For the first time in nearly a year, Mohonk Preserve, Inc. came before the Town of New Paltz Planning Board to discuss a site plan and special use application relating to a farmhouse on the property.
In a discussion primarily led by Ryan Weitz, a senior staff engineer with planning and consulting firm Barton & Loguidice, D.P.C., the planning board heard about redevelopment plans for the farmhouse, which are dependent upon preservation.
Brook Farmhouse is a 2,850-sq. ft. 19th century, two-story wood frame house with basement and one-story addition sitting in farm fields on the 836-acre preserve acquired for permanent protection a decade ago. Last year, plans were announced to rehabilitate and renovate the farmhouse into the new home of the Daniel Smiley Research Center in honor of the late conservationist and founding member of the Mohonk Preserve.
In a June 30, 2022 letter to Kevin Case, president and CEO of Mohonk Preserve, Inc., John Orfitelli, chair of the Town of New Paltz Historic Preservation Commission, expressed support for the plans.
“The Town of New Paltz Historic Preservation Commission continues to work closely with the Mohonk Preserve to assure changes to structures and the landscape are in keeping with the extraordinary legacy established by the Smiley family,” wrote Orfitelli. “Plans for the Brook Farmhouse project have been reviewed by the commission, which concurs with the changes, as well as the future use as a center for education and research…For these reasons, I am pleased to provide this letter of support for this project. Good luck with your application and keep up the good work!”
Close to a year after the project last came before the planning board, developers are asking for one comprehensive SEQR (State Environmental Quality Review) for the planned two phases of the project, as opposed to focusing on the first phase. Weitz explained that was because phase two is no longer just conceptual.
“What we’ve done is spent the last year really trying to develop the scope of what phase two would be,” he said.
Phase one includes the adaptive redevelopment of the farmhouse for the research center’s conservation and education programs, as well as a septic enlargement plan.
“At a maximum for the farmhouse, we’re looking at a maximum of 15 employees and upwards of 20 visitors, but that would be a very rare occurrence. It’s really geared towards youth nature education programs and conservation programs.”
Conservation programs currently held at Mohonk Mountain House will no longer have the space available as of 2025, hence the plans to convert Brook Farmhouse, Weitz said.
“The Brook Farm complex is able to keep conservation programs right there in the foothills, which is you know a relatively new area in the last ten years for the Preserve, but also a high use and high maintenance area.”
Phase two of the project would be focused east of the farmhouse and would include a six bay run-in pole barn, a three-bay maintenance garage, office space, cold storage, a salt shed, a small interpretive kiosk, electric vehicle recharging stations, and a range of associated infrastructure. Phase two construction would take into account the historic farmhouse, Weitz said.
“The intent of the design of this side of the site is to mimic what’s there now,” he said, adding that in keeping with the project’s roots in conservation, phase two would disturb just 2.03-acres of earth.
“This was something important when the Preserve was looking at relocating these departments and trying to minimize impacts to any new areas,” Weitz said.
In addition to focusing the second phase of the project, Weitz said the project also took time to return to the planning board while trying to figure out plans to relocate the farmhouse’s existing septic system, currently along the southeast side of Lenape Lane and flowing downhill to a distribution box and absorption system in the middle of delineated wetlands. The system, Weitz said, was installed in the early 1980’s when the farmhouse was a four-bedroom residential structure. The top floor of the farmhouse is still currently a residence.
“It was a concern to us and definitely I know to the (planning) board what the condition of that septic system is and how do we proceed without knowing the condition of that septic.”
Weitz said that a septic inspection revealed that while the lines to the distribution box were still in good condition, those running to the absorption field had collapsed. As a result, Weitz said, the applicants had been working with the State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) to find a suitable relocation site. In order to get the septic system relocated next spring, Weitz said, ground work would need to begin before this winter. In the meantime, the applicants were seeking approval to install a temporary septic holding tank.
Planning board deputy chair Lyle Nolan suggested that the applicants should have come forward with the holding tank request sooner.
“Just imagine if your neighbor in a residential area’s system fails,” Nolan said. “How long do you let him keep polluting the groundwater around your house before you do something? Before last year you had no knowledge; now you have the knowledge. I think that you should be doing something to either stop using the house restrooms or provide some means of dealing with it.”
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