“We’re open to talk to everybody and anybody to do what’s right for the environment, to do what’s right for the town,” he said.Peter Bauer, executive director of Protect the Adirondacks, which went to court to try to block the project’s APA permit, said Rumbough could emerge as a hero if he acts to protect environmentally sensitive areas in the proposed resort site and if he returns Big Tupper as a ski facility for the community.Added Town Trustee Ronald LaScala, “He’s the one who can do it. That latter sum is some of the money Crossroads principal Stanley Hutton Rumbough put into the project for road construction, services and materials between August 2017 and February 2019, according to court records and interviews.Crossroads ADK, created this October, and Crossroads Preserve LLC, created in October 2018, are backed by some of the same principals and is represented by the same lawyer, Simos C. Dimas, of Manhattan, state records show.Dimas said Rumbough is associated with both Crossroads entities. Since 2014, he has served as chairman of HUTN Inc., a Springfield, Ohio-based financial firm, also known as E F Hutton. … Rumbough is a philanthropist, photographer and veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps. “The trust sold the mortgage with the community’s interests at heart, firmly believing the buyer has the incentive, capital and ability to move the project forward, and understanding that the buyer has already made very significant investments in the project.” Rumbough, who owns property in the Tupper Lake area, has been funding much of the development on the site, including the costs of a new road through the woods to proposed housing sites, and on facilities at Big Tupper.
TUPPER LAKE -- In one of the biggest foreclosure actions in the history of the Adirondacks, the holders of the mortgage on the bulk of real estate acquired for the proposed Adirondack Club & Resort housing development seek to retake the property from the corporation that has failed to build the massive project.The legal maneuver could lead to moving the dormant development forward, perhaps even clarifying the future of the shuttered Big Tupper Ski Area that has been planned as a feature of the resort project.A group called Crossroads ADK LLC on Thursday sued Preserve Associates so that 5,800 acres at the edge of Tupper Lake can be sold at public auction, presumably to a group related to Crossroads ADK.The land was sold by the Oval Wood Dish Liquidating Trust in May 2017 to Preserve Associates, one of the corporations created by partners Thomas C. Lawson and Michael D. Foxman to build a major housing resort.Other entities created by the Foxman-led partners acquired a marina and Big Tupper as assets for the project they’ve envisioned for many years.Preserve Associates, however, has failed to pay tens of millions of dollars in bills, including installments on the $5.15 million mortgage held by the Oval Wood Dish trust.
But Big Tupper is tied up in about $20 million in debts, McNally said.Rumbough has been negotiating purchase of the Oval Wood property for months but couldn’t strike a deal that would give him the opportunity to advance the project.“It’s not vicious, we’re just trying to get this done,” McNally said. He is the heir of Wall Street, cereal and soap fortunes as well as the grandson of Marjorie Merriweather Post, whose Adirondack great camp he visited as a child.Rumbough hopes to kick-start the ACR project, into which he has already invested millions of dollars with the current developers, said his partner, Upper Saranac Lake resident Michael McNally. He had one sister, Elizabeth Colgate Rumbough. Despite announcements about reopening Big Tupper, at least temporarily, the ski facility has remained closed.Among the debts owed by Preserve Associates is $1.5 million owed lawyer Thomas A. Ulasewicz, who helped Foxman and Lawson get Adirondack Park Agency approval of the resort project as well as state permits and subdivision authorizations. He received an undergraduate degree from the University of Denver and an MBA from Columbia University. Oval Wood held the mortgage and was never paid any installments. It also said county property taxes have not been paid from 2017 to 2019.Crossroads ADK also sued a pack of creditors of Preserve Associates, including law firms, landscape architects, engineers and a group called Crossroads Preserve LLC that has a lien of $2.28 million on the mortgage. Great-grandson of Post cereals heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post and financier E.F. Hutton. The village has described it in financial documents as a $500 million development on 6,400 acres for up to 700 condos, vacation homes and luxury great camps, plus a 60-bedroom hotel and a revitalized Big Tupper, a golf course and a marina.Officials with Preserve Associates, one of the corporations created by partners Thomas C. Lawson and Michael D. Foxman to develop the resort, declined to comment for this story.To make it easier to foreclose on the land, Crossroads ADK also sued creditors of Preserve Associates, including law firms, landscape architects, engineers and Crossroads Preserve LLC, which has a lien of $2.28 million on the mortgage.
Over the past year, he has proposed selling his interest, first to Lawson, and in recent months to Crossroads Preserve. “This is an attempt to save the project, not destroy it,” Dimas said.The Rumbough group has been trying to negotiate purchase outright from Foxman, he said, and took the foreclosure option because of an impasse.The foreclosure action was filed by Tupper Lake lawyer Daniel J. Hogan, who said he is unable to discuss the matter. Rumbough is a philanthropist, photographer and veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps. The acting career was interrupted by marriage to Stanley Rumbough Jr., an heir to the Colgate-Palmolive fortune—who flew 50 combat missions as a … This design is the work of Saranac Lake architect Andrew Chary.
Grandson of actress Dina Merrill and Colgate heir Stanley M. Rumbough, Jr. Step-grandson of Oscar winning actor Cliff Robertson. Foxman and Lawson could not be reached for comment.In January, an entity called Camp Pine Cove LLC paid Lawson $1,549,711 for 11 acres near the project site, public records show. Dimas said the foreclosure action is a remedy to gain control of the property “so that work on the project can finally begin, and jobs can start to be created.” He said it is the group’s understanding that the existing state permits and authorizations would carry to the property’s new owners.Nancy Hull Godshall, the successor trustee of the Oval Wood Dish trust, said her group is optimistic and encouraged by the latest developments. (Paul Buckowski / Times Union)