By KIM SMITH DEDAM
Staff Writer
May 06, 2008 06:33 am
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TUPPER LAKE -- A community-based effort mustered to move the Wawbeek Restaurant building has apparently run out of time.
What's your opinion?
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.
In a telephone interview Monday, Mr. Sittig said they plan to move ahead with construction of their new great camp, salvaging what they can of the existing structures.
No one has come up with a timely and solvent plan to move the buildings since the idea was presented in March, he said.
"Even with extending the deadline, nobody was willing to put up the money to get this done. There were some good intentions, but it's a huge undertaking. It requires a lot of planning and a lot of resources.
"We're going to go ahead with our construction. We've waited, we've delayed, even through keeping the resort open last summer. I anticipate salvaging what's salvageable and the rest coming down."
Sittig said rebuilding with an eye on the future is an important way of responding to the past.
"I don't think Adirondack architecture is a frozen museum piece."
What lasts forever is the landscape, he said, and how we interpret that in our dwelling here.
"The best we can do is build something in keeping with an Adirondack architectural genre. And I know we're doing a very good job of that."
What was lately called the Wawbeek Resort was first a Great Camp, turned into a summer camp for boys, then a restaurant and bar, then a private resort.
Three hotels with the same name have come and gone in a hundred years next door.
"A hundred years from now, who knows what the building will be?" Sittig said of their new structure.
"Architecturally, it will leave a proper legacy."
But Lanthier says the buildings represent 110 years of Tupper tradition.
"These are historic buildings, and it's very important, especially since we've lost most of our historic buildings already."
NO LEGAL PROTECTION
The Coulter buildings were never formally protected by listing on the National Register of Historic Places and likely will not come under scrutiny of the State Office of Historic Preservation, even though they've been deemed historic in nature under several key criteria for preservation, according to Adirondack Architectural Heritage Executive Director Steven Engelhart.
"Most of the Tupper group's challenges could have been overcome with a little more time," Engelhart said of the rejection letter. "I was hoping this would appeal to their (the Sittigs') bigger hearts and better interests."
Tupper Lake historian Jon Kopp said he had hoped to see the buildings preserved one way or another.
"It would be nice if it could come to Tupper Lake. Maybe Jim just needs a little more time. We do have a place for it, if we could get it here."
But site planning takes time, and time appears to have run out.
"Without having the building here, we can't pursue those options," Kopp said.
kdedam@pressrepublican.com
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