July 24, 2006
On the edge | A proposal for a summer camp has Rangeley residents taking a stand against lakefront development
By Chris Churchill
Hermie Glick leads a visitor through the woods, down a puddled path that cuts through the 372 remote acres owned by his family. The forest clears, giving way to a scene of gray and green and a small pond, its water smooth and its shoreline nearly untouched by development.
This is Round Pond. And though it's hard to believe when standing on its quiet edge, this placid water is at the center of a two-year, continuing battle that has been the talk of the Franklin County town of Rangeley. It is here, along the pond's shore, where Glick, all of 26 years old, wants to build his dream: a youth summer camp that could enroll 400 children. And it is here that some Rangeley residents say they have drawn a line in the mud, declaring that at least one lake in the region should remain free of the development that increasingly crowds other Maine shorelines.
By all accounts, the long fight over the proposed camp, Camp Rangeley, has been odd, full of as many twists and turns as an Old Orchard Beach roller coaster. Lawyers have been retained, and a court has heard the arguments. There have been petition drives and harsh letters published in the regional newspaper, The Rangeley Highlander. There even was a tie vote on the issue at a special Rangeley town meeting, a jam-packed affair of 300 voters and perhaps half as many onlookers. "With that many people voting," says Richard Caton, the understated moderator of the meeting, "you don't usually come out with a tie."
And this, remember, is a fight over a summer camp. Is there any enterprise that seems less likely to generate a bitter fight, especially in camp-laden Maine? Any business that brings such pleasant imagery to mind ˆ of children swimming, singing songs around a campfire and drinking bug juice in the dining hall?
Opponents of Camp Rangeley, represented by the grassroots Rangeley Crossroads Coalition, admit to occasionally feeling as though they've launched a campaign against apple pie and baseball cards. But they insist they are fighting for the future of the region they love. They say the real issue is not the camp, but the steady march of unfocused development. "How are we going to leave this area for the next generation?" says Jim Proctor, a coalition member who lives in the residential area along Dodge Pond Road, the unpaved artery that would lead to the camp. "Do we want it to be Lake Winnipesaukee or Sebago Lake?"
Water fight
Hermie Glick says his New York family could not imagine their proposal for a summer camp would be divisive and contentious when they purchased the Round Pond land two years ago. The family, he says, expected residents to welcome the summer camp as a taxpayer and economic engine, especially in a lake-rich resort town in which summer visitors are key to keeping local wallets full. "We really wanted to be a good neighbor to the town, but a lot of people kind of rejected us," Glick says. "They've hired lawyers, and they're fighting us every step of the way."
The architectural drawings for the proposed camp, which would be built on just 41 acres of the Glick's land, show a series of buildings best described as upscale rustic ˆ a classier version of the typical Maine summer camp. The plan calls for dorms for staff; cabins for campers; a main building containing a performing arts center, movie room, recreation area and dining hall; a roller hockey facility; outdoor basketball courts; eight tennis courts; two soccer fields; a football field; two baseball fields; an archery range; a gymnastic pavilion; and quite a bit more.
The $5 million proposal is ambitious, no doubt. And it represents a dream and potential career for Hermie Glick. "I've been going to camp for years and years," he says. "This is what I want to do."
But when the Glick family, who Hermie says own a high-end door-accessory business in New York, gathered Rangeley-area residents to unveil their intentions shortly after buying the land, some saw the plan laid before them as a nightmare. "They said, 'We're going to water ski on Round Pond,'" says Linda Robertson, a member of the Rangeley Crossroads Coalition who lives in nearby Sandy River Plantation. "And all of our jaws dropped."
Members of the coalition describe the meeting as a wake-up call that delivered a clear message: They'd better organize against what they see as unplanned, unthoughtful development in the Rangeley region before the area is forever changed. The group, which now claims nearly 200 members, decided, for example, that Rangeley needs to adopt stricter and more rigorous zoning regulations, that the town needs to prepare for a coming wave of retirees and second homeowners.
The coalition's primary argument against Camp Rangeley is simple: It is much too big for a pond that is only 166 acres and is more appropriate for the shores of, say, nearby Rangeley Lake, which is 36 times larger. "This doesn't feel like a real camp," Robertson says. "This feels like a country club or a resort." The coalition also says the camp is planned for a steep incline that builders likely would have to level, potentially creating runoff issues that would threaten the pond's water quality.
Robertson and Proctor depict the Glicks as naïve about Maine and the water at the heart of their camp. Don't the New Yorkers know the water is full of leeches, they ask? What children would want to swim there? The pair says the camp could easily fail, leading the family to turn it into a conference center or resort with a mission and schedule far different from that of a destination for children.
