LOON LAKE – Thousands of acres on and around Loon Lake are up for sale, including a swath of undeveloped shoreline and the former Loon Lake Golf Course.

Loon Gulf Inc., based in Italy, is selling off its holdings in the town of Franklin. It’s asking $5.95 million for the 13 lots containing roughly 2,600 acres, according to the company’s real estate agent, Brian Draper of Say Real Estate in Saranac Lake. The property went on the market last month.

“They would prefer to sell the whole thing as one parcel, which is the most attractive thing to any developer that would want to do anything out there,” Draper said. “However, they have said they would sell off individual parcels.”

Draper said one lot has already sold, two more are under contract and offers have been made on others, including one on the former golf course that wasn’t accepted. He wouldn’t identify the buyers or potential buyers. Among the parcels of various sizes up for sale is a 380-acre lot on the back side of the lake that Draper says has a lot of potential for waterfront development.

Loon Gulf’s bid to sell its acreage comes two years after it submitted a conceptual plan to the state Adirondack Park Agency to reopen the golf course and subdivide its holdings into 160 residential lots and three open space lots. The plan never went any further with the agency.

Draper said didn’t know why the company has decided to put the property on the market.

“I know they were talking to a developer and that they had plans set up and they had quite a bit of information prepared to do something,” he said. “Loon Gulf is not closed to the idea of them doing something out there. It’s just they’re familiar with the struggles it would take to get a very large resort out there, i.e. (the Adirondack Club and Resort in) Tupper Lake.”

Loon Lake was a popular resort destination for the affluent in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, anchored by the Loon Lake House. It began in 1878 as a 31-room-hotel, built on a bluff overlooking the lake, and eventually grew to accommodate 800 in two hotels and 60 private cabins spread across roughly 3,000 acres. The golf course, built in 1895, was one of the first in the Adirondacks. The resort hosted writer Oscar Wilde in 1882 and three presidents: Benjamin Harrison in 1892, Grover Cleveland in 1895 and William McKinley in 1897. The hamlet that grew up around the resort featured a general store, a post office and a large train station.

The resort went bankrupt in the early 1930s but continued to operate until the 1950s, when it was used as a summer camp. It burned to the ground in September 1956. Within the next two years, the property had been auctioned and many of its homes had been sold to families who had rented them while the hotel was operating. The golf course closed in 2003. Loon Lake’s population now is largely seasonal.

“Obviously the lake is a very quiet, family-oriented place,” Draper said.

He thinks there’s a chance Loon Lake could see some of its prior prosperity return again.

“There’s a lot of potential out there, for sure, for a number of different things,” he said. “I could see the golf course coming back and the old inns coming back and getting a cafe that would bring people out there again. You could have horseback riding and cross-country ski trails and other winter activities out there. Any kind of development in the Adirondack Park or in this area that can bring jobs and can bring stability to our economy here is a positive.”

“Ultimately the goal would be to find a solution that works best for everybody out there, because there’s a number of people who do not want any (development) whatsoever, and then, of course, there’s the people who would welcome something.”

Loon Lake resident Keith Silliman, who writes an online blog about life and happenings on the lake, said he doesn’t want to see any development around the lake “that would degrade the quality of this resource, both upland and aquatic.

“I would love to see the golf course reestablished, along with the Inn,” Silliman wrote in an email to the Enterprise. “I am not opposed to some additional housing within the hamlet of Loon Lake. It would be great to see sustainable forestry practices used on the adjoining lands.

“It will be interesting to see what actually happens down in Tupper Lake. We have more challenges here – very short golf season, forty minutes to Whiteface, via back roads, forty minutes to quality grocery shopping.”

Town of Franklin Supervisor Art Willman said he hadn’t heard about Loon Gulf putting its acreage up for sale until an Enterprise reporter told him about it, although he said he had heard rumors.

“I’ve actually been having conversations with some of the homeowners there, and I suggested, ‘Why don’t you guys buy up the shoreline. Then you control it,'” Willman said. “They’d like to leave it as is with no building up there. A bunch of them were talking at one point about getting a consortium together and buying up what they could. I believe they approached Loon Gulf but didn’t hear anything, or what they did hear was not too promising.”

Willman said he supports new development in the area, with restrictions.

“It certainly is a beautiful lake,” he said. “As long as whoever is developing it has respect for the shoreline and keeps the views tasteful and whatnot. The APA has its shoreline setback regulations, so you’re not going to have a house right on the water.”