NEW SCOTLAND — Timothy Albright and the rest of the Indian Ladder Farms management crew are moving with the times, and ready to offer mobile meals on the road to the John Boyd Thacher State Park. The local orchard submitted a special use permit application to the town planning board this week.

Also, the New York Capital District Renaissance Festival requested a special use permit to hold its second event at Indian Ladder Farms later this year.

Satellite farm stand

“We’re mulling a couple of ideas over,” Albright told The Enterprise. Those ideas include selling “the wares of Indian Ladder Farms, like apples, cider, and doughnuts,” and possibly opening a vendor concessions truck.

“Peter II and John Ten Eyck — brothers — own a lot that’s cliff side of Thacher Park Road, on the southern boundary of Thacher Park,” Albright told The Enterprise of the owners of Indian Ladder Farms. The plot is 10 minutes from the orchard, he said.

Albright submitted to the town’s planning board a special use permit application for a mobile concession trailer. The planning board Tuesday set a public hearing for the proposal to be held at its April meeting.

Governor Andrew Cuomo, who championed state parks in 2011 after 88 parks were threatened with closure the previous year, announced plans last week to spend $900 million over a seven-year period, with $110 million from the executive budget slated for 2015-16. The plan, NY Parks 2020, hopes to “restore facilities, enhance visitor experiences, and develop parks and their surrounding areas into “local economic engines,” the governor’s office said.

Talk of a high adventure park to be installed at Thacher Park fueled Indian Ladder Farms’ desire to use its cliff-side lot. Albright said that, by some estimates, more than 300,000 people visited Thacher Park last year.

“We are feeling — here’s a really good opportunity,” Albright said. “We think the attendance at the park is going to increase. We feel that we should jump in on this opportunity.”

In addition to a proposed $3.8 million visitor center at Thacher Park, plans for the re-invented park include cave tours, rock climbing, and zip-lining.

William Von Atzingen, the maintenance supervisor at Thacher Park, said in January that the specific site for the proposed zip-lining had not yet been decided, nor had a contract for the provider been finalized.

Planning board member Kurt Anderson told The Enterprise that the board did not find issues with the application.

“It’s pretty pro forma,” he said. The lot previously held a hot dog-type of stand there decades ago, he said. The planning board set a public hearing before it approves the request because the process under which special use permits can be granted requires a hearing, Anderson said.

When the Ten Eycks purchased the plot years ago, Albright said, the property already had a permanent building and a parking lot. The Ten Eycks donated the small building, used as a snack bar, to the New Salem Volunteer Fire Department, Albright said.

The snack bar may have been used at the fire company’s Punkintown Fair, Albright surmised.

The lot has 150 feet of road frontage, and is 85 feet deep, he said. Indian Ladder Farms plans to clean up some of the brush on the lot and add new gravel to the existing parking lot, he said.

“Whatever we do, it will be a mobile unit — something that goes in in the morning and out at the end of the day,” Albright said. “We want to leave it a vacant lot and offer our services and products.”

Albright said that the farm might add picnic tables that would remain overnight. A more permanent structure than a food truck would require water and septic, and  none of the management crew wants to consider those issues now or in the future, Albright said. Three public restrooms are available within a half mile, and the farm will not provide a portable facility, he said.

“A lot of people think it’s a great idea,” he said.

Renaissance festival

The planning board set a public hearing for the Renaissance festival’s special use permit application to be held at the board’s April meeting. The application is required under local laws about public assemblage.

The group received town approval last year, Anderson said.

“Most people had a good time, and everything went smoothly,” he said.