Despite foes, Glenville man not giving up on ropes course

Michael Cellini gives a tour of his property off Weatherwax Road in Glenville on Wednesday, May 13, 2015.

Holding a harness in one hand and a helmet in the other, Michael Cellini climbs through a forest toward the top of Glenville Hill, a point he says is the town’s highest elevation at 1,100 feet.

He looks into a deep ravine that would become part of a high ropes course he wants to build among the trees. The course, called Mountain Ridge Adventure, would bring adventure seekers young and old across zip lines and suspended telephone poles, through cargo nets and barrels, and other obstacles.

“From the very bottom of the gorge to the top is 150 feet deep, and then you’re going to add another 50 feet in the air, so that perception of going over the gorge is pretty cool,” he says during a tour of the site Wednesday.

As he puts the harness around his waste and pulls on the helmet, he notes that course users would be strapped into a safer full-body harness and also wear helmets. The harness could only be detached with a key that would be kept at ground level out of reach, and trained staff would be situated along the course — designed for people as young as 7 and as old as 100, depending on physical health — to assist them.

Cellini’s envisioned course, which spans three out of about 50 acres of wooded property he owns between Johnson and Weatherwax roads, has its own obstacles to get through.

The neighbors, saying the course would disrupt their peaceful neighborhood, have formed against it, recently hiring Albany-Based attorney Andy Brick to help in their fight. They have collected 120 signatures and, wearing pins that say “Keep It Rural” with a picture of a tree, attend town meetings when Cellini’s plans are on the agenda. On Monday, more than 50 opponents were at the Municipal Center when the Planning and Zoning Commission delayed a vote on giving the proposal preliminary site plan approval and a conditional use permit.

Stephen Helbling lives on Weatherwax Road, a dead-end dirt road, about 1,300 feet from a 30-car parking lot included in Cellini’s plans. He said he’s against the “incredible amount of noise” the ropes course would bring, between children using the course and their friends and parents there to watch them, from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. The course would close during the winter and be open Saturdays and Sundays from late April through late June, daily from late June through Labor Day and weekends only from Labor Day through October.

Helbling said the area’s rural/residential and agriculture zoning is vague about what constitutes recreational activity. The project, proposed by Cellini in March, requires no zoning variance, according to town officials, because the zoning allows for commercial recreational facilities.

“This is something that shouldn’t exist in this area,” Helbling said, adding that a Johnson Road neighbor recently sought a variance to build a deck on the front of their home. “You need a variance for a deck on the front of the house, but yet you can put in a big parking lot and an amusement park in your yard? There’s a disconnect there.”

In spite of the opposition, Cellini is pushing forward with his plans for the adventure course, which would employ 20 seasonal workers. He had a job fair planned at Burnt Hills-Ballston Lake High School later in the day Wednesday and another scheduled at Scotia-Glenville High School later this month.

“I really want to open this year,” he said, adding that receiving town approval in July would allow him to open in August.

Cellini said the course’s economic impact could surpass $1 million annually for the town, but the impact of additional noise and traffic would be “benign.” He said the course would produce 52.6 decibels of noise, about equal to that of a dishwasher, based on a study of similar courses. On average, it’s 1,200 feet away from the six adjacent land owners’ homes. There are 22 houses on Johnson Road, to which his business would bring an estimated 45 cars during a 10-hour day, he said.

“There’s no roller coaster with speaker system going on,” he said.

He also said Johnson Road is home to Ski Venture and Glenville Fish and Game Club, which add noise to the area in the form of club members, snow grooming machines and gunfire.

Cellini said his project will preserve the forest because he’ll continue forestry management practices he started when he purchased the property nearly 12 years ago. That includes removing large trees that grow crooked and allowing straight trees to grow, said Cellini, an environmentalist who owns an engineering firm with his wife, Olivia, that designs passive-solar homes.

“It actually improves the forest,” he said. “The average land owner, by now, would have come in and harvested all of these trees” for money.

He will, however, have to cut down many saplings to make way for the 14,500-square-foot parking lot, which would be set back 40 feet from Weatherwax Road. He said three large maples between the road and parking area would remain standing.

The proposed parking lot is where Cellini started his tour Wednesday before walking across Weatherwax Road and about 100 feet into the woods. He pointed to where a 10-by-20-foot welcome shed and 10-by-10-foot equipment shed, to be built by Amish using locally milled lumber, and a 10-by-20-foot seasonal tent for children’s parties would stand. There would also be two seasonal portable toilets.

“Everything is roped off to keep everybody off the course,” he says as he walks over twigs and leaves.

Cellini keeps walking about 270 feet to the course’s starting point, where a ladder would greet course users. He says it would be pulled up at the end of the day to prevent people from using the course unsupervised.

Then he walks the 500-foot course, climbing up to the top of Glenville Hill. After ascending the ropes course and crossing the ravine, users would turn around and work their way down it, ending at the entrance. Their parents and friends could watch from a path that would traverse the course at ground level. Tours, which take between two and three hours to complete, would be scheduled every 30 minutes.

Once out of the woods, Cellini says high ropes courses are proven to reduce childhood obesity and depression. He already has names for the course’s obstacles, like the Telephone Repair Man, which would require users to jump from one suspended telephone pole to another, and the Ninja Swing.

“There’s a ton of benefits to playing — unorganized play,” he says. “You’re building confidence, you’re getting up in the trees — it’s incredible.”