Talk of Talk
In recent months there’s been a spate of stories on the “news” that for the first time since 1999, Crossroads Ventures’ Dean.Gitter is finally prepared to talk about a smaller Belleayre Resort project. That of course, is something The Phoenicia Times has been advocating for many years. But to hear Mr.Gitter tell it, the problem is nobody’s willing to talk to him. Were it true, that would indeed be sad. In fact though, over the years there have been many such approaches and discussions. Several years back, Mr.Gitter and I even gave it a shot one afternoon over my kitchen table. Didn’t go anywhere, but neither has anyone else gotten anywhere on the subject with Mr. Gitter. Of course the project hasn’t gone anywhere either in the same period, except into that apparent place between limbo and freefall.
But as the project’s circumstances along with state politics has changed, hardly anyone’s surprised Mr. Gitter is now ready to talk about a reasonably sized project. After submitting arguably the most problematical environmental impact study in state history, followed by a judge’s ruling that 12 major subject areas were inadequately addressed and must now move toward trial-like adjudication, things could hardly seem to be headed further south for the project than they are at this point.
The reality is that submitting “alternative” or scaled down versions of the project isn’t a conciliatory gesture on the developer’s part, they’ve been COMPELLED to present such plans by the judge overseeing the project’s review. So after five and a half years of refusing to comply with SEQRA law on the subject of alternatives, they’ve finally decided to obey the judge’s order. But instead of just DOING IT, instead of simply submitting a scaled-down plan, the developer’s now taken another tack. He’s insisting that BEFORE they submit what the judge has required, that those who’ve been opposing the mega-scale version of the project must first agree to accept an alternate plan, worked out with him, in advance. It is frankly, an attempt to avoid adjudicating the only plan ever presented to the state and an odd twist of the SEQRA process, which Mr. Gitter used to champion but now insists is broken. Which is presumably, why it has to be circumvented now.
Not incidently, these theoretical discussions, in the world according to Mr. Gitter, do come with at least one precondition. Just about anyone holding elected office is welcome to join in now. In fact the less involved they’ve been, the less they actually know about the project, the better. The main thing is the people who do understand the issues best, the lawyers who’ve been dealing with them all these years, they can’t come. They’re not allowed at the table. It’s a condition so ridiculous that Catskill Preservation Coalition head Tom Alworth hardly had to think much before saying No Thanks. And their lead counsel Marc Gerstman summed up the situation nicely. “His lawyer has the phone number of our lawyer, who would be me. But the phone is not ringing. If he really wants to talk, that’s all he has to do, call.”
But so far nobody’s calling CPC. These of course are the same people who for years Mr. Gitter has been attacking and insulting, calling them “bastards,” “jihadists”, “pointy-headed nerds from cyberspace,” and so on. They are however, part of a public, state-run review process, having earned the right to participate through years of work. But the irony is their blessing isn’t needed for the developer to resubmit any alternate plans it wishes to. And if such plans are submitted, they’ll still have a lengthy SEQRA process to go through, which CPC, like the developer, will continue to be a party to.
Where all this leaves us, or the project, is hard to say. If a major downscaling of the project is really in the works, the Belleayre Resort may have a future. But you all remember the first and much heralded downsizing of the project in 2001. That was when the number of golf courses dropped from 3 to 2, but the number of proposed guest rooms rose from 742 to its current level of nearly 1,300. So far what we’re reading and hearing lately seems heavy on calculated public relations value and light on earnestness, but that could change with a phone call. So we do remain hopeful progress can be made.
One thing that’s not helpful though, is when some of our regional news media seem to cover the subject with limited objectivity. It’s not our place to take issue with how anyone else reports the news, but we are troubled by the way our region’s only daily newspaper, long the project developer’s most stalwart supporter in the press, has been handling the matter of late. We see our job as to provide both solid reporting and appropriately critical analysis of events. We sincerely hope that in time, every newspaper in the region will drift back that way.
Like many people, we continue to try and balance our personal misgivings about the proposed project’s current scale against some possible measure of public good for a far smaller project. That we believe, is what the SEQRA process is designed to sort out and we encourage all parties to continue to work within its framework. It does seem to work everywhere else in the state, just as we believe it ultimately will here. BP