ROSENDALE – Many Rosendale residents know Williams Lake as the site of an old hotel that is now embroiled in controversy because developers have plans to build a new hotel and a large number of townhouses on the parcel, which is close to 800 acres in size. Not as many are familiar with the history of the Williams Lake Hotel which led up to the present imbroglio.

Anita Williams Peck took over management of the hotel in 1987, when her father died. When she finally decided to sell the property twenty years later, she felt she had carefully selected the best possible buyer.

"I knew that the lake needed to be reinvented, and that I couldn't afford to do it," she said, noting how she set some criteria for potential buyers. For one thing, she wasn't interested in selling to any organization which was tax-exempt.

"I'm a member of this community, and I was a member of the Rondout Valley School Board," she said. "I knew what the impact of taking this land off the tax rolls would be. If there hadn't been any other options, I would have waited."

So how did she react to the strong and vocal opposition to the project that has ensued?

"I was totally shocked," she said. "I thought about it so deeply — I couldn't do something which was detrimental to this town, this land, or this school district." Peck can see the lake and hotel from her home, and said that she told the developers, "I'll be watching through a telescope when they start building." So while she feels that Hudson Valley River Resorts will be a good steward for her family's land, she intends on making sure of it.

The Williams Lake Hotel began as a land acquisition by Finnish immigrant Gustav Yalonon, who found that the region reminded him of the lakes in his home country, according to Ed Williams, Anita's brother. The 850-acre parcel was bought for around $40,000 from the Binnewater Ice Company, which retained rights to harvest ice from the lake. Yalonon was a home builder, or "developer" in the modern vernacular, and built somewhere around a hundred homes in Teaneck, New Jersey, some of which are worth a million dollars each today.

The homes that Yalonon built, as well as the land he bought, were financed with purchase money mortgages — that is, the seller held the note and was paid over time. The hardship which was the Great Depression found Yalonon struggling to pay for Williams Lake, because many of his own customers were in dire straits. He ended up deeding nearly half of the property back to the ice company, and spent the years following reacquiring most of it.

A fine resort by any measure, Williams Lake Hotel had its share of tragedies, as well. In 1937 the pier collapsed, and in 1953 a fire destroyed the main building and killed four people. The fire started at four in the morning, and was spotted by the engineer of a passing train. He stopped the train and leaned on the horn, saving hundreds of lives.

A number of bungalows were built on the far shore lands that the ice company had reacquired, so the family corporation ended up owning several of them in addition to the hotel. Ed Williams, who had left the family business to become a sports attorney, purchased one of them from the corporation in the early 1990s. The deed carries with it a right-of-way through the main Williams Lake property, which has led to some controversy. Williams has given permission to members of Save the Lakes, the group committed to reducing the size of the proposed development, to use the right-of-way.

"I've given some friends permission," he said, "and some of them are members of Save the Lakes, but I'm not a member. I have no problems with HRVR. They have a wonderful opportunity, and it will be a wonderful product."

During one of those permitted excursions, an STL member took pictures of logs set out on display, posting them to the group's Facebook page with the claim that logging of the property had begun. It turned out the logs actually belonged to Ted Peck, Anita's son, who is a log broker and obtained permission to display his wares on the property. STL removed the pictures and apologized for the error, but some bad feelings linger.

"I didn't hear when he brought the logs in, and I didn't hear them go out," Peck says of her son. "If they had been logging the property, I would have noticed." She says that no member of Save the Lakes has ever approached her to speak about any aspect of the project, including the presence of the logs earlier this year.

To say that the siblings aren't close would be an understatement — even though they both have property on the lake, they just don't speak to each other. Each of them, though, recalls the hotel's heyday, when thousands of people would crowd the lake's shores. Those halcyon days gave way to a quieter time, when the hotel wasn't as full but the "beach club" always was. Even though the lake had been much busier in the 1960s, Peck decided to limit the swimming access to a maximum of 400 people.

"I don't know where this idea of public access came in because we never allowed public access," said Peck. "The only people who swam here were hotel guests, attendees at events like weddings, and members of the beach club." Despite all the different reasons given for opposing the project, she remains convinced that at its core, it's about the swimming.

"Some people think all lakes are public," she said.

The lake and grounds have long been a center of athletic activity, according to Williams, who was himself an Olympic skier.

"My father was always looking for ways to make Rosendale a destination," he said, and a number of world-class events were held there. Williams says that he doesn't pay much attention to the controversies surrounding the project, including the recent one regarding using the lake as a site to raise money to repair the town pool. He comes to town to visit with friends and enjoy the lake.

His sister disagrees, but won't get into detail.

"He's been very difficult," she said.

Final approvals for the Williams Lake Project may come this year, but there are a number of hurdles left. The DEC must finish reviewing the site plan, and there is the matter of a zoning change that HRVR has proposed for that tract. Finally, the Rosendale planning board must review the final environmental impact statement and decide if it lays out a good enough plan to mitigate environmental damage during the ten years construction is expected to last.

All told, the shovels may hit the ground by the end of the year — but it certainly won't be the first time that Williams Lake has seen construction.