Lake Huntington attracts suburban subdivision

By CHARLIE BUTERBAUGH

LAKE HUNTINGTON, NY — Sitting in a Narrowsburg diner sipping hot chocolate on a brisk morning, William Boucher recalled an eager discussion in Charlie Knapp’s nearby barbershop about where to put a new high school.

Boucher had purchased 165 hilltop acres above Lake Huntington and planned to subdivide it for small single-family homes, but the idea of a school appealed to the 30-year math teacher. He called his attorney in Monticello, and soon he had donated 48 acres of the property to a newly merged school district, streamlining an otherwise bureaucratic process of agreeing on a location. Construction of the Sullivan West High School overlooking Lake Huntington began in 2000.

“I took the politics out. I like to see everyone make money. What the school will do is establish activity in the town not there before,” Boucher said.

Last week, at the April 29 Town of Cochecton Planning Board meeting, engineer Tim Gottlieb of Monticello presented drawings of Lake View Estates, Boucher’s proposed subdivision of 74 half-acre lots on 94 acres of wooded land adjacent to the high school property. Gottlieb said several different kinds of custom-built homes, each with three to four bedrooms, would be sold on each property for $250,000.

“We’re looking for full-time owners,” Gottlieb said.

The plans show 40 out of 94 acres, mostly around the perimeter of the subdivision, designated as open space.

“It will remain open, I guarantee, if I have to stand there with my sword,” Boucher said in the interview before the meeting.

Former teacher turns developer

Boucher grew up in a yellow house on the lower end of the lake, and his father taught in one-room schools in Bethel and Lake Huntington. He remembers summers when Lake Huntington was a busy place.

“Life in the summertime used to be amazing. It was so busy you couldn’t drive,” he said.

“But that died out. It had much to do with improved transportation.”

At some point during his teaching career in Wilmington, DE, supporting a family with three children, Boucher began buying farms, three of which he turned into successful Christmas tree businesses. Now, he has completed 25 to 30 subdivisions in southeastern Pennsylvania and northern Delaware.

Residential developments in Philadelphia and Wilmington suburbs constructed during the early 1980s tended to completely overrun farmland, which displeased Boucher. He began to fit designated open spaces into his subdivisions, often creating baseball fields and nature trails.

“Open space is something more meaningful near Philadelphia and Wilmington. But it’s something that could happen up here,” Boucher said. Following last week’s meeting, he described his application as a process of “educating” the planning board on a style of development still unfamiliar in western Sullivan County.

The 74-home development, with an average of about two children per household, could add 150 children to the school district.

“There goes our school taxes,” planning board member Earl Bertsch said, and the board added several concerns to the discussion.

Boucher intends to use the school’s entrance as the main ingress for Lake View Estates, a provision that he said is “written in black and white” in the contract that was signed when the property was donated.

Boucher will also need to apply for a zoning variance since the minimum lot-size allowed in Cochecton is two acres. Still to resolve is the petition to annex the Lake Huntington Sewer District for the subdivision’s use.

But Boucher doesn’t seem fazed by long-term planning board review. His subdivision proposal in Pocopson Township, just south of West Chester, PA, is almost 10 years in the making.

“This will be my last subdivision,” he said about Lake View. “I must finish it.”