Ready or not, the 2026 elections have arrived. Villages across New York State will elect local leaders on March 18th. In the Adirondack Village of Saranac Lake, the election is hinging in part on plans by New York’s Adirondack Park Agency to relocate it’s headquarters.
Nearly four years ago, Park Agency staff approached Saranac Lake’s newly-elected mayor, Jimmy Williams, with a request to explore leasing and refurbishing a village-owned office building and erecting an accompanying structure on the same property for a new agency headquarters.
The presence of the village police department in the existing structure and plans by the mayor to relocate the department to a proposed public safety facility which would need an agency permit complicated the deal. Agency staff and village officials worked behind closed doors on the lease proposal for a year before it was leaked to the public.
The Numbers
In February 2022, Governor Kathy Hochul appointed Saranac Lake native Barbara Rice to replace the Park Agency’s outgoing Executive Director Terry Martino. Director Rice brought with her from Albany $29 Million to build a new headquarters, a 45% increase over the amount Martino had negotiated with the Division of Budget for a new building at the New York State compound in nearby Ray Brook.
(With costs ranging from $350-$870 per square-foot for state government office buildings in the northeastern US, $29 million could buy Director Rice a building between 33,000 and 83,000 square-feet—or 2.6 to 6.6 times the size of APA’s current Ray Brook headquarters—for a staff of 54.)
Still, engineering analyses connected to a feasibility study for the Park Agency’s Saranac Lake headquarters plan revealed that an additional $10 million would be required for that location. The increase was requested by Governor Hochul last year and approved by the Legislature.
Popular support for the move has been a matter of concern. Commitments by the Park Agency to hold a public information forum on relocation of it’s offices date back to December 2023.
At the September 2025 presentation in Saranac Lake, agency staff predicted that its forum would finally be held three months later in early December. Another three months after that, the public forum still has not been scheduled.
Details of the lease, released late Friday by the village, reveal a lose-lose proposition. After sinking $39 Million into the project, the state of New York will not own the leased property or the 19,000 square-foot building it will build there. Saranac Lake stands to lose twice over.
To eliminate a conflict of interest with the Park Agency, the village, with assistance from Albany, last year relocated the Police Department to an abandoned state armory outside the village limits.
The Park Agency lease would foreclose the possibility of returning the force to an improved and expanded centrally located facility, accessible to residents and visitors alike. In addition, the terms of the lease compensate village taxpayers a single dollar per year for 40 years.
Time is Running Out
Saranac Lake Mayor Williams is running for reelection on the Republican line on the March 18th ballot. The final regular meeting of the village board before Election Day was held this week. The mayor, aware of the possibility that a board majority in favor of the plan may reverse course after the election — with or without him at the helm — submitted a board resolution to approve the lease.
As with the agency, Saranac Lake still hasn’t held a public forum on the plan. Monday night, village trustees approved the lease on a 3-1 vote with one abstention citing lack of information.
Despite Director Rice’s eagerness to sign the lease, the Park Agency is still working through turmoil and turnover in it’s legal department. Moreover, it is embroiled in litigation surrounding an adjudicatory hearing over an artillery range in the Town of Lewis.
Communicating with a skeptical, possibly unwelcoming public over the headquarters matter may be a low priority. Governor Hochul, who exerts some measure of control over Park Agency policies and priorities, is herself running for re-election later this year.
With a comfortable lead in the polls and a downstate challenger unfamiliar with Adirondack political horse-trading, she may see no short-term risk in having the Park Agency push through a decision on its future headquarters without public input.
Longterm consequences are another matter entirely. Public sentiment among residents of the Adirondack Park towards the agency has always been a political minefield.
With a mayor who has chosen to tie his re-election bid to an expansive and expensive agenda — including the APA lease — Governor Hochul may be prudent to suggest the Park Agency postpone any hasty decisions until after local election returns come in on the 18th.
Read more about the Adirondacks.
Stephen Erman served as Adirondack Park Agency’s Special Assistant for Economic Affairs from 1982-2010; Jim Connolly served as Adirondack Park Agency’s Deputy Director for Planning from 2002-2013; Mark Wilson is a cartoonist and newspaper commentator on political affairs.
Illustration by Mark Wilson.
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