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Coalition Strikes Back - Changes Name to Reflect Mission
02/04/2008
The Colition to Save Belleayre Mountain
Belleayre supporters vow to kill legislation to stop ski center's growth
Facility expansion seen as critical to region's renaissance
The Coalition for Belleayre, a twenty-five-year-old organization of Belleayre Mt. skiers, business people and other supporters, announced today that it will take steps to change its name back to the name under which it was originally founded - the Coalition to Save Belleayre. Responding to the introduction of legislation (NY Senate Bill # 6835) questioning the state's place in the recreation industry, Coalition Chairman Joe Kelly vowed to work to kill the legislation and push for expansion of the ski center as outlined by Governor Eliot Spitzer in an agreement announced September 5 in Kingston, NY.
Born of crisis in 1984 when then Governor Cuomo threatened to mothball Belleayre Mt. Ski Center, the Coalition to Save Belleayre has served as a voice for the state-owned and operated facilities for nearly a quarter of a century. The upstate/downstate coalition thought it had accomplished its goal by keeping the first-in-the-Catskills ski center open way back then. After all, Cuomo's decision was reversed when he was presented with petitions bearing 13,000 signatures three weeks after his announcement.
In the decade after Belleayre was spared, the Pine Hill Lake was added for major snowmaking expansion and addition of a summer swimming program. Voters of the State of New York passed a constitutional amendment calling for the expansion of Belleayre and new management introduced modern operational and marketing techniques that moved the state-owned ski center to center stage in winter recreation in the northeast.
With Belleayre saved, the group changed its name to the Coalition for Belleayre. Its leaders continued lobbying for frequent improvements and helped to launch a separate organization that functions independently today as a public/private partnership for the performing arts that stages more than 20 events a year during the off season. But much to the chagrin of Coalition founder Joe Kelly, Greene County ski centers Hunter and Windham, through Senator James Seward, have introduced legislation that could seriously curtail Belleayre's operation and expansion and once again, the Coalition feels a need to save Belleayre Mt.
"We thought we were finished with this sort of nonsense years ago," said Kelly announcing the organization's return to its original name. "This is a full frontal assault," added the indefatigable Irishman of legislation introduced to slow or even halt the state's investment in Belleayre Mt. "The Me-First parochialism of Hunter and Windham has hurt the entire tourism industry in this part of the state. We are going to stand up to this bullying because the stakes are too high to let them get away with it. Hunter's problems are with its own image, not with Belleayre Mt."
Pointing to massive public/private investments at Whiteface in the late 1970's Kelly noted the precedent for using state investments to stimulate adjacent private sector investment "The money spent to prepare Whiteface to host the 1980 Olympics nearly killed Belleayre at the time," said Kelly. "Today we can see that the public/private partnerships in the Adirondack Forest Preserve stimulated resurgence in the Lake Placid region's economy and now they actually serve as a model for what could happen in the Catskill Forest Preserve region."
Kelly said "Greene County is on record as wanting to halt investment in Belleayre so their private ski centers can grab all the skier visits to the region. That's like demanding Jones Beach be closed so that private beaches can get more visitors. It makes absolutely no sense to the rest of the state or the rest of the region," said Kelly. "One county doesn't get to set the agenda for the entire state. When the voters pass a constitutional amendment demanding the expansion of a ski center, they deserve to have that directive honored."
The Chairman went on to say that in addition to taking pot shots at the state-owned ski resorts, the Senate Bill also drags state-owned golf courses and campsites into the fray. "There is clearly a public interest served by having the State of New York own and operate public recreation facilities and the notion that such facilities hurt the private sector is ludicrous. We all know that Belleayre came first. It was the state's investment in a public ski center in the 1950s that led to the development of the private ski resorts in the 1960s. They owe their very existence to the state's investment and they've coexisted very nicely with Belleayre for more than 40 years."
The irony, according to Kelly, is that when Belleayre was threatened with closing, everyone, including the private ski centers, demanded that it be kept open and "made competitive. They wanted the state to operate Belleayre like a private sector resort would operate instead of operating like a state park. So Belleayre became competitive and now the private operators don't like it."
But Kelly went on to add that from his perspective, it is lackluster marketing efforts and attention to real estate over skiing that have caused pain for the private areas in recent years. In comments at a recent Snowball event at Belleayre, Kelly said "if I had some advice for Greene County it would be... 'Stop blaming diminishing skier visits on Belleayre and look at your own business plans.' Skiers respond to good grooming, quality experience and just plan fun," Kelly added.
He noted that at one time, Hunter Mountain was number one in name recognition because of its consistent use of the marketing tag line, "Snowmaking Capital of the World," and Windham made its name with heavy use of an ad campaign trumpeting "World Class Snow." "When was the last time you heard either of these ski centers pushing the niche's that made them famous," asked Kelly.
