Letters to the editor

November 6, 2024

Good for the land and good for the people

Marty Martin’s characterization of Beautiful Saugerties (HV1, 10/30/24) as “angry” is erroneous and uninformed. Beautiful Saugerties is not angry but deeply concerned about the massive overdevelopment proposed by the current owners of Winston Farm in their application for rezoning. What Beautiful Saugerties strongly supports is the preservation of as much of the property, intact, as possible, under the terms of the current or any future zoning.

The Winston Farm ecosystem  is too valuable to the local environment and, in its small way, to the much larger, global picture of the health of the entire planet as well. Our literal survival as a community, a civilization, and possibly as a species depends on minimizing, preferably ending, the destruction of nature, on which human survival depends, in the name of the false promises of economic growth. And in fact, Saugerties’ Comprehensive Plan (a legally binding document) requires that 73% of the property remain as open space no matter what else is built there. Beautiful Saugerties is working to ensure that adherence to that plan results in undisturbed  woodland, wetland, meadow, habitat and water supply, and beyond that, that any development that occurs be done with the lightest possible footprint and the greenest available technology.

Letter to the editor

October 23, 2024

Winston Farm development plan — a better alternative

I imagine the rain water that came down recently, making its way into aquifers, wells and the roots of trees. I also picture the impervious hard surfaces the development of Winston Farm (WF) will result in. These hard surfaces will increase runoff from rain storms and take water from our trees, aquifers and wells. This phenomenon is happening all over the country where natural habitats are being replaced by parking lots.

The development plan presented in the Draft Generic Environmental Impact Statement (DGEIS — August, 2024) has sections on potential mitigation measures to reduce the damage done by the loss of trees and natural habitats. The word mitigate is very telling. It admits to the potential damage that may occur but don’t worry, these measures will lessen its impact. How much damage will occur to the WF environment, even with the “mitigation” strategies? No one is quite sure. At the August 14, 2024 Saugerties Town Board meeting, community members were told that the success or failure of the development plan might not be known for ten years. We know now, the development plan will irreparably change our WF treasure. 

There is a simpler solution to the development plan and the mitigation dilemma. Leave WF alone to enrich our lives. No mitigation needed to counteract the transformation done by thousands of asphalt-covered parking spaces.There is an alternative plan for WF presented by Permaculture expert, Andrew Faust, “Winston Farm/An Alternative Vision: A Community Farm & Forest Preserve.” This plan was presented to the Saugerties Town Board at its September 18 meeting. The character of our community is hanging in the balance.

People come to Saugerties not for a boutique hotel, but for its beauty, the autumn leaves, the fresh air, and the Hudson River, not to be stuck in traffic with thousands of additional cars and their exhaust. 

Letter to the editor

October 16, 2024

Rebutting Ward Todd's Winston Farm Op-Ed: Letter By Margarita Asiain

To the Editor: The recent opinion piece written by Ulster County Chamber of Commerce's President and CEO, Ward Todd, regarding the Winston Farm Development project begs for a few responses and questions.

The Saugerties Chamber of Commerce is reportedly remaining neutral on the project. Who then is the UC Chamber representing with its apparent endorsement?

Mr. Todd has a fast and loose use of the word "facts." The fact is, the "facts" in the Draft Generic Environmental Impact Review currently under review by the Town Board means they are subject to being scrutinized for accuracy and adequacy and to being disputed. The "facts" remain to be determined. Even a cursory review of the DGEIS, which is publicly available, shows many areas that are inadequate or missing critical information.

Yes, the owners are local, respected benefactors in Saugerties. Yes, their businesses are part of Saugerties’ character and contribute to the local culture. Yes, they are proven responsible business owners. But they have been clear that they will not develop the property themselves. The goal is to sell the property in parcels; whoever the developers are, they will almost certainly not be local, and there is no way of foreseeing whether their designs will be in keeping with Saugerties character and culture.

Supporting arguments for development always include that the benefits will be that taxes will go down and that tax bases will increase to benefit the town. This is more a theory that often doesn't work out in practice. It is incumbent on the owners to provide evidence of where this has worked rather than merely saying that it will.

As we talk about the need for creating jobs, Kings Highway and Malden Turnpike, both zoned for business, have space for development. We have a conference center already at Diamond Mills. We have hotels already, and campgrounds. There are other spaces for housing development.

Letters to the editor

October 10, 2024

Do we want a ghost town?

Has the impact on the Village of Saugerties by the mega-development of Winston Farm been sufficiently assessed? Do we want a ghost town?

Meyer Rothberg
Saugerties

Heartbroken

I am writing to express my feelings regarding using Winston Farm to promote monetizing the natural world.

I am heartbroken over the dramatic disregard for this precious resource.

Yes, people need housing, recreation and all that temporary stuff, but the land here must endure.

I can’t speak to the details of this project, because I don’t care about that. I only recognize beauty and the life that exists. This project will impair our world and will reverberate into the future 

Please leave Winston farm as a huge parcel of beauty and a gift to all.

