In 2023, Woodstock National LLC presented a proposal to the Woodstock Planning Board for a private luxury home community with an 18-hole golf course, short term rentals, villas, and a heliport on 624 acres of forest in the towns of Woodstock and Ulster. The land in question is the largest remaining private parcel of pristine forest and wetland in our community, over 624 acres of unfragmented natural habitat. The acres lie between Bluestone Wild Forest, the Israel Wittman Sanctuary, the City of Kingston Reservoir, and other protected land.

Preserving the parcel gives the Woodstock community thousands of contiguous acres of largely unfragmented wild forest and wetland which offer an important wildlife corridor. The entire 500 acres located in Woodstock have been designated as a critical environmental area because of their “exceptional and unique environmental characteristics”.  New York State’s Open Space Plan (NYS OSP) has identified most of this land as a Priority Project Conservation Area, with the goal of adding it to the Catskill Forest Preserve. 

This is not just any piece of land, so the local community was determined to stop this development. The Woodstock Land Conservancy along with environmental activists formed a coalition to halt the development and preserve this precious land. In the Fall of 2023, Woodstock National LLC changed their name to Zena Development and finalized the purchase of the property. The strong opposition from hundreds of community members led the developers to withdraw their application for the golf course and temporarily focus their energies on developing the 100+ acres in Ulster saying they had no plans to develop Woodstock, “for now”.

The developers faced a major problem with their plan to develop in Ulster. Not a single adjoining property owner, including the Ruby Rod and Gun Club and the Woodstock Land Conservancy will grant access to the purchased land, leaving the property landlocked. The only access would be through the Town of Woodstock. This would require expanding and paving Eastwoods drive, currently a narrow dirt road, along a designated wetland in the town of Woodstock. Zena’s current application requires Woodstock emergency services - fire, police, EMT’s to travel through Woodstock to the Ulster property. The developers want to form a homeowner’s association for the homes in the Ulster Development and have those homeowners promise to reimburse Woodstock for those services. After attempting to circumvent the application process, the Woodstock ZBA held a public hearing on August 22nd (2023) to hear arguments regarding how Zena Development had violated Woodstock’s zoning with the proposed road expansion. 

The current proposal is for a sprawling development of 30 building lots and up to 77

homes with tennis and pickleball courts, and a rec center in the town of Ulster with road access through the town of Woodstock. This proposal is right smack in the middle of the contiguous forest. The sound associated with all of this activity adjacent to a wildlife sanctuary would have dramatic impact on wildlife. A wildlife corridor which is the habitat for the Bald Eagle and hundreds of bird species is not the right place for homes of any kind.

Zena Development has demonstrated that they cannot be trusted. The developers

conducted their traffic study on a Tuesday in January during one of the weeks Sawkill Road was closed. They state in their application that rabbits, deer and raccoons are the predominant wildlife. Woodstock has mapped the wildlife on the adjoining property and the list includes wood frog, spotted salamander, marbled salamander, long eared bat, Indiana bat, and the foraging area for the bald eagle as well as125 bird species. They neglected to tell the Ulster town board that some of the homes might be duplexes and omitted critical information about Woodstock’s access approvals by trying to circumvent the Woodstock Planning Board and going directly to the building inspector. This led the Ulster supervisor Jim Quigley to state “This goes … directly to credibility, Why would I trust anybody that misrepresents something this basic?”. They say they want to build “environmentally sustainable” homes but beware of greenwashing…. they also say that if a buyer wants sustainable energy such as solar it will be up to the individual homeowner to make that happen. 

For meaningful protection in the face of climate change, a patchwork of small, protected parcels is less effective. We need large swaths, corridors of protected land connecting diverse habitats. This land, in our critical environmental area, connects Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) lands, the reservoir and Onteora lake and the Bluestone wild forest to the foothills of Overlook and on into the Catskills. 

Efforts to date have stopped Zena from building a golf course community and this housing development can be stopped as well. Construction has not begun, and this is going to be a marathon, not a sprint, and the community will have to remain vigilant and engaged for a long time. The Stop Zena Development effort has engaged an attorney with the goal of convincing the developers to leave this parcel and decide to build somewhere that is not a critical environmental area.

Please join the conversation and get real time updates on the Stop Zena Development Facebook page, volunteer on the website at stopzenadevelopment.org, sign up for the newsletter, and importantly, write letters to the editor and attend relevant Ulster and Woodstock planning board meetings. Zena Development has submitted another application to the town of Ulster.