Tribe wants to build casino in Saugerties

By Hallie Arnold , Freeman staff Daily Freeman April 16, 2005

SAUGERTIES - It's been trampled by 350,000 rock music fans. It narrowly avoided becoming home to an Ulster County trash dump. Now the Winston Farm is the subject of another proposal that's sure to be controversial: An Indian tribe wants to build a casino, hotel, convention center, entertainment venue and 27-hole golf course on the site.
Town of Saugerties Supervisor Greg Helsmoortel said on Friday that he's met twice with leaders of a tribe interested in developing the 840-acre property at the junction of state Routes 32 and 212. He would not identify the tribe or confirm a published report that it's the Seneca-Cayuga Tribe of Oklahoma. A phone message left for the chief of that tribe was not returned on Friday.
The first meeting was among tribal representatives, Helsmoortel and town Deputy Supervisor Fred Costello, the supervisor said. The second meeting included the same parties, plus town Police Chief Gregory Hulbert, village of Saugerties Mayor Robert Yerick, the superintendent of the Saugerties school district and representatives of the Saugerties business community.
THE TRIBAL representatives asked that the meetings be kept confidential, but Helsmoortel said he decided to go public once it became clear that the tribe was serious about it's plans.
"I thought it was time for the public to know that nothing will be done without their input, and I intend to stay that way," the supervisor said.
Helsmoortel said he hopes to hold a public meeting on the casino plan in the near future.
LAST YEAR, Gov. George Pataki reached a series of proposed land-claim settlements with five tribes - the Seneca-Cayugas of Oklahoma, the Cayuga Indian Nation of New York, the Oneidas of Wisconsin, the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohican Indians and the Akwesasne Mohawks - and said each would be allowed to operate a Las Vegas-style casino in the Catskills.
On Friday, Pataki announced he was withdrawing the pending settlements with four of the tribes, including the Seneca-Cayugas, because a recent decision by the U.S. Supreme Court made it necessary to "review and re-evaluate" the proposals. But he said he remains committed to the land deals and the casinos.
Helsmoortel spoke to the Freeman on Friday before Pataki made his announcement.
THE WINSTON Farm, where Ulster County considered establishing a huge trash dump in the early 1990s and which hosted the mammoth Woodstock '94 rock festival in August 1994, is owned by Frank Schaller. Helsmoortel said Schaller was not at the meetings with tribal leaders but has expressed interest recently in selling the farm.
Schaller could not be reached for comment on Friday.
ULSTER County Legislature Chairman Richard Gerentine said county leaders had not been contacted about the proposal.
"If they do have an interest, hopefully they will come forth, and we will have open discussions regarding it," said Gerentine, R-Marlboro.
U.S. REP. Maurice Hinchey, a longtime Saugerties resident who now lives in Hurley, said he'd been hearing chatter for a while about an Indian tribe looking at the farm.
"I'm not completely surprised because I've heard rumors to that effect, although I have not placed a lot of credence in the rumors," the Democratic congressman said.
Informed on Friday that the proposal was for real, Hinchey said: "I'm very skeptical about it. ... I don't think that's an appropriate site for that kind of activity at all."
Hinchey was among those who fought efforts by the Ulster County Resource Recovery Agency in the late 1980s and early 1990s to put a megadump at the Winston Farm.
LANNY Walter, chairman of the Winston Farm Alliance, a Saugerties-based group that formed in the late 1980s to oppose the dump plan, said the alliance's executive committee will discuss the casino proposal at a meeting later this month.
Walter himself opposes the plan.
"Personally, I find it very troubling," he said. "I'm not a gambler, and I find encouraging people to gamble not a positive thing, and I'm very fearful about what it will do to our community."
Walter said he didn't know how other alliance members, and the community at large, will react to the proposal.
But, he said, "as a community, we're not people to be bullied, and to the extent to which the powers that are behind this multimillion-dollar enterprise want to have their way with us, if we should stand up to it, we will stand up to it. We've demonstrated that in the past, and we're perfectly capable of doing it again."
Other development plans for the Winston farm over the years - none of which came to fruition - have included a performing arts center, a business park, a shopping center, a veterans' cemetery, town houses, a school, town government offices and a public park.
THE WINSTON Farm proposal is the second casino plan to surface in Ulster County since the state Legislature voted four years ago to allow Indian-run gaming halls in the Catskills.
In 2002, the Modoc Tribe of Oklahoma, a group loosely affiliated with the Seneca-Cayugas, proposed a $250 million casino complex on the Kelly Farm property along U.S. Route 209 in the town of Wawarsing.
Ulster County lawmakers reached a three-year deal with the Modocs in March 2003 under which the county would receive $15 million per year from the Modocs if the casino opened. But Gerentine said he hasn't heard from Modoc leaders since.
Separately, at least a dozen homeowners in a neighborhood near the former IBM Recreation Center in the town of Ulster were approached last fall about selling their properties to an unidentified developer from New York City, fueling speculation - so far unfounded - that a casino was in the works for that site.

©Daily Freeman 2005

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