Susan Towlson
Saugerties

Saugerties development and a growing safety concern

Over the past couple of days, Saugerties has seen multiple car accidents, one even involving a first responder en route to help at another crash site. These accidents are alarming on their own, but even more so in the context of the continued push for overdevelopment in our town. With the Winston Farm proposals that would add an extreme amount of housing and entertainment units, I can’t help but ask: what are we doing to our community?

Saugerties is already feeling the strain. In recent years, we’ve added significant developments — Summit on Hudson and the unfinished condos by Diamond Mills along 9W, Country Meadow Apartments on North Street and a new neighborhood of single-family homes off Glasco Turnpike. This, on top of a road system that seems increasingly unable to handle the traffic. The recent accidents make it painfully clear that we’re pushing beyond what our infrastructure can safely accommodate.

Letter to the editor

September 24, 2024

Winston Farm: a better plan, revealed

Permaculture expert Andrew Faust’s presentation at the September 18 Saugerties Town Board meeting was impressive and inspiring: a regional food hub consisting of a regenerative farm, including intensive vegetable production plus a small dairy,  as well as a “food forest” of nut trees. This is a use for Winston Farm that looks to the needs of the actual future, working with nature instead of against it, as the currently proposed mixed-use commercial/residential development would do by bulldozing and paving large parts of the property.

Experienced in the development of such sites, Faust was confident that the funding required to get the project up and running would be found following the purchase of the property by a not-for-profit land conservancy. It’s known that the State of New York is interested in such a project as part of the state parks system. Furthermore, the project itself would create jobs for people who want to turn their hand to farming as well as the many other kinds of jobs required to keep a large agricultural operation going and create housing for those who work on the property, potentially hundreds of people.

Letters to the editor

September 10, 2024

The “highest and best use of the land:” An alternative vision for Winston Farm

Lately, I’ve been hearing that people who oppose the rezoning of Winston Farm in Saugerties are some kind of tree-hugging idealists who stubbornly refuse to consider any kind of development of the property. Let’s get something straight. No one is seriously proposing that “nothing happen” at Winston Farm. This idea is being weaponized by people who wish to present a false “all or nothing” choice or who may actually be confused. But even if a few forward-thinking citizens like me believe that nature knows best, we don’t dare to dream that Winston Farm could be left to nature in the world we’ve actually created, motivated by profit and growth, both of which are leading us over the cliff of environmental and economic collapse.

In fact, however, there is an alternative vision, one which aligns with “the highest and best use of the land” (if use it we must) and cooperates with nature’s purposes of keeping the air clean and the water abundant, of sequestering carbon, and of increasing biodiversity. It’s called regenerative agriculture, a method which creates and improves topsoil instead of paving it over. Relying on permaculture methods of food production, it would place Winston Farm as a key part of the bioregional food production effort we are going to rely on in the near-enough future, as the economy (including the global supply chain which stocks our supermarkets) continues to collapse and the climate continues to change beyond recognition.

Seriously, everybody, how much longer do you think this American joyride is going to continue? Food security is going to be paramount any day now, and we’re going to have to grow what we need within our bioregion. The vision held by the current owners of Winston Farm is one of a future in which everything looks the same as it does now, only more so. But that’s not the future seen by better-informed people who aren’t captured by the no-longer-tenable myth of perpetual growth or the false promises of Wall Street, corporate America and our own government. We see a planet on which nature needs all the help she can get. What’s proposed for Winston Farm offers only destruction.

Letter to the editor

September 3, 2024

Winston Farm project would destroy quality of life in Saugerties

A hard truth, that some people still don’t get: We cannot continue to build, pave, destroy habitat, deplete aquifers in the name of growth, development and profit, destroying the very fabric of the Earth on which we depend.

Winston Farm is a perfect microcosm of the challenge we face. The developers want their profit, the Town Board its potential tax base. The American Way! But growth and profit at what

cost?

Saugerties is already choking on traffic. Its aquifers are strained and always in danger of contamination. Houses stand empty, because it’s not profitable to rehab them.

Now there’s a proposal to build 133 homes, 115 townhouses, 800 apartments, a campground with 157 cabins and RV sites, 425,000 square feet of retail, a 150-room hotel, a conference center/300-room hotel, a 5,000-person amphitheater, and 375,000 square feet of industrial space on what is now woodland and fields.

Letters to the editor

September 3, 2024

A monstrosity in our midst

The fact that the Winston Farm developers are local is irrelevant. The objections to their project would be the same if they were high rollers from NYC or anywhere else. And the objections are paramount!

We’re only recent Saugertiesians, we bought our property in 1982; we recently donated 75 acres to the Woodstock Conservancy, appraised at $320,000 to be forever wild. Winston Farm should not be allowed to be turned into a monstrosity in our midst. The investors should scale down the project for a lesser profit and/or take a tax deduction to recoup some of their investment; public access should be a requirement.

Meyer Rothberg
Saugerties

Business as usual, or a choice to survive?

It’s a hard truth, that some people still don’t get: We cannot go on as we have been doing. We cannot continue to build, pave, destroy natural habitats and deplete aquifers in the name of growth, development and profit, because it’s destroying the very fabric of the Earth on which we depend for life. 

