Tupper Lake marina added to assets of wealthy investor

Stanley Rumbough now has multiple lakefront properties

By James M. Odato

A man acquiring properties around Tupper Lake has added a well-known marina and campground near the site of a failed major residential resort.

SHR Ventures LLC, tied to Stanley H. Rumbough, paid $2.5 million for the Blue Jay Marina and Campsite, on the shore of Big Tupper Lake, according to interviews and public records.

The March 25 under-the-radar transaction was between the Rumbough entity and Frank Scotti of Asbury Park, NJ. The Scotti family has run Blue Jay since 1946, its website states.

Scotti said he would not discuss the deal.

His real estate agents and the buyers would only confirm the sale. Some buildings on the site have been removed recently.

SHR Ventures’ contact, Simos Dimas, of the Dimas Law Group in Manhattan, said he cannot discuss plans at this time.

Rumbough purchased the mortgage on a great deal of land near Big Tupper, the former downhill ski center, with the idea of resuscitating some of the once-grand plan to build multiple high-end residences, a hotel and resort. The project, known as the Adirondack Club and Resort, fizzled after developers gained critical state permits but not enough financing.

Rumbough moved to put the property into foreclosure but that has been stalled because of pandemic-related policies and lienholders demanding payment, according to local officials.

Development plans for the Blue Jay site off Route 30 are unclear. The marina was used by boaters for decades and was the only fuel stop on Tupper Lake.

In 2019, Rumbough purchased nearby Camp Pine Cove for $1.5 million from Thomas Lawson, one of the proposed developers of the Adirondack Club and Resort. 

Rumbough, of Greenwich, Conn., sometimes flies into the 11-acre camp along Simon Pond on a seaplane.

He is the heir of Wall Street, cereal and soap fortunes as well as the grandson of E.F. Hutton and Marjorie Merriweather Post, whose Adirondack great camp, Topridge, on Upper St. Regis Lake, he visited as a child.

Rumbough has been interested in find ways to accomplish some of the club and resort project that had been billed as a $500 million development on 6,400 acres for up to 700 condos, vacation homes and luxury great camps, plus a 60-bedroom hotel and a revitalized Big Tupper, a golf course and a marina.

Rumbough’s representatives have said in the past that he is interested in acquiring much of the acreage of the proposed project site, but not Big Tupper.