More Review Time!

 ...........Applications for party status, which Shandaken seems poised to still decide this week, were also extended until that date. An issues conference on all such claims will be held on May 25 in Margaretville.
            At the February 3 DEC hearing at Onteora,16 people spoke against the project while only two spoke in its favor.  DEC Administrative Law Judge Richard Wissler, citing the weather, closed the meeting after three hours- just as the Shandaken meeting was getting underway.          Many project opponents continued to take aim at Crossroads' DEIS, alleging distortions and inaccuracies, while other opponents stressed their love of the region and their conviction that the project would damage the environment, the community, and the local economy. The two proponents, both employees of Catskill Corners, the shopping, lodging, and entertainment complex owned by Gitter, expressed confidence that the resorts would bring increased economic opportunities.
            Ted Wright, the new CEO of Catskill Corners, said he has been in the area for six months and noted how, as the founder of Regents Hotels International, he experienced public outcry that preceded construction of a similar development in Carmel, California, where, he said, business has since prospered as a result of the project.
            John Kain of Phoenicia responded to Wright, saying, "I grew up in California. Carmel was a quaint town. Now even a millionaire can't buy a house there."
            Jim Sofranko of West Shokan replied to the previous hearing's comment by Chamber of Commerce president Ward Todd, who said the development will bring back the prosperity enjoyed during the tourism boom of the twentieth century. "Since when does supply create demand?" asked Sofranko. "There were many reasons the tourism industry died. One of them was the invention of the airplane. I have not seen an overflow into local hotels from an overbooked, No Vacancy' Catskill Corners." 
            Shideh Lennon of Mt. Tremper said even the DEIS states that the resort would "compete head-on with local businesses," since it will include shops and a wide range of dining facilities, from snackbars to restaurants, comprising 1,120 seats.
            Kate Woodruff of West Hurley, owner of a furniture shop, objected to the DEIS' statement that the resort is designed to complement the Belleayre ski area, calling it the region's "key destination" and stating that the area suffers economically when Belleayre is closed. "Then why does my business do best in the summer?" asked Woodruff, calling the project proposal "an evasion of civil responsibility."
            Several speakers expressed concern about local taxes going up to pay for increased services such as police and fire protection, while tax breaks for the resort mean it will not pay its full share of taxes until 2025. Others suggested that if Gitter is truly concerned about the region, as he states, he should put his money into projects that will benefit the communities, such as museums, performing arts centers, nature preserves with hiking trails, support of small businesses, and similar things.
            As for the same evening's Crossroads' presentation, Cross said he didn't call it off because, "the Crossroads people said they'd still be here." 
            "I got to see some larger scale maps with more topography," noted the supervisor, a career surveyor. "They also gave us an index to their environmental statement and a table of contents!"
            Planning Board chairman Beth Waterman, who asked a majority of the questions at the two and a half hour meeting, said she, "Learned a little bit. The problem is that with so many pages, it's hard to determine if what's new is significant and whether something important has been omitted."
            To help with such difficulties, Waterman said she asked for a red-lined copy of the DEIS that would highlight changes from previous drafts and was told, privately after the meeting, that one would be made available.
            In addition to Cross and Waterman, questions were also asked by planner Charles Frasier, a local contractor, and Kathy Nolan, a member of the Zoning Board of Appeals.
            "Listening to the Crossroads Ventures' consultants give superficial and vague answers after having just come from the hearing in Boiceville, it seemed to me that the public knows more about the DEIS than the consultants do," said Judy Wyman of Friends of Catskill following the meeting. "This is the third time that Crossroads Ventures has done a presentation on its project and refused to allow the public to participate."
            Wyman, who called the driving conditions Tuesday night "horrific," questioned Cross' decision to hold a meeting of such importance in such inclement weather.
            Even Waterman characterized the conditions as "white knuckle," noting the difficulties it took to get the planning board's traffic consultant to come all the way from Hartford, CT to attend the meeting.
            Cross said on Wednesday that he would consider holding yet another presentation by the Crossroads' folks in the future.
            "It depends on whether we have any more questions," he said. "And of course, it would depend on whether they make such an offering to us."

