on the fourth Sunday in July. Chance of a lifetime In August, one of the most talented young golfers in the Tri-Lakes found the opportunity of a lifetime drop into his lap. During the previous month, Art Griffin’s emotions as an aspiring golfer went from his biggest heartbreak to the most joyful moment of his young career. The heartbreak for the talented 21-year-old from Lake Placid occurred on July 14, when he came just one stroke away from qualifying for the 2016 United States Amateur Championships, which were held at the legendary Oakland Hills Country Club in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. The elation came Thursday, Aug. 12 when Griffin found out he would be heading to Oakland Hills after all when an alternate spot opened up for the most prestigious amateur golf tournament in the world. Griffin could have nailed down a berth in this year’s U.S. Amateur Championships
TOP SPORTS STORIES
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Legendary football coach John Raymond and player Matt Burns look on as the clock winds down on Saranac Lake’s 1998 football season during a state semifinal loss to Edgemont at Dietz Stadium in Kingston. It marked the final game Raymond coached after a 25-year career. when he played in New York state’s qualifying tournament at Colgate University in a competition that included 36 holes in one day. He fired a 69 in the first round to take a one-shot lead, but couldn’t hold on as two Canadians — Hugo Bernard and Blair Hamilton — finished tied for the top spot after the final round to punch their tickets to Oakland Hills. The situation changed Aug. 12 when Bernard, a Quebec golfer, won the Canadian men’s championship to gain an automatic berth in the U.S. tournament, which opened the door for Griffin, who had just wrapped his four-round run the same day in the New York State Men’s Amateur Golf Championship held
Aug. 9-11 at the Mohawk Valley Golf Club. Tri-Lakes title towns Each year in late October and early November, high school teams compete for sectional titles in their respective sports, and 2016 saw Lake Placid land a pair of championships and Saranac Lake two more The Blue Bombers crowns were both repeat feats as Lake Placid notched its second boys sectional cross country title in a row while the boys soccer team nailed down an impressive fifthstraight championship. Meanwhile, Saranac Lake won the Section VII, Class C football title for the sixth time in the past seven years, and the Red Storm boys cross
(Enterprise photo — Lou Reuter)
country team captured first place in Class C at the state qualifying meet to earn a trip to the state championships. Golden sliders The year wrapped up with impressive showings for both United States luge, bobsled and skeleton athletes in World Cup racing in Lake Placid on the mile-long track at Mount Van Hoevenberg. The action kicked off on Dec. 2 and 3 with luge, with the bobsled and skeleton athletes then hitting the ice Dec. 16 and 17. Chants of “U-S-A, U-S-A” filled the air as fat snowflakes began to fall in earnest on the afternoon of Dec. 2. These were not generic calls for patriotism, but a genuine show of affec-
tion as American luger Tucker West slid across the finish line to win the World Cup men’s singles gold medal by just 0.006 seconds. Watching on the monitors, the crowd of people around the finish line at Mount Van Hoevenberg made audible gasps, countered by cries of joy, as West gained and lost the lead multiple times during his second run in the race. But when all was said and done, West was given a bouquet of flowers, which he quickly handed off to his mom at the end of the first day of luge action. “That was great racing,” West said. “I wish I could have pulled ahead a little bit more, but hey, a win’s a win.” West was sitting in the first spot after a stellar first run which put him in the lead over Russian slider Semen Pavlichenko by 0.008 seconds. Pavlichenko grabbed the number one spot on his second run, but with West coming down the track last in the second run, it was all up to the American to win or lose. American and Saranac Lake native Chris Mazdzer was bumped off the podium, missing the bronze by less than a tenth of a second. Later that day, two more Americans turned in a historic finish for their nation by earning the first podium spot in six years in men’s double luge. U.S. lugers Matt Mortensen and Jayson Terdiman took the silver medal in the second race of the Viessmann World Cup series on their home track, falling just 0.163 seconds shy of gold medal winners Toni Eggert and Sascha Benekin of Germany.
