By Paul Post
A Key West luxury resort developer has found his own slice of paradise at a remote Adirondack lake beneath the shadow of Buck Mountain in West Fort Ann.
Pritam Singh recently purchased the 945-acre former Crossett Lake Scout Reservation from prominent Glens Falls businesswoman Elizabeth Miller for a reported $9.5 million cash.
“I’ve been looking for a lake like this for 30 to 40 years,” said Singh. “I was absolutely floored that it’s less than a two-hour drive from my house in South Woodstock (Vt.), and about three hours from New York and Boston. The clear, spring-fed lake has three islands, is 130 feet deep and its physical location and geography is quite unique because it’s so high up, a thousand feet above Lake George.”
“And it’s surrounded by 13,000 acres of wild forest so it doesn’t have problems with salt and agricultural runoff or septic. It’s really like a hidden alpine valley,” he said. “Just amazing, idyllic. If a kid was going to draw a picture of paradise this is what he’d draw.”
The site, on the eastern edge of the Adirondack Park, will be strictly for family use as a seasonal getaway, Singh said.
The sale, which closed on April 21, was brokered by Dan Davies of Queensbury-based Davies Davies & Associates.
“There was a lot of interest, but the biggest difference between Mr. Singh and other parties is that they wanted to do substantial development and he didn’t,” Davies said. “To run a project through the Adirondack Park Agency would be heavily scrutinized and take years. Mr. Singh is going to build houses for he and his kids and that’s basically it. I’ve sold in the Adirondacks for 35 years. This is literally a sanctuary from the world, but 15 minutes from the world (Glens Falls). That’s very, very rare.”