The Glicks, on the other hand, say they know what they're doing and can't understand the objections to a business they say would operate just seven weeks a year. "There have been people swimming in the pond for 1,000 years," says Mary Glick, Hermie's mother. "If you buy land along a pristine pond, that's the attraction. We're going to do everything we can to keep the pond pristine."
The Glicks see the opposition as part of a regional bias against people from away and a cultural resistance to change of any kind. "Doing business in the state of Maine is very difficult," Hermie Glick says. "It's ridiculous."
Debating what's allowed
Shortly after the Glicks' plans were announced during the summer of 2004, Camp Rangeley became entangled in a complex fight. At issue was whether overnight summer camps are allowed under town zoning law. (Rangeley currently does not have such a summer camp, though it has two day camps.)
The town's code enforcement officer told the Glicks the law does not allow camps. The family appealed that ruling to the Zoning Board of Appeals, which decided a camp was allowable under the town's vaguely written code. The next stop was Franklin County Superior Court in Farmington, where the presiding judge threw the case out of court as irrelevant because the Glicks had failed to submit a formal application for the development with the town.
As the debate wound its way through formal channels, members of the Rangeley Crossroads Coalition didn't rest. They began a petition drive that ultimately forced a special town meeting on whether to declare Round Pond mostly off-limits to development by creating a Round Pond Watershed Protection District.
Such a district, quite obviously, would be a death knell for the Glicks' summer camp dream, and the family lobbied vigorously against it. But members of the coalition insist the proposed zone was not about Camp Rangeley. "The whole idea of the special district was to reduce the amount of impact on the pond," Robertson says. "It was not designed to stop any particular project. It was a way of saying, 'This place should be protected from development.'"
In the weeks leading up to the May 11 vote, Camp Rangeley and the protection district were the talk of the town. The Highlander, flooded with letters to the editor on the topic, even went so far as to devote much of an entire issue to "The Truth about Camp Rangeley." When the meeting at last came, nearly 300 voters ˆ this in a town with just more than 1,000 full-time residents ˆ swarmed into the high school gymnasium.
And when the tally was announced, the assembled crowd gasped: The result was a 143-143 tie, meaning the watershed protection district had failed. "It was unbelievable," Proctor says, still shaking his head at how close the coalition came to success.
Pressure point
Summer camps are big business in Maine. A recent economic study by the Maine Youth Camping Association claimed the state's 190 summer camps have a $300 million annual impact on the economy. Some in western Maine believe Rangeley would benefit from a slice of that pie. "A camp for kids plants seeds for future tourism," says Allison Hagerstrom, executive director of the Farmington-based Greater Franklin Development Corp., which is backing the Glicks' proposal. "You have folks who come to Maine, have a wonderful experience and will come back as adults."
Like the Glicks, Hagerstrom says she wouldn't have predicted the controversy over the camp proposal. "It's not like it's an industrialized project," she says. "I thought it was a nice match to what already happens in Rangeley."
But opponents say what is already happening in Rangeley ˆ rampant development ˆ is a threat to what they like about the region. "We came here because we wanted to get away from the fast pace, and we like peace and quiet," says Proctor, a New Jersey native. "[The Glicks] are stopping at nothing to get what they want, and they're not thinking about what the people who have lived here for years want."
Coalition members seem to have the majority of residents on their side: Most interviewed for this story say opinion at the town meeting was decidedly against allowing the camp, but that many residents nevertheless voted against the protective district because they objected to quickly made zoning changes.
That wouldn't seem to bode well for the future of Camp Rangeley, which after two full years of debate was recently set to be heard by Rangeley Planning Board. However, apparently aware that the camp as now proposed is unlikely to pass muster, the Glicks pulled their application just prior to a July 12 board meeting. "We're taking time to reassess the climate," says Mary Glick, declining to elaborate further. "It's been a very discouraging endeavor."
If the Glicks do go forward, planning board members will be charged with deciding if the camp is allowed under town law. The board's chair, Robert Silvia, predicts Camp Rangeley has a long, time-consuming road to travel to approval. And it sounds as if he's unlikely to vote in its favor. Silvia does not believe summer camps are allowed in Rangeley, an opinion he says is backed by the Augusta-based Maine Municipal Association, which looked at the case at the request of the town. And he says the town's comprehensive plan instructs the board to approve only "low-impact" projects. "I have trouble describing 600 people on 41 acres in a nice community area as low impact," Silvia says, "especially when you're going to be blowing up a mountain."
The Glicks say they may explore options in other towns. And whatever the ultimate decision in Rangeley, the family says it is determined to build a summer camp somewhere in Maine. The Glicks say doing so is more than a business opportunity ˆ it's a calling.
