Newcomb unveils new community hub

Newcomb’s $1.9M building at Overlook Park aims to connect community and visitors

On a piece of high ground in the central Adirondacks where the timber giant Finch, Pruyn & Company once used standing trees to spell out the initials FP, the town of Newcomb has made its own mark with a $1.9 million visitor/community/communications center that will officially open with a ceremony on May 24.

For branding purposes, the small towns of the east-central part of the park are known as the Adirondack Hub, and Dave Hughes, recreation and events coordinator for Newcomb, hopes the new center will become the hub of the hub.

It boasts state-of-the art electronics, top-notch meeting space, a commercial kitchen, tele-work space and a visitors clearing house of information about the too-often overlooked southern access to the High Peaks. Perhaps most important, the center will promote a natural resource that is increasingly hard to find: community connection.

The primary difficulty to luring people inside the center itself might lie in convincing them to take their eyes off the view, an impressive panorama from Allen Mountain in the east to Mt. Marcy and its lofty pals, then to the Santanoni range to the west. On the veranda is an inviting ring of Adirondack chairs around a gas fire pit.

New ways to bring community, visitors together

Newcomb Councilor Mary Lamphear said the 5,000-square-foot center represents a new era both for the town’s 400 residents, as well as a sizable summer population. “We’re creating this new event on the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend at the opening of the season when people are coming back to open up their camps,” she said. “Our plan is to have an opening day with music and food and games, and the whole community coming together.”

Newcomb has a full day of activities planned for its May 24 grand opening, including food, music, arts exhibits and games.

Locally, Lamphear is starting a book club, which will meet at the center along with an existing foreign-relations discussion group. There will be movie nights, modern meeting space for local committees, and also for hiking clubs, state agencies, historic groups and anyone who wants to gather on the south side of the Peaks.

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Hughes said he hopes the center will kindle greater interest in the region, which has many natural attractions, but only a fraction of the visitors of Keene Valley and the Adirondack Loj, the northern gateways to the High Peaks.

“Newcomb essentially has everything that anybody would be looking for,” he said. “We have the upper elevation hikes, lower elevation, fire towers and the Essex Chain of Lakes.”

A long road to renewal

Great tracts of land became public a decade or more ago when by way of land trusts the state acquired a total of 69,000 acres of Finch, Pruyn land and added it to the Forest Preserve. To win local-government approval (or at least avoid express disapproval) for protecting so much land from the possibility of private development, the state compensated the community, with money for the visitor center, start-up money for two restaurants and a plan for a network of high-speed snowmobile trails. 

In 2018, then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced plans for the Adirondack Gateway in North Hudson, a $30 million public-private development off the Northway’s Exit 29. As “overuse” became a watchword among conservationists to the north, Newcomb was pitched as a viable safety valve for High Peak hikers.

But much of that energy had been lost. No private partner was found for the Adirondack Gateway project, and the snowmobile trails were held by the courts to be illegal because they required excessive tree cutting. Both restaurants have since closed and Covid escalated the price of building materials.

Poised for fresh attention?

But through it all, plans for the community center — which predated COVID-19 — persevered, said council member Lana Fennessy, although the path was not always smooth. “We’ve had several plans, and we had to deal with COVID,” she said. “But we always wanted something that would bring the community together.”

Hughes said he also believes that the state and conservationists’ idea of Newcomb as an attractive alternative to northern trailheads is still valid. The Open Space Institute refashioned the Upper Works trailhead to the Peaks into a widely acclaimed outdoor museum of the old sportsmans club that grew up in the community of Adirondac.

And, taking notice of the successful Adirondack Rail Trail being built between Lake Placid and Tupper Lake, cycling advocates are turning their eyes to an abandoned rail spur running between the mines of Tahawus south to North Creek.

Hughes said it is possible that freight cars could once again run on the line to a Tahawus rock quarry, but it would be difficult because the line south is owned by multiple entities that would have to sign off — which at the moment seems unlikely.

Another wild card is High Peak trailhead permitting, which has been in place at the Adirondack Mountain Reserve parking lot in St. Hubert’s. Should permitting be extended to other major trailheads, hikers without a reservation might head for the Upper Works as an alternative. The approach to Mt. Marcy is a bit longer, but in Keene Valley hikers on busy weekends sometimes walk a mile or more just to get to the trailhead.

And for bone-weary hikers, there’s a new great room waiting for them, with overstuffed chairs, a gas fireplace and, soon, historical black and white photographs of the town’s history — just one more reason to come, and one more reason why Newcomb partisans believe their town is more than worthy of your time.