Avid Belleayre skiers in four different decades, Kelly and his cohorts have made themselves experts on ski industry budget, operations and marketing practices as they have advocated for Belleayre Mountain. Kelly noted that the Governor's compromise and the expansion of Belleayre Mountain would actually increase skier visits to the entire region and in the end, would help both Hunter and Windham who continually top the market share grab of skier visits in the region. "When you can promote an entire region as a ski destination, everyone benefits," said Kelly. "Anyone who looks at Vermont, Utah or Colorado knows that. We even see it in the north country of New York State. The Catskill region does have the best skiing and is closest to the New York metro market. If they could just maximize their assets and work together, all would benefit."
First Volleys
The recent battle between the Catskill region's top three attractions started last summer when the Greene County ski resorts convinced their legislature to pass a resolution opposing future development of Belleayre Mt. Ski Center. But Ulster and Delaware Counties both fired back with resolutions of their own supporting Belleayre Mt. and in September, Governor Spitzer visited Kingston to announce an Agreement in Principle for a public/private partnership that would not only increase the state-owned facility, but which paved the way for a $400 million private sector investment adjacent to the resort.
The Agreement in Principle, currently undergoing review required by New York's State Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQRA), would move permit the construction of a private sector hotel, golf, spa and fractional housing complex and link it to a state reinvestment in the adjacent state-owned ski center on Belleayre Mt. Among the features of the agreement is a plan to re-open the trails of the now defunct Highmount Ski Center to create a "ski in-ski out" lodging presence for Belleayre Mt.
Kelly's Coalition, run by a group of skiers who has remained loyal to each other and to Belleayre throughout the last quarter century, has joined other local organizations in Partners for Progress, a new organization seeking to push Spitzer's Agreement in Principle to a positive conclusion.
"We took no position for or against the Belleayre Resort at Catskill Park while it went through more than 8 years of study by every environmental organization and public agency known to man," said Kelly. "We sat quietly and let the process run its course until an agreement was reached that demonstrated to us that we could have expansion of Belleayre, with a nearby hotel, golf course, spa and other housing units, all without threatening the environment."
Kelly went on to add that "when we saw the City of New York, who spent more than $600,000 trying to stop this project, had agreed there was no major environmental threat to its water, we felt pretty safe in accepting the project. When we saw that the Natural Resource Defense Council, NYPIRG, the Catskill Center for Conservation and Development, the Riverkeeper, Trout Unlimited, Theodore Gordon Flyfishers and the Zen Environmental Studies Center had all signed on to the agreement, we decided to endorse it and work to make the plans a reality."
But on January 10, calling themselves the "Greene County Coalition for Economic Equality" Hunter Mountain and Windham Mountain wrote a nine-page paper accusing Belleayre Mountain of "unfair competition." In the paper which noted that Hunter and Windham tallied 700,000 skier visits per year as compared to just 175,000 for Belleayre Mountain it was difficult to see the harm the Greene County areas claimed.
"They admit they are much bigger areas than Belleayre Mountain yet they try to make a case that tickets at the smaller mountain should cost as much as they do at the bigger areas," said Kelly. "Any skier knows that just does not make sense."
Kelly, who said that until now he has always enjoyed a good working relationship with Greene County ski area operators, noted that contrary to what the Greene County resorts said, Belleayre Mountain does pay property taxes and does collect sales taxes, just as the private areas do. "While it is true that Belleayre doesn't pay the same sorts of insurance premiums that the private areas pay," Kelly added, "the fact is they pay far more in wages than the private areas because they must pay union wages. In reality, the pros and cons of private operation and public operation wash and the economic impact of the state's investment at Belleayre Mt. is just as important to Ulster and Delaware Counties as the economic impact of Windham and Hunter to Greene County."
"We're taking off the gloves on this one," said Kelly. "Belleayre Mt. is not allowed to defend itself against these scurrilous attacks so those of us who know the real story, must.
The fact that with 700,000 skiers between them, these ski centers are whining about 175,000 skiers at Belleayre shows just how greedy they are. I'm sure they'd like to roll back the clock to when Belleayre just had 80,000 skier visits but that won't happen on our watch. That sort of thinking will have us right back where we were in 1984 and none of us wants to go there."
Kelly said the Coalition to Save Belleayre will work alone on behalf of the mountain but will also work in concert with other supporting organizations including Partners for Progress, the Delaware and Ulster County Chambers of Commerce, the legislative bodies for both Ulster and Delaware Counties, and the other pro-economic development organizations and individuals involved. More information on efforts and activities to support Belleayre Mt. Ski Center is available by logging on to www.supportthecompromise.org or www.coalitionforbelleayre.org.
The Colition to Save Belleayre Mountain
PO Box 247
HIGHMOUNT, NY 12441
Contact: Joe Kelly - 516-510-6941 or
Tom White - 845-254-6222 or 917-865-8299
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