Her frustration with the Rangeley fight evident in her voice, Mary Glick notes the multi-state outpouring of emotion that followed the recent death of Hy Schmierer, founder of a Pennsylvania camp that Hermie Glick attended as a child. "When you own a camp," she says, "you can affect thousands of people. It might be one of the nicest things you can do."
This is Round Pond. And though it's hard to believe when standing on its quiet edge, this placid water is at the center of a two-year, continuing battle that has been the talk of the Franklin County town of Rangeley. It is here, along the pond's shore, where Glick, all of 26 years old, wants to build his dream: a youth summer camp that could enroll 400 children. And it is here that some Rangeley residents say they have drawn a line in the mud, declaring that at least one lake in the region should remain free of the development that increasingly crowds other Maine shorelines.
By all accounts, the long fight over the proposed camp, Camp Rangeley, has been odd, full of as many twists and turns as an Old Orchard Beach roller coaster. Lawyers have been retained, and a court has heard the arguments. There have been petition drives and harsh letters published in the regional newspaper, The Rangeley Highlander. There even was a tie vote on the issue at a special Rangeley town meeting, a jam-packed affair of 300 voters and perhaps half as many onlookers. "With that many people voting," says Richard Caton, the understated moderator of the meeting, "you don't usually come out with a tie."
And this, remember, is a fight over a summer camp. Is there any enterprise that seems less likely to generate a bitter fight, especially in camp-laden Maine? Any business that brings such pleasant imagery to mind ˆ of children swimming, singing songs around a campfire and drinking bug juice in the dining hall?
Opponents of Camp Rangeley, represented by the grassroots Rangeley Crossroads Coalition, admit to occasionally feeling as though they've launched a campaign against apple pie and baseball cards. But they insist they are fighting for the future of the region they love. They say the real issue is not the camp, but the steady march of unfocused development. "How are we going to leave this area for the next generation?" says Jim Proctor, a coalition member who lives in the residential area along Dodge Pond Road, the unpaved artery that would lead to the camp. "Do we want it to be Lake Winnipesaukee or Sebago Lake?"
Water fight
Hermie Glick says his New York family could not imagine their proposal for a summer camp would be divisive and contentious when they purchased the Round Pond land two years ago. The family, he says, expected residents to welcome the summer camp as a taxpayer and economic engine, especially in a lake-rich resort town in which summer visitors are key to keeping local wallets full. "We really wanted to be a good neighbor to the town, but a lot of people kind of rejected us," Glick says. "They've hired lawyers, and they're fighting us every step of the way."
The architectural drawings for the proposed camp, which would be built on just 41 acres of the Glick's land, show a series of buildings best described as upscale rustic ˆ a classier version of the typical Maine summer camp. The plan calls for dorms for staff; cabins for campers; a main building containing a performing arts center, movie room, recreation area and dining hall; a roller hockey facility; outdoor basketball courts; eight tennis courts; two soccer fields; a football field; two baseball fields; an archery range; a gymnastic pavilion; and quite a bit more.
The $5 million proposal is ambitious, no doubt. And it represents a dream and potential career for Hermie Glick. "I've been going to camp for years and years," he says. "This is what I want to do."
But when the Glick family, who Hermie says own a high-end door-accessory business in New York, gathered Rangeley-area residents to unveil their intentions shortly after buying the land, some saw the plan laid before them as a nightmare. "They said, 'We're going to water ski on Round Pond,'" says Linda Robertson, a member of the Rangeley Crossroads Coalition who lives in nearby Sandy River Plantation. "And all of our jaws dropped."
Members of the coalition describe the meeting as a wake-up call that delivered a clear message: They'd better organize against what they see as unplanned, unthoughtful development in the Rangeley region before the area is forever changed. The group, which now claims nearly 200 members, decided, for example, that Rangeley needs to adopt stricter and more rigorous zoning regulations, that the town needs to prepare for a coming wave of retirees and second homeowners.
The coalition's primary argument against Camp Rangeley is simple: It is much too big for a pond that is only 166 acres and is more appropriate for the shores of, say, nearby Rangeley Lake, which is 36 times larger. "This doesn't feel like a real camp," Robertson says. "This feels like a country club or a resort." The coalition also says the camp is planned for a steep incline that builders likely would have to level, potentially creating runoff issues that would threaten the pond's water quality.
Robertson and Proctor depict the Glicks as naïve about Maine and the water at the heart of their camp. Don't the New Yorkers know the water is full of leeches, they ask? What children would want to swim there? The pair says the camp could easily fail, leading the family to turn it into a conference center or resort with a mission and schedule far different from that of a destination for children.
The Glicks, on the other hand, say they know what they're doing and can't understand the objections to a business they say would operate just seven weeks a year. "There have been people swimming in the pond for 1,000 years," says Mary Glick, Hermie's mother. "If you buy land along a pristine pond, that's the attraction. We're going to do everything we can to keep the pond pristine."
