By: Matthew Brown The Record
(19-02-2001)

Feb. 11--VERNON, N.J.--A Canadian company hoping to build a massive residential and golf course development on Hamburg Mountain has been hit with a potentially major setback, with a state senator calling for hearings into the project just months before Intrawest Corp. had hoped to break ground.

Sen. Walter Kavanaugh, R-Somerville, said the golf course -- the linchpin in Intrawest's expansion plans for the Mountain Creek ski area -- violates deed restrictions on 1,200 acres atop the mountain.

That parcel is a former state-owned wildlife management area in the heart of New Jersey's environmentally sensitive Highlands region, and it was sold to the ski area's former owner, Eugene Mulvihill, in 1986.

Kavanaugh, then an assemblyman, was one of four members of the State House Commission, which approved that sale and set the deed restrictions governing future use of the site.

"We didn't intend to have championship golf up there," Kavanaugh said on Friday. "It's a beautiful place up there. It would be horrible."

The hearings are scheduled for March 26 before the Senate's State Government Committee, headed by Kavanuagh. A spokesman for Intrawest, Ron Moreno, said the company had no comment.

The Highlands serves as the watershed for North Jersey's drinking water supply, and Hamburg Mountain includes the headwaters of the Pequannock River, which feeds a series of reservoirs owned by the city of Newark.

Included in Vancouver-based Intrawest's plans are the 18-hole course, 1,600 condominiums, hotels, a conference center, and dozens of retail stores. The company has a history of buying struggling ski resorts, upgrading lifts and other services, and then building huge housing complexes that use the revamped recreational opportunities as an attraction.

The golf course is considered a key to attracting year-round interest in the resort and would be a major selling point for its residential component.

Intrawest has said the 1986 deed allows Vernon officials -- favorable to the project as a new tax source -- to decide whether golf is an acceptable use of the Hamburg Mountain site.

Environmentalists, including the New Jersey chapter of the Sierra Club and the New Jersey Conservation Foundation, are fighting the residential and commercial project, fearing that it could open the gate to other massive developments throughout the Highlands.

Kavanaugh's call for hearings was praised by those groups.

"It indicates that Intrawest is really trying to use its influence to overturn a decision that was settled 16 years ago," said Tim Dillingham, executive director of the New Jersey Conservation Foundation. "It's one more piece of evidence that the facts are against them."

Pending a state review of the project, the Attorney General's Office had asked Vernon's Planning Board not to approve the plan, but the township ignored that request and gave Intrawest a green light Dec. 19, 2000.

The environmental groups, which have a lawsuit pending against Vernon, are planning to file a second suit against Intrawest and Mountain Creek. The groups are trying to get the state Attorney General's Office to join the suit, but so far they have had no success.

A spokeswoman for the attorney general said the agency is awaiting more detailed information about the Mountain Creek project before it weighs in on the lawsuit.

"The state is still not ready to take a position," said the spokeswoman, Katherine Lyons.

Two of the other members of the State House Commission when the deed was signed, Assemblyman Alan Karcher and Sen. Walter Foran, have died. The fourth, former state Senate President John Russo, has recently come down with prostate cancer, Kavanaugh said.