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 For Love Of Nature

            Chase's family was in the Philadelphia area at the time, with a hardscrabble farm, bought by his grandfather in 1920, where the family compound now sits. He recalls, in detail, spending all his summers in the Catskills, wandering the forests and creeks and walking, when he could, to Woodstock where an aunt, Carmelita Hinton, lived in a home known as Camelot, later owned by Bob Dylan. (She went on to found the notable Putney School in Vermont). At the time, the area was a rich mixture of 19th century rural lifestyle and a smattering of the nation's best and brightest artists, musicians, writers, scientists and thinkers. You can feel the presence of such fertile soil in the current breadth and depth of Chase's interests, intellect, and continuing sense of passion.
            His father was an engineer, an uncle was one of the leading lights of what would become known as the Manhattan Project, which eventually produced the atom bomb. A bright boy from a very bright family, Chase spent a year at the University of Arizona, then still something of a frontier school. He went on to Yale and found himself drawn towards botany and genetics, a burgeoning field at the time.
            Kenny, originally a Compton, came from what was considered the nation's top academic family in the first half of the last century. One uncle was president of MIT, another of Washington University in St. Louis, the third head of Washington State. She went to Wooster College in Ohio, a place her family has had close contacts with over the years.
            Mutual friends brought the two back together. Sherret remembers how people would ask if he knew Kenny, and he'd always think how he just wished to know her more. Kenny kept hearing about Sherret and remembering the first time she'd met him, years earlier.
            Finally the two got together at a friend's wedding; Kenny invited Sherret out to her family's farm in Northern Virginia the next Sunday to which the young man came, only to find himself volunteered to escort an older man out to some fields to look at some brand-new hybrid corn. The man just happened to be Henry Wallace, the Vice President.
            Store this information for later∑
            "June 29, 1941," Chase quips, remembering the exact date.
            He goes on to talk about how he went on to graduate studies at Cornell University only to volunteer for the war, where he served in the 15th Air Force out of Italy. By then, he and Kenny were married.
            "After our third date we knew we were going to get married," he recalls, looking to his wife's smile.
            She tells of her first trip to the Catskills to meet his mother, and being picked up from the Kingston train station on a foggy night and driven up Chase Mountain from Kenosta Lake, thinking the whole world, "What in the world is happening?" The next morning, clear-skied, the couple walked over Winchell's Notch, at the place they still call "Two Views," and Sherret gave Kenny a ring, asking her to share his life. Later that evening, he says, the couple went to visit an old family friend in Woodstock who had long thought of the Chase as a potential husband for her own daughter. But then when she saw Kenny, he says, she whispered to him, "Don't let her go," and he said no, no, he never would.
            The wedding came quick after Sherret's call-up, and involved everyone going to his training camp in Savannah, where the newlyweds then lived sic weeks until he went overseas.
            After the war, they made home for a year in Houston, where he had to finish out his service. A first daughter was born. Then on to Cornell for a year and a half where a son came along. A first job was offered teaching in Iowa, where the family grew to 5 children over the next seven years. Then further jobs, in teaching and research, in Illinois, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Oswego, NY, and California before the couple finally retired to the one place that served as constant during their years of work and travel∑ in the Catskills.
            Chase, through his career, ended up becoming one of the leading authorities, and researchers, in the hybridization of corn, one of the "green revolutions" that has changed the world as we know it in the last half-century. At the same time, he also served as one of the founders of the Catskill Center for Conservation and Development, and has been instrumental in numerous other local and national efforts, from the continuing drive for a long-planned Catskill Park interpretive center in Mt. Tremper to new work, with former Vice President Wallace's daughter, to revive the American Chestnut.
            Kenny says, with a grin, "We've lived in twelve different places and it's the wife that makes the home when you move."
            Yet she has nothing but praise for the many moves her family's made, and all the places they've lived.
            "We always appreciated wherever we were as though we were going to love there the rest of our lives," she says, soberly. As a result, she adds, the couple have a network of close friends, dating back 60 years and more, all over the world.
            "Throughout it all, though, this was always our real home, right here in the Catskills," says Sherret, whose commentary about the proposed Belleayre Resort as an unwanted "shining city on the hill" has now reverberated beyond the local scene onto National Public Radio and the New York Times. "All of our children grew up with a similar feeling."
            So what about their recent appearance, Kenny's standing with her husband in support, and the couple's beliefs about the region?
            Another story, both agree. After all, it's Valentines.
            Do they celebrate?
            No, the couple says.
            "But you know," Sherret adds, "This has worked out pretty well."
            At which Kenny smiles again.

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