The Glicks see the opposition as part of a regional bias against people from away and a cultural resistance to change of any kind. "Doing business in the state of Maine is very difficult," Hermie Glick says. "It's ridiculous."
Debating what's allowed
Shortly after the Glicks' plans were announced during the summer of 2004, Camp Rangeley became entangled in a complex fight. At issue was whether overnight summer camps are allowed under town zoning law. (Rangeley currently does not have such a summer camp, though it has two day camps.)
The town's code enforcement officer told the Glicks the law does not allow camps. The family appealed that ruling to the Zoning Board of Appeals, which decided a camp was allowable under the town's vaguely written code. The next stop was Franklin County Superior Court in Farmington, where the presiding judge threw the case out of court as irrelevant because the Glicks had failed to submit a formal application for the development with the town.
As the debate wound its way through formal channels, members of the Rangeley Crossroads Coalition didn't rest. They began a petition drive that ultimately forced a special town meeting on whether to declare Round Pond mostly off-limits to development by creating a Round Pond Watershed Protection District.
Such a district, quite obviously, would be a death knell for the Glicks' summer camp dream, and the family lobbied vigorously against it. But members of the coalition insist the proposed zone was not about Camp Rangeley. "The whole idea of the special district was to reduce the amount of impact on the pond," Robertson says. "It was not designed to stop any particular project. It was a way of saying, 'This place should be protected from development.'"
In the weeks leading up to the May 11 vote, Camp Rangeley and the protection district were the talk of the town. The Highlander, flooded with letters to the editor on the topic, even went so far as to devote much of an entire issue to "The Truth about Camp Rangeley." When the meeting at last came, nearly 300 voters ˆ this in a town with just more than 1,000 full-time residents ˆ swarmed into the high school gymnasium.
And when the tally was announced, the assembled crowd gasped: The result was a 143-143 tie, meaning the watershed protection district had failed. "It was unbelievable," Proctor says, still shaking his head at how close the coalition came to success.
Pressure point
Summer camps are big business in Maine. A recent economic study by the Maine Youth Camping Association claimed the state's 190 summer camps have a $300 million annual impact on the economy. Some in western Maine believe Rangeley would benefit from a slice of that pie. "A camp for kids plants seeds for future tourism," says Allison Hagerstrom, executive director of the Farmington-based Greater Franklin Development Corp., which is backing the Glicks' proposal. "You have folks who come to Maine, have a wonderful experience and will come back as adults."
Like the Glicks, Hagerstrom says she wouldn't have predicted the controversy over the camp proposal. "It's not like it's an industrialized project," she says. "I thought it was a nice match to what already happens in Rangeley."
But opponents say what is already happening in Rangeley ˆ rampant development ˆ is a threat to what they like about the region. "We came here because we wanted to get away from the fast pace, and we like peace and quiet," says Proctor, a New Jersey native. "[The Glicks] are stopping at nothing to get what they want, and they're not thinking about what the people who have lived here for years want."
Coalition members seem to have the majority of residents on their side: Most interviewed for this story say opinion at the town meeting was decidedly against allowing the camp, but that many residents nevertheless voted against the protective district because they objected to quickly made zoning changes.
That wouldn't seem to bode well for the future of Camp Rangeley, which after two full years of debate was recently set to be heard by Rangeley Planning Board. However, apparently aware that the camp as now proposed is unlikely to pass muster, the Glicks pulled their application just prior to a July 12 board meeting. "We're taking time to reassess the climate," says Mary Glick, declining to elaborate further. "It's been a very discouraging endeavor."
If the Glicks do go forward, planning board members will be charged with deciding if the camp is allowed under town law. The board's chair, Robert Silvia, predicts Camp Rangeley has a long, time-consuming road to travel to approval. And it sounds as if he's unlikely to vote in its favor. Silvia does not believe summer camps are allowed in Rangeley, an opinion he says is backed by the Augusta-based Maine Municipal Association, which looked at the case at the request of the town. And he says the town's comprehensive plan instructs the board to approve only "low-impact" projects. "I have trouble describing 600 people on 41 acres in a nice community area as low impact," Silvia says, "especially when you're going to be blowing up a mountain."
The Glicks say they may explore options in other towns. And whatever the ultimate decision in Rangeley, the family says it is determined to build a summer camp somewhere in Maine. The Glicks say doing so is more than a business opportunity ˆ it's a calling.
Her frustration with the Rangeley fight evident in her voice, Mary Glick notes the multi-state outpouring of emotion that followed the recent death of Hy Schmierer, founder of a Pennsylvania camp that Hermie Glick attended as a child. "When you own a camp," she says, "you can affect thousands of people. It might be one of the nicest things you can do."
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