After years of legal wrangling, the 5,800-acre tract in New York’s Adirondack Park that was once planned for residential development is now headed for a public foreclosure auction. The property, near Simond Pond and the former Big Tupper ski centre, will be auctioned on 18 September at the Franklin County Courthouse in Malone, according to a report by Times Union.
In 2017, Preserve Associates bought the land from the Oval Wood Dish Liquidating Trust for $5.2 million. He bought the mortgage in 2019 and filed for foreclosure. He purchased the Blue Jay Campgrounds and Marina on the lake itself for $2.5 million and began upgrades.
Creditors of Preserve Associates launched disputes. The land was once pitched as the largest residential development in the Adirondack Park’s history. The Adirondack Club and Resort was a project that promised hundreds of second homes, a hotel, hiking trails, and the return of the long-closed Big Tupper ski area. More than a decade after receiving regulatory approval, the project remains unfinished as the property’s ownership has become tied up in a lengthy foreclosure dispute. The property had once supplied lumber to the region’s woodenware factory. Now it was supposed to become a playground for the affluent. But things worsened quickly. Preserve Associates couldn’t sustain mortgage payments. The Oval Wood Dish Liquidating Trust, which held the original loan, watched the debt go into default. That’s when Stanley Hutton Rumbough, an investor and businessman with long-standing ties to the Tupper Lake area, stepped in. But what followed was a cascade of litigation. And in all this, seven years went by. The parcel that was supposed to be the iconic residential development sat idle. But Rumbough continued to believe in it. He started discussions with developers on how to either build the residential project or reopen the ski centre, or possibly both. That gamble is why the Tupper Lake project still has value despite its troubled history.
The former ski centre is also involved in the area’s changing ownership scenario, although it is no longer included in the upcoming sale of the 5,800 acres. In 2024, New Jersey investors Josh Parnes and Martin Schapira, operating as Love Tupper LLC, purchased smaller parcels from the original development site at a separate foreclosure auction. They paid $650,000 for Mount Morris, home to the former ski centre, and have purchased other local properties, including the Trails End tavern, which they remodelled and recently reopened.