The resulting fire charred timbers, blew out a window and burned a hole in the former barn’s roof, and there was considerable water damage to sheetrock in the process of dousing the blaze. The stills and other production equipment did not sustain serious damage.
Since the fire occurred, several of the distillery’s near neighbors have demanded of town officials that the facility be shut down, claiming that it still represents a “danger zone” and questioning why its owners had not been required to undergo full application review by the Planning Board when the business was first opened. As it turns out, the regulation of farm distilleries falls under the jurisdiction of the New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets, not local zoning laws. But the Town Board promised to stay in close communication with Gardiner’s code compliance officer, who is monitoring Tuthilltown Spirits’ renovation process. Significant safety upgrades are already being implemented at the facility, where the stills have been moved to the ground floor, and both production and tours have resumed.
Another “hot” issue in 2012 in which local zoning regulations are trumped by state law was the proposed Samuel F. Pryor III Shawangunk Gateway Campground. The Mohonk Preserve, the Palisades Interstate Park Commission (PIPC) and the American Alpine Club plan to build a 50-campsite public facility, including a pavilion for educational presentations, on Route 299, west of the existing Multiple Use Area campsite. An ad hoc group of neighbors of the site, alarmed by the prospect of noisy, alcohol-fueled late-night partying by campers, has turned out at a series of Town Board and Planning Board meetings at which the plan was discussed.
Since the lead applicant on the project is PIPC, an interstate public agency, Town officials have been advised by legal counsel that their hands are tied in terms of exercising any jurisdiction and making local zoning regulations stick. Town supervisor Carl Zatz and Town Board member Warren Wiegand tried to mediate between the opposing sides and help negotiate a Memorandum of Agreement stipulating what enforcement measures neighbors could take in the event of public nuisances arising at the campsite, but no agreement was reached. In late summer the project’s developers brought their final site plan before the Planning Board in what they termed a “courtesy visit,” announcing that work would be underway by spring of 2013. The year ended with the Town Board acceding to the neighbors’ last-ditch plea to write a letter to PIPC requesting that it voluntarily undergo the Planning Board’s standard review process.
Sparks flew, tempers flared and rhetoric escalated at Planning Board meetings all year long as that body debated an application by Charles and Mary Beth Majestic to build a single-family home on their landlocked property in the highly protected SP-3 zone on North Mountain Road. The main bone of contention was the proposed driveway, which exceeds half a mile in length, traverses steep and erosion-prone terrain and bisects the properties of several unhappy neighbors. Supporters and opponents of the project alike turned out in force while the Planning Board squabbled over technical zoning code questions such as whether the site was a Type 2 or an “unlisted” action under the State Environmental Quality Review Act.
The contentious atmosphere peaked in late summer, when the Planning Board submitted the Majestics’ application to Gardiner’s Environmental Conservation Commission (ECC), allowing its members, several of whom were out of town, less than a month to review it. At the next meeting the ECC returned what it called “the most limited of comments” and demanded more time to conduct a thorough analysis and make detailed recommendations. But the Planning Board plowed on without further ECC input, declaring the applicants’ Conservation Analysis complete in September and finally voting to grant a Special Permit and Site Plan Approval in November, to the jubilation of the applicants and their supporters in the community. Unless local environmental groups decide to mount an Article 78 legal action against the decision, driveway excavation and construction will presumably go forward as soon as weather permits.
Finally, the development controversy that dominated public discussion in Gardiner in 2011 spent much of 2012 behind closed doors and ended, like the world in T. S. Eliot’s poem “The Hollow Men,” “not with a bang, but a whimper.” At the beginning of the year, the proposal to construct a cell tower by Wireless Edge on Town Hall property seemed on course for success, having gained its requisite variances from the Zoning Board of Appeals and conditional Site Plan Approval from the Planning Board and Town Board. But two issues raised by local environmentalists and aviators proved its undoing.
The applicant found itself stymied by the requirement under Gardiner zoning law to obtain specific assurances on Federal Aviation Administration letterhead that the adjacent Gardiner Airport did not need any safety modifications to the proposed tower. And perhaps more lethally, town officials realized that they had not exercised due diligence in the process of issuing a Negative Declaration on the applicant’s Environmental Assessment Form in 2011. Procedurally, an official delineation of nearby wetlands should have been obtained from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) first. Wireless Edge’s efforts to obtain documentation of the delineation got bogged down, one might say, with DEC officials reluctant to issue such approval retroactively.
In any event, in March it was revealed that the owners of the Gardiner Airport had served the town and Wireless Edge with an Article 78 action protesting the approvals, and most of the Town Board’s subsequent discussion of the issue in 2012 occurred in closed executive session. Finally, in November, the Town Board announced that Wireless Edge had sent a letter to Gardiner officials withdrawing its application to build a cell tower on the Town Hall site and waiving all previous approvals. The company has indicated that it intends to pursue plans to build the much-needed tower elsewhere in or near the hamlet. It appears most likely at this juncture that the new site will be on privately owned land, generating no lease income for the Town of Gardiner — but probably considerably less controversy as well.
