The majority of the facilities, such as the bobsled and luge track, biathlon range, most of the ski trails, and the stadium area are on Town lands, where ORDA can operate without constitutional restrictions, while the parking lots, main lodge, and other facilities are on the Forest Preserve, where ORDA must comply with Article XIV as well as the Adirondack Park State Land Master Plan.
If clearings of timber from lands owned by the State in the Forest Preserve are sanctioned for such a purpose, they are equally sanctioned for the construction of public automobile race tracks, toboggan slides, golf courses, baseball diamonds, tennis courts and airplane landing fields, all of which are out of harmony with forest lands in their wild state.
The Association decision references various allowable state management decisions on the Forest Preserve, both those authorized by previous constitutional amendments, and those authorized by state agencies, where limited tree cutting was permitted for “proper facilities for the use by the public which did not call for the removal of the timber to any material degree.
The framers of the Constitution, as before stated, intended to stop the willful destruction of trees upon the forest lands, and to preserve these in the wild state now existing; they adopted a measure forbidding the cutting down of these trees to any substantial extent for any purpose.
