The Terramor project proposed for the Woodstock/Saugerties border wasn’t the only glamping operation in the mid-Hudson to hit a wall last week. At its February 7 meeting, the Gardiner Town Board, unanimously and without any further debate, approved a resolution declaring the Awosting Club’s campground application “defective and incomplete and…otherwise improperly made and rejected.” The lengthy resolution made a painstakingly detailed case for the rejection, extensively citing Town zoning law, in an apparent effort to deflect any plans by the applicant for a lawsuit.
The Awosting Club property, located at 50 Camp Ridge Road at the foot of the Shawangunk cliffs and straddling the Town of Gardiner’s most rigorously protected zoning districts, was once home to a Girl Scout camp known as Camp Ridge-Ho. It had been acquired in the 1970s by John Atwater Bradley, adjoining a large tract of land on the flanks of the Gunks that he unsuccessfully tried to turn into a luxury housing development in the early 2000s. Gardiner environmentalists rallied against that project in what came to be called the Save the Ridge campaign.
Bradley’s consortium of investors ultimately fell apart; the land was put up for auction; in 2006 the Open Space Institute and the Trust for Public Land acquired the property and subsequently sold it to New York State. The acreage known as the Awosting Reserve, which includes Palmaghatt Falls, is now part of the Minnewaska State Park Preserve.
But the Bradley family held onto the parcel now called the Awosting Club. In recent years John Bradley’s daughter Camilla rebuilt the platforms along the Palmaghatt Kill that used to house Girl Scout tents, topped them with “GeoDome” structures and rented them out to glampers year-round, along with the nearby Okawega Lodge, built as a hunting lodge in the 1890s.
In 2020, local activists including the Friends of the Shawangunks got wind of construction in progress on the long-neglected tent sites and began complaining to Gardiner officials, fearing environmental damage to the mountain stream and sensitive talus slope habitats nearby. Visits to the site by Gardiner building inspector/code enforcement officer Andy Lewis triggered a long standoff in which documents that Town requested from Camilla Bradley failed to materialize: a site-plan application, a campground license application, an Environmental Assessment Form, a map or plan that shows the location of the campsites relative to the boundaries of the SP-2 and SP-3 protected zoning districts.
For her part, Bradley took the position that the campground was a “preexisting nonconforming use” that should be “grandfathered in,” and that no permits were necessary. According to a letter sent to the Town Board by her attorney, Allan B. Rappleyea of Corbally, Gartland and Rappleyea, LLP, on the same day that the Board was to vote on the resolution announcing her intent to withdraw it, the primary basis for the grandfathering argument is an e-mail sent by Lewis to Bradley on June 10, 2020. This message was attached to the text of Section 200-45.3C of the recently revised Town zoning code, which governs “existing campgrounds. I believe you fall into this category,” Lewis wrote.
In recent months, the Town Board has been meeting extensively in executive session with David N. Yaffe of Hamburger, Maxson & Yaffe, LLP, an attorney specifically retained to examine the finer details of the Awosting Club application and the portions of the Town code that apply to the situation. One conclusion drawn as a result of this process, incorporated into the resolution adopted last week, refuted the grandfathering claim, stating, “any preexisting nonconforming use of the Subject Property was limited to seasonal canvas tents and a Lodge facility, both of which appear to have been subsequently voluntarily discontinued for at least one year, thus losing any such status.” It was noted in the resolution that Bradley had claimed a STAR exemption from property tax on the Okawega Lodge for 2019, signifying that it was being used as a private residence rather than rental lodging that year.
The fact that the new GeoDomes are semi-permanent and equipped for year-round use not only means that they are a “change in use” from the former seasonal canvas tents and therefore can’t be considered a preexisting use, but also that the Awosting Club no longer falls under the Town’s definition of a “campground,” but is rather a “lodging facility,” according to the resolution. Such year-round use is not permitted except as explicitly approved in the zoning for a Campground Floating District, like the one currently being sought by Lazy River, LLC for the Yogi Bear Jellystone Park campground closer to the Gardiner hamlet. The resolution also declared the GeoDomes “illegally erected without authorization and required permits.”
Also cited in the resolution as compelling reasons to reject the application were the failure to include an Environmental Assessment Form, as required under New York’s State Environmental Quality Review Act, and the requested “map/plan disclosing the location of the zoning districts that bisect the Subject Property and the locations of the subject alleged campground uses.” It was also noted that “the Application has not established or indicated a compliant and adequate water supply system, sanitation system and stormwater drainage system.” A link to the full text of the resolution can be found online at www.townofgardiner.org/town-board-agenda, under OLDER AGENDA 2/7/14.
The resolution was adopted with little fanfare, though the controversy over the Awosting Club has been raging for nearly three years now. Public comment during the “privilege of the floor” segment at the end of the meeting was lively, however. Several Awosting Club neighbors spoke up in favor of the project. Bradley and her attorney Rappleyea were both in attendance, and criticized the content of the resolution as “misinformation.” “You’re literally fighting a ghost: the ghost of Save the Ridge,” Bradley said. “You’re not dealing with a developer. You’re not dealing with my father.”
Local environmentalists who have long opposed the new construction at the Awosting Club applauded the resolution and urged swift enforcement measures to shut the operation down. “We hope the Town Board will act swiftly to restore the site,” said Emily Svenson of Friends of the Shawangunks (FOS). “Will there be a ‘cease and desist’ order to enjoin this illegal activity? This resolution is the first step in a process.” FOS president John Hayes agreed, calling for a “full-throated discussion of how to prevent a situation like this from happening again.”
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