On March 26, 2024, Camilla Bradley, owner of the controversial Awosting Club campground site in Gardiner, was dealt a major legal setback when Ulster County Supreme Court judge Kevin Bryant issued a preliminary injunction and restraining order forbidding campground operations without explicit approval from the Town of Gardiner. The decision came in response to the Town’s Order to Show Cause and verified petition filed with the County in December 2023.
Judge Bryant had previously dismissed an Article 78 lawsuit that Bradley filed against Gardiner’s Town Board and building inspector/code enforcement officer Bruce Terwilliger in reaction to the board’s February 2023 rejection of her campground license application as “defective and incomplete” in ten areas. Bradley was then chastised by the judge for filing an instant Article 78 without exhausting administrative remedies, “which, in essence, asked this court to interject itself into the administrative process prior to the Board having an opportunity to evaluate and make determinations on a complete application.” Bradley subsequently filed a Notice of Appeal and a Motion to Re-Argue, both of which were rejected by the court.
In issuing the new restraining order, Bryant noted that Bradley “has disregarded the applicable process under the town zoning code and ha[s] continued to engage in a use of the property that requires approval from the town,” ignoring repeated warnings. He added, “At this juncture, there is no factual dispute that defendant has not secured permits, certificates, site plan, or other approvals for the current use of the property,” and accused Bradley of repeatedly attempting to bypass the proper process.
In conclusion, the judge ordered, “Defendant is hereby prohibited from operation on the subject property of any ‘campground’ or ‘lodging’ absent approval from the town. Defendants are further prohibited from the use of any structure on the property for any use that has not received specific approval from the town.”
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 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. After Bradley’s consortium of investors fell apart, the land was sold at auction in 2006 to the Open Space Institute and the Trust for Public Land, and later resold 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 environmental activists got wind of construction in progress on the long-neglected tent sites and began complaining to town officials, fearing damage to the mountain stream and sensitive talus slope habitats nearby. Visits to the site by Gardiner building inspectors triggered a long standoff in which documents that the town requested failed to materialize. 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. But she has not applied to the Zoning Board of Appeals for such a determination.
“It’s a preliminary injunction, so the matter still isn’t settled, though the decision appears to put Gardiner’s position in a good light,” observed town board member Michael Hartner of Judge Bryant’s recent decision. Hartner, who has been working on the Awosting Club issue since his appointment to the town’s Environmental Conservation Commission in 2021, was elected to the town board in November 2023, filling the seat vacated by the retirement of Laura Walls.
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