After years of legal wrangling, the 5,800-acre tract in New York’s Adirondack Park that was once planned for residential development is now headed for a public foreclosure auction. The property, near Simond Pond and the former Big Tupper ski centre, will be auctioned on 18 September at the Franklin County Courthouse in Malone, according to a report by Times Union.The land was once pitched as the largest residential development in the Adirondack Park’s history. The Adirondack Club and Resort was a project that promised hundreds of second homes, a hotel, hiking trails, and the return of the long-closed Big Tupper ski area. More than a decade after receiving regulatory approval, the project remains unfinished as the property’s ownership has become tied up in a lengthy foreclosure dispute.
The major residential project that never took off
The original vision sounded plausible enough. In 2012, the Adirondack Park Agency signed off on permits for the Adirondack Club and Resort. The plan was to construct 600 luxury ‘second homes’, a renovated marina, a reopened ski centre, and scattered hiking trails across the massive piece of land. The developer group, Preserve Associates, had successfully cleared a high regulatory bar after contentious public hearings.However, the environmental groups weren’t convinced. Protect the Adirondacks and the Sierra Club sued to block the project. They called it ‘the greatest threat to the ecological integrity of the Adirondack Park since the creation of the Adirondack Park Agency’. But they lost, and the permits stuck.In 2017, Preserve Associates bought the land from the Oval Wood Dish Liquidating Trust for $5.2 million. The property had once supplied lumber to the region’s woodenware factory. Now it was supposed to become a playground for the affluent.But things worsened quickly. Preserve Associates couldn’t sustain mortgage payments. The Oval Wood Dish Liquidating Trust, which held the original loan, watched the debt go into default. That’s when Stanley Hutton Rumbough, an investor and businessman with long-standing ties to the Tupper Lake area, stepped in. He bought the mortgage in 2019 and filed for foreclosure. But what followed was a cascade of litigation. Creditors of Preserve Associates launched disputes. And in all this, seven years went by. The parcel that was supposed to be the iconic residential development sat idle. But Rumbough continued to believe in it. He purchased the Blue Jay Campgrounds and Marina on the lake itself for $2.5 million and began upgrades. He started discussions with developers on how to either build the residential project or reopen the ski centre, or possibly both. That gamble is why the Tupper Lake project still has value despite its troubled history.It’s a calculated gamble that the Tupper Lake project, despite its tattered history, still holds value for someone willing to bet on it. A State Supreme Court-appointed referee has now determined that Rumbough is owed $10.58 million, plus interest, for money spent in connection with the property. The auction is intended to move the foreclosure process forward and provide a way for the outstanding obligations to be resolved. Rumbough could bid for the acreage himself. He has also been discussing the possibility of reviving the residential development with other developers, according to Jay Creutz, manager of Crossroads ADK LLC, the mortgage holder. Franklin County is also owed more than $1 million in property taxes and penalties.Whether a new owner can actually build depends partly on the APA permits that Preserve Associates secured over a decade ago. Creutz noted that the permits transfer with the land, and a new buyer could theoretically pick up where the original developers left off. However, Claudia Braymer, executive director of Protect the Adirondacks, is uncertain whether the rules still apply. There is a question as to whether a new buyer can simply start building now. The answer could define what happens next. The environmental concerns raised in 2012 haven’t disappeared yet.The former ski centre is also involved in the area’s changing ownership scenario, although it is no longer included in the upcoming sale of the 5,800 acres. In 2024, New Jersey investors Josh Parnes and Martin Schapira, operating as Love Tupper LLC, purchased smaller parcels from the original development site at a separate foreclosure auction. They paid $650,000 for Mount Morris, home to the former ski centre, and have purchased other local properties, including the Trails End tavern, which they remodelled and recently reopened.
