Daily Freeman
By William J. Kemble
March 23, 2024
TOWN OF ULSTER, N.Y. — A proposal to subdivide 106.6 acres into 30 residential building lots is being objected to by the Ruby Rod and Gun Club.
The site is in an area that was part of the now-withdrawn Woodstock National project.
During a Town Board meeting on Thursday, March 21, Brian Murphy, the club’s vice president, said the group would not allow Zena Development LLC any access over its adjacent parcels.
“Our membership voted last December not to grant any right-of-way to any of our parcels to anyone,” he said.
The club owns 15 parcels amounting to 408.3 acres near the proposed development site. Four of the parcels are adjacent to the entire eastern property line in the town of Ulster and one parcel abuts 1,111 feet of the developer’s 1,401 feet of property at the south end, which is adjacent to the town of Kingston.
“Since we honor New York state law that limits the use of firearms (to no closer than) 500 feet of an occupied dwelling we are further objecting to residential development on this parcel because our ability to hunt … would be constricted,” Murphy said. “We are responsible stewards of this beautiful wild environment. We are reluctant to compromise our hunting rights, which we have freely and responsibly exercised for 76 years.”
Without an agreement from the organization, Zena Development’s only other option for access from the town of Ulster would be through adjacent property to the north owned by the Woodstock Land Conservancy, which does not have road access, in combination with at least one other property that would be in the town of Saugerties. That option comes with the acknowledgment from developers that there is a strained relationship with the environmental watchdog group dating back to the now-abandoned Woodstock National proposal.
“We offered to partner with the Woodstock Land Conservancy and give them a say as to which consultants we hire to study the land and to help us design the most forward-thinking sustainable housing development ever built,” developers wrote on their website. “That offer was immediately rejected.”
The town of Ulster parcel was previously going to be used for three holes of an 18-hole golf course that would have primarily been in the town of Woodstock, where an additional 418.14 acres would be added and include 77 townhouses and 90 single-family homes.
Developers can access the 106.6 acres in Ulster via their Woodstock parcels but would have to construct a driveway or road about 2,500 feet long that went south and then east from Eastwood Drive. That’s a solution that Regis Obijiski, townofUlstercitizens.org co-chairman, said would be difficult to accomplish.
“One is reminded of the mythological Procrustes who made custom beds of one size upon which he force-fit his victimized patrons,” he said. “Those too short to fit the length of the bed were stretched out of their joints. Those too long had their legs summarily trimmed to fit.”
The analogy was accompanied by more direct concerns from Obijiski.
“They want to create a subdivision of unattached houses obsessively with in-ground septic and wells,” he said. “Oddly, this proposal would plunk a 100-acre (development) in the middle of over 1,000 acres of continuous wet, carbon-absorbing forest, compromising a flow of water a