The Winston Farm is a tiny corner of the Earth, but it’s a perfect microcosm of the challenge that we all face. The developers want their profit, the town board its potential tax base. It’s the American Way! But we all have to be honest: growth and profit at what cost? 

Saugerties is already choking on traffic. Its aquifers are strained and always in danger of becoming contaminated. People need housing, while houses stand empty, because it’s not profitable to rehab them. 

Now we are faced with a proposal to build 133 single-family homes, 115 townhouses, 800 condo/apartment units, a campground with 157 cabins and RV sites, 425,000 square feet of commercial retail space, a 150-room hotel, a conference center with 300 more hotel rooms, a 5000-person amphitheater and 375,000 square feet of lab or light-industrial space on what is now pristine woodland and open fields. 

In other words, another whole town. Want to destroy the quality of life in Saugerties? This will do it. 

There is already plenty of land in Saugerties zoned for commercial development and potentially available for housing projects. We already have a large conference hotel in the village. We don’t need a single inch of Winston Farm to have those things.

I read that last year the Open Space Institute offered $10 million to purchase the property to build a state park. That would have been a $6 million profit over what it cost the developers to purchase it, but that wasn’t enough for them. 

Letter to the editor

August 29, 2024

Concerns about the plan for Winston Farm

The newly suggested plan for Winston Farm that was described to the town board of Saugerties this August is puzzling. Since it is just a generic plan intended to support their case for necessary zoning changes, I don’t expect much detail. However, what they offered to the town was only an in-person retelling of what is on the Winston Farm website plus some numbers suggesting potentially wonderful possibilities including increased “economic windfalls” from earnings and spendings at home and from enhanced tourism. The following concerns are what puzzles me:

• Is 840 acres large enough for 799 housing units, a 5000-seat indoor venue, a 150-room “boutique” hotel, a conference center with 250 additional rooms, a 100-cabin campground, 250,000 square feet of commercial space and 250,000 square feet of light industrial or lab space?

• All on 840 acres? And promised “open space?” Not public open space? Public open space was not the language used..

Letter to the editor

August 17, 2024

Think clearly about Winston Farm plans

The Saugerties Town Board needs to think more clearly about the demands on the services if the development at Winston Farm goes through per the developers’ plans (Police, schools, emergency services and ambulances, tow trucks and mechanical needs, etc. for the newly expanded area and

populations). It’s helpful to not be stuck in traffic continuously while one needs to get from point A to point B like what happened out in Barclay Heights. Just because there’s land, it doesn’t mean that it should be developed to make more money for the remaining pieces of open land to be just developed and no longer user user-friendly. If we wanted to live in a city, we would have moved to the city. It was nice to see that piece of land down by the creek open to let busy people have some small window of opportunity to see nature in its semi-finest. That’s developed and ready for erosion too.

Who has to deal with that issue? The developers will have moved on to greener pastures without taking traffic concerns, job availability and services into consideration. Rubber-stamping projects for the wealthier developers need more awareness on the typical scale like police, EMTs, DPW, etc.

I don’t care how many generations of their families have lived here. It’s more of a common sense concept vs. who is in the Saugerties cemeteries.

Letter to the editor

August 6, 2024

Winston Farm: Think globally, act locally

I’ve been thinking a lot about the destiny of Winston Farm lately, as Beautiful Saugerties (the community group opposing the massive development project proposed by the current owners) reboots in anticipation of the release of the Environmental Impact Statement required by the SEQR process.

If we look at it strictly from the point of personal preference, we will never be able to talk about it as a community and make a sensible decision. There’s a big divide between the folks who would love to have a waterpark and all the other commercial and residential development proposed for the property in their town and those for whom that would utterly compromise the traditional semi-rural small-town vibe they love about Saugerties.

But there is a point of view that transcends personal preference, or lifestyle, or old-timers vs. newcomers, or whatever you like to call the apparently polarized opposites. It has to do with our perceived vs. our actual relationship with nature and the way we feel entitled to use nature for our own purposes, as though we weren’t part of it but rather separate from and somehow “above” it, and as though nature herself didn’t call the shots in the end.

Letter to the editor

July 16, 2024

Beautiful Saugerties!

I’m a relatively new full-time resident to Saugerties but I have been happily spending over half of the last ten years here. I was very active in my old (city) neighborhood and am now trying to get up to speed about how things roll in the small town of Saugerties. Oh yeah, village or town? It’s confusing to say the least, but some things are starting to become clear to me.

A few years ago, I learned of a developer plan for the former site of the historic 800-acre Winston Farm just down the road from me. At the moment, my understanding is that the five members who make up the town board, which is the “lead agency” for this proposal, will decide how and if this development plan moves forward. The developers have a website that unpacks their intentions, which will require a zoning change that they have requested. The town board, five people who know the developers personally, is going to decide — albeit based on reports that are being prepared in response to issues raised by the plan — whether or not to grant this zoning change. IF the town decides yes, we could easily be seeing a development that belongs in New Jersey and not in the small town of Saugerties, the beautiful gateway to the Catskills! I shudder to think. The developers propose clearcutting over 200 acres to realize their goals.