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NOTICE OF WITHDRAWAL
With great regret and disappointment, we write to inform you that effective immediately, we are suspending all activities relating to the permitting of the Yale Farm golf course and discontinuing our efforts with respect to the project.
We recognize the extraordinary time and effort committed to Yale Farm by a vast array of dedicated and highly professional public servants, paid and unpaid, at the local, state and federal levels. These men and women worked diligently at the task before them in a variety of adverse circumstances. We applaud and appreciate their patience, perseverance, objectivity and goodwill.
Golf course permitting today throughout the country is lengthy, expensive and sometimes contentious. A seven to nine year permitting period is not uncommon.
But we believe the Yale Farm was the wrong Rubicon. We are equally as dedicated to the environment as those who opposed the project. We believe that the interveners campaign was long on hysteria and short on science. The environmental issues that stop golf courses: endangered species, endangered species habitat and issues relating to water quality and quantity are not found at Yale Farm. It is no accident that every commission, administrative and judicial review of environmental issues always found in our favor.
Further, we have no doubt that the DEP's letter of Tentative Approval would have been confirmed at the conclusion of the public hearing.
In fact, by any measure, no other use of the property, including its current use, compares favorably to the golf course from an environmental prospective. The current farmland absorbs twelve times the pesticides and fertilizers of the proposed golf course and in a rainstorm these chemicals run uncontrolled into the brooks and streams that flow through our neighbors' lands.
No question that the permitting process had become a circus. Sometimes amusing, sometimes informative, sometimes divisive. But in the end that circus had nothing to do with our decision to change gears.
The collapse of America's economy doomed Yale Farm. In short, our economic model, which was dependent on membership sales, is no longer viable. (We realize that much was written about "housing" but in fact, housing was the tail not the dog.) Private clubs throughout the Northeast are under enormous stress. They are losing members, cutting dues, making deals to keep existing members which I would never have thought possible, even poaching each others members. And still many will not survive.
A new club dependent on high initiation fees is simply not a viable option today or in the foreseeable future.
Over the past two months, we have engaged numerous golf experts and analyzed all of our options from a variety of different angles. Simply stated, none of them work. An investment of $25 million can no longer be justified. As painful as it is to give up the fight (we came to quite enjoy it) it is the only prudent course of action.
Yale Farm, conceived as one of the finest courses in the country (and we have no doubt that it would have been) is no longer financially viable.
Finally, we appreciate that we had the political and popular support of both North Canaan and Norfolk and regret that the economic development that is so sorely needed by both towns will now not happen.
The Mead family has owned the Yale Farm property for over 90 years, Roland & Lois Betts have had a home in Clayton Corners for 27 years and David Tewksbury has had his home abutting the Yale Farm property for 16 years. All of us are keenly disappointed to have reached this conclusion. We all love the Berkshires. The permitting process is not without scars and strained friendships but the economy dictates that is time to turn the page.
Sincerely,
Roland W. Betts, Slade Mead David A.
