Day: June 23, 2025

Woodward Lake is a Marginal Tract for Residential Development: The Woodward Lake site is a marginal tract for residential development. It is characterized by poor soils, extensive streams and wetlands, and steep slopes, all of which are inappropriate for  residential development. 

The developer claims that it will somehow extinguish 34 principal building rights, 12 on Resource Management lands and 22 in Rural Use, while pursuing a permit for 36 principal buildings. This statement is inaccurate. There are no “development rights” under the APA Act. The zoning densities that the developer used are the maximum mathematically available under the APA Land Use and Development Plan (LUDP). Under the LUDP the allowable principal buildings are not automatically assigned to a parcel of land. The total number of buildings authorized reflects the number allowable after a comprehensive APA review. Far from “extinguishing” development rights, the developer is seeking approval at a level of development beyond what is appropriate for this tract.

This 1,169 acre tract has a number of features, such as a large waterbody, wetlands, streams and steep slopes, which the APA has always considered constraints on development. An analysis that removed all of the undevelopable land from the tract found that 129 acres of Woodward Lake, 159.56 acres wetlands, 9.18 miles of streams, which with 50-foot-wide protected buffers total 55.64 acres, 450 acres of lands with steep slopes of 15% or greater, totaling more than half of this tract. This means that over half of this tract is land unsuitable for development. Much the remaining lands are not much better. This magnifies the problems with this tract and shows that the vast majority of the Woodward Lake development site is not suitable for development. The reality is that this tract can support residential development only at a level far less than the 36 principal building rights sought by the developer.

https://www.protectadks.org/proposed-subdivision-of-woodward-lake-is-a-conventional-development-that-rings-an-adirondack-lake-with-houses/