New Jersey will pay $7.1 million to preserve 1,700 acres on Hamburg Mountain, an environmentally sensitive area in the state's northwestern corner that is home to the Mountain Creek ski area, state officials have reported. In return, the ski area's owners said they would no longer pursue plans to build a golf course.
The deal was announced by Gov. James McGreevey and other officials in Vernon, N.J., where the mountain is part of the New Jersey Highlands, a largely untracked wilderness that is home to several endangered species and a watershed for millions of residents.
"What we have put forward strikes the right balance between economic development in the valley and permanent preservation of the mountain," said Bradley M. Campbell, the state environmental protection commissioner, by telephone.
Under the agreement, Intrawest Corp. of Vancouver, British Columbia, will sell the state 467 acres for $7.1 million, and donate another 1,262 acres, in which it reserves the right to cut additional ski trails within Mountain Creek's existing trail system. Lorne Bassel, Intrawest's executive vice president for resort development, confirmed that the company had signed a letter of intent outlining the deal.
Intrawest, which is North America's biggest ski resort company -- its properties include Stratton Mountain in Vermont and Whistler in British Columbia -- had planned to construct a golf course and more than 800 residences atop the mountain. Bassel said the company still planned to spend more than $500 million on a condominium and shopping village, and perhaps even a golf course, at the base of the mountain.
Jeff Tittel, executive director of the Sierra Club of New Jersey, praised the deal, but said he remained concerned about the impact of runoff and treated sewage from the proposed base village on the nearby Wallkill National Wildlife Refuge.
Tittel and Campbell said that the deal was a costly but worthwhile remedy to the state's questionable sale of 1,400 acres of the same property in 1988 for a mere $340,000 to a local developer, Eugene Mulvihill, who sold it to Intrawest for an undisclosed sum 10 years later.