The latest plans for Winston Farms were revealed during a meeting of the Saugerties Town Board last week, with developers saying their 840-acre project addressed concerns raised since their first draft plans were submitted nearly three years ago. Some members of the public said they feel differently.
A draft environmental generic impact statement (DGEIS) dubbed “A transformative development opportunity in collaboration with the Saugerties community” was reviewed during the town board meeting held on Wednesday, August 14. A 25-page summary version of the document touts the project as a mixed-use “live, work, play development with job creation, housing opportunities, the potential for smart development and tourism.
The project, developers claim, would come with an expected economic windfall of $55,088,971 from new jobs’ workers earnings, $4,465,383 from new tourism workers earnings, and $3,099,563 in spending by new households. The document also estimates around $457,469,231 in construction spending associated with the development, and a boost of an estimated 125,925 in new tourists each year, amounting to $13,851,750 annually.
“This will generate thousands of jobs and substantial, consistent tax revenue for the town, Saugerties (Central) School District and fire district year after year, helping keep taxes down and funding municipal services Saugerties residents rely on each day,” reads the DGEIS.
The current proposal includes 799 housing units with a combination of townhouses and apartments, serving an estimated 1,746 residents. Also included in the plan over the 840-acre project would be 250,000-square-feet of commercial space, a 150-room boutique hotel, a conference center with a further 250 hotel rooms, a 5,000-seat enclosed performance space, a 100-cabin campground, and around 250,000-square-feet of laboratory or light industrial space.
Among the changes from earlier concepts include the elimination of a planned water park, outdoor adventure park and hiking trails have been removed from forested area, a proposed amphitheater was adapted to be an enclosed performing arts center, and roads were relocated to avoid wetlands.
The plan also reaffirms the developers’ stated commitment to open space. It also claims it will be self-sufficient, with two wells yielding a combined 270 gallons of water per minute, meaning, they believe, they will not need to connect the development to municipal water sources.
“Winston Farm is committed to smart development,” reads the summary DGEIS. “This includes ‘green, sustainable construction techniques and water-conservation technology.”
The summary added that the final plans will adhere to the Town of Saugerties’ climate action plan.
The property is currently owned by three local residents and businessmen, Tony Montano, John Mullen and Randy Richers, who bought the property in July 2020 for $4 million. Town supervisor Fred Costello said that was a contrast to the issues the City of Kingston are having with real estate investor and developer Neil Bender.
“You’re going to see them getting coffee,” Costello said. “They’re not hiding from the community asking lawyers to represent them.”
Local resident Lauren Ruberg, who spoke during the town board meeting in favor of the plans, agreed.
“They’re not just local people,” Ruberg said. “We’re talking about generations. We have their parents here, they›re here, their children are here, their grandchildren are here. They are providing various services already to our community with businesses that are giving jobs to people in our community.”
But other speakers questioned what the development would do to the local environment without a thorough review. Catskill Mountainkeeper project manager Kate Hagerman said Winston Farm “is much more than a site for developers to exploit for profit.”
“Given this large-scale development would be built on the headlands of 7,000-acre aquifer,…the town (should) adhere to the Winston Farm high technology feasibility study and master plan which calls for leaving 73 percent of the open space undeveloped.”
Hagerman said the ecosystems currently on the property “are hard to quantify in dollars and cents, yet they translate into clean water quality and natural landscapes that we all enjoy, as well as habitats for rare, threatened and endangered species. All of which will be lost if this project as it was presented tonight without careful and clear-sighted review.”
Local resident Sarah Lesher agreed.
“I also share the concerns that several people have had of losing a sacred place and not being able to get it back,” Lesher said.
Winston Farm is perhaps best known both inside and outside Saugerties as the site of Woodstock ’94, held in August 1994 in celebration of the 25th anniversary of the original Woodstock Festival. But plans that ultimately failed to come to fruition on the property included a community college, a casino, a landfill and incinerator and a high-tech business park.
Developers stressed that the current DGEIS is not a site plan, merely the next conceptual step in what they hope to eventually build at Winston Farm. Supervisor Costello said the town will take into consideration the opinions of all interested parties as the project moves forward, disparate though they might be.
“I think there’s a broad spectrum of perspective on this project,” Costello said. “I think for a lot of people, they would like to see nothing happen and leave it as it is. And the other extreme of that is that we do nothing, and if not this group of developers, another group of developers employs the current rights under the zoning law which reflect the ’60 style subdivision with some strip malls in the front and housing all the way up the back and I think that’s a terrible idea. And then there’s everything in between.”
Costello added that he understood where conservationists were coming from on the development of Winston Farm, and hoped there might be a way of moving the project forward while still maintaining those ideals.
“There’s a lot of expression of protection for open space and concern for potential impacts on water,” he said.“Those are fair concerns, and I think we share them. We’re going to rely on data and the studies, including the DGEIS.”
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