TUPPER LAKE -- A community-based effort mustered to move the Wawbeek Restaurant building has apparently run out of time.

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The building is one of two historic structures designed by William Lincoln Coulter as part of a Great Camp complex for a New York City banker in 1899.

In a letter sent via his attorney, Dick Sittig, new owner of the 40-acre former resort, says he no longer considers viable a burgeoning plan to move the building.

"It appears to us that there are significant organization (sic) uncertainties, and that there is no currently available funding source, and that your group will not be able to complete your work by the originally prescribed May 20th date or any date even close to that," attorney Tim Smith wrote for the Sittigs.

"Accordingly, my clients will be making different plans for the building."

The Wawbeek Relocation Group was pulling the move together with support from the Tupper Lake Chamber of Commerce, the town historian and a group that owns the restored railroad station depot.

Jim Lanthier, a rustic craftsman from Tupper Lake, coordinated the effort and had answered nearly all of eight strategic questions raised by Sittig at the beginning of April.

"The unanswered questions were exactly where the money was coming from," Lanthier said in a phone interview Monday. "And we still needed quotes from the insurance company for the $2 million liability coverage."

A moving company with experience moving historic buildings gave the Wawbeek Relocation Group a price of $126,000 to disassemble and store the building in five large containers for six months.

DISAPPOINTED

The property owner's rejection letter was a letdown, Lanthier said.

"I actually feel that the Sittigs should be a little more considerate for Tupper Lake and that they should help us move the building to Tupper Lake."

The cost to demolish the buildings would likely be more than the cost to move them, he said.