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FRIDAY, DECEMBER 30, 2016
¯ YEAR IN REVIEW 2016 ¯ LAKE PLACID NEWS
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TOP OUTDOORS STORIES
YEAR
APA, TNC transition under new leadership OF THE
By JUSTIN A. LEVINE Outdoors Writer The Adirondack Park is unlike any other place on Earth, with people living, working and recreating in the largest preserved area in the eastern U.S. And as such, outdoors news can dominate the headlines. 2016 was a year of changes, some contentious, some not.
APA board members In July, several appointments were made by Governor Andrew Cuomo to the state Adirondack Park Agency board. Sherman Craig, who had been a regular board member, was approved by the state senate to be chairman of the APA board after Lani Ulrich announced she would not seek another term at the helm. While Craig moved to the chair, three new board members were appointed, and one current board member was reappointed. Saranac Lake resident and Franklin County legislator Barb Rice was added to the APA board, while Elk Lake Lodge owner John Ernst was also appointed. Chad Dawson, who was a professor at SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry rounded out the new make-up of the board. Erstwhile APA member Dick Booth also left the board this year, with the June meeting being his and Ulrich’s last. The Nature Conservancy Another big change in the
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the Senate approved it but it died in the Assembly. The Senate approved it again in June, and an Assembly version is now in committee. The bill would essentially just add the word “moose” to current hunting regulations.
New APA board members, from left, John Ernst, Barb Rice, Chad Dawson and incoming APA Chairman Sherman Craig smile at their first board meeting in July. who’s-who of Adirondack movers and shakers came when Mike Carr announced that he was leaving the Adirondack Chapter of The Nature Conservancy to become the head of the Adirondack Land Trust full time. Carr had been leading both groups, but with the sale of the Boreas Ponds tract to the state, Carr said it was time to move over to the land trust full time. “I’m excited about it; I really am,” Carr told the Enterprise in October. “We just finished the Boreas Ponds sale to the state, and it
just feels like the right moment to begin to take some opportunities for the land trust forward into building it.” No announcement has been made on who will replace Carr at the Nature Conservancy. Group-size ticket Two Canadians were given tickets at the end of August for violating the state’s group-size laws when they brought two busses with a total of 67 people to the Adirondak Loj outside of Lake Placid. The Loj is owned and
(Enterprise photo — Justin A. Levine)
operated by the Adirondack Mountain Club, which has no enforcement responsibilities. But ADK Executive Director Neil Woodworth said ADK staff did try to warn the group that it was too large. “Our HPIC manager did speak with one of the Canadian bus drivers and warned them that the group was too large, and they might get ticketed by DEC,” he said. “They were warned by at least our employee. “We do our best to educate people on the rules, but we can’t apprehend them.”
¯ YEAR IN REVIEW 2016 ¯ LAKE PLACID NEWS
Moose hunting bill Despite the relative rarity of moose in the Adirondacks, the animals are growing in numbers. The state Department of Environmental Conservation is working on determining the number of moose in the Park through various tracking studies. A member of the state senate introduced a bill that would direct the DEC to develop hunting regulations for moose. Sen. Patrick Gallivan, a Republican from Elma outside of Buffalo, introduced the bill early last year, and
Algonquin rescue Local news here sometimes hits the national stage, but nothing this year made quite the splash nationally as the rescue of two lost hikers earlier this month. Blake Alois, 20, and his girlfriend, Madison Popolizio, 19, both from Niskayuna, were found by state Department of Environmental Conservation Forest Ranger Scott Van Laer and volunteer climber Don Mellor around 11 a.m. near Algonquin’s 5,114-foot summit on Dec. 13. Alois and Popolizio were suffering from hypothermia but otherwise managed to survive their ordeal unscathed. Rangers warmed them and hoisted them from the mountainside by helicopter. Popolizio released a statement through Adirondack Medical Center in Saranac Lake, where the pair was brought after being rescued. “I cannot even begin to articulate how unbelievably grateful I am to the rescue group who found us,” she said, “and to the people who saved us, and to the people who never gave up looking for us and kept us in their prayers.”
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 30, 2016