ITHACA -- A Syracuse-based developer is proposing to build a 20-room, high-end inn, 250-seat restaurant and boathouse on Cornell University-owned land on the east shore of Cayuga Lake.

"There was a lot of discussion about the uses for the site over many months," John Majeroni, director of Cornell Real Estate, said Tuesday. "This kind of a proposal, with a high-quality inn, made a lot of sense to us."

The Paramount Realty Group wants to build the 30,000-square-foot project on the west side of East Shore Drive in the Town of Ithaca, across the street from the heat exchange facility that is part of the university's Lake Source Cooling Project.

Cornell acquired the 2.5-acre site in 1996, when it was planning the cooling project, Majeroni said. Paramount would lease the land from Cornell and hire a third party to operate the inn and restaurant, on which property taxes would be paid, university and company officials said.

The developer submitted preliminary plans to the town Friday and is scheduled to appear before the town's Planning Board at its June 17 meeting for an initial discussion.

The plans submitted to the town showed a long, low mix of one- and two-story buildings and 110 parking spaces between a small town park to the north and a marina to the south.

In a written description submitted to the town, the developer said the project would be "in keeping with the historic genre of a Finger Lakes inn," with a stone and wood exterior. The project would be called the Remington Inn and Restaurant, after the name of the point that juts out into the lake.

"Our intent is to make the point more beautiful than it is right now and to embellish the lake if we can," Richard deVito, one of Paramount's partners, said this week. "The structure is going to be residential in style, not commercial at all, and look as if it belongs on Cayuga Lake."

The site now houses a private marina with boat storage, launching and docking facilities and two buildings. Paramount is proposing to keep the existing boat launching and docking facilities, eliminate boat storage now offered on site and build a one-story replacement boathouse with marina operations, equipment storage and bathrooms.

Johnson's Boat Yard, on Pier Road in the City of Ithaca, has managed the marina for Cornell for the past three years, owner Jeff Cleveland said Tuesday.

He said the university had told him up front that they wanted to develop the parcel, and that in March he notified boat owners that all boats would have to be removed from the marina by October. He said the marina wasn't a big part of their business and that it was fine with him if they weren't involved in the proposed project.

"The downside is, there aren't many more docks available," he said.

DeVito said final decisions haven't been made yet, but that Paramount intends to make the facility available to the general public, rather than exclusively for Cornell's use. The plans also show a walk and sitting areas between the buildings and the lake's shore.

The project's proximity to the lake likely will be a topic of discussion at the Planning Board meeting, said Jonathan Kanter, the town's director of planning.

He said the town wanted to ensure that stormwater runoff was adequately filtered before it reached the lake, and that it also would ask for studies of the project's impact on traffic and views.

Kanter said he believed the project would require only site plan approval from the Planning Board, and no zoning changes or variances. Proposed changes to the town's zoning regulations would require commercial projects in that zone to be set back 100 feet from shore to minimize impacts on views and provide public access. But the current zoning requires only a 30-foot setback, Kanter said.

He said he did not expect the Town Board to adopt the new regulations until October or November, and that the regulations would not take effect until four months after the Town Board adopts them.

A town resident who used to live on East Shore Drive, Rich DePaolo, said he was concerned about the impacts the project could have on views and public access before the new zoning is implemented, given its high-end description.

"That parcel has been a de facto park to some extent for much longer than I've been living in town," he said. "I don't think the town's little postage stamp of a park suffices as public access."

Originally published Wednesday, June 4, 2003