The hearings are the latest step in Mount Tremper developer Dean Gitter's five-year struggle to win approval for the 573-acre Belleayre Resort, a development straddling the boundary between Shandaken and the Delaware County town of Middletown and adjacent to the state-owned Belleayre Mountain Ski Center.

The resort, according to plans, would include two hotels, with 400 rooms, 351 additional hotel/detached lodging units, a 21-lot single family housing subdivision and two 18-hole golf courses.

The public comment period follows the acceptance by the state Department of Environmental Conservation of a draft environmental impact statement submitted by Gitter's company, Crossroads Ventures. The study, which runs 3,500 pages and cost the developer $4 million, is intended to outline the company's response to a host of concerns raised in public hearings in 2000.

The latest hearings are intended to give the public an opportunity to respond to the environmental impact statement.

Environmental groups have voiced strong opposition to the project from the beginning and are expected to turn out in force to poke holes in what Gitter calls most comprehensive environmental impact statement of its kind ever submitted in New York state.

"We have grave reservations about golf courses because of the pollution caused by pesticides and fertilizers," said Jim Mays, chairman of the Catskills Committee of the Sierra Club. Mays said his group also opposes the clearing woodland for the resort as well as issues of water quality and the impact of the proposed resort on the rural character of the area.

"We mostly came up here for a quieter place, a place in the woods," said Mays. "I personally would be opposed to this type of commercialization."

In anticipation of the hearings, another environmental group opposed to the development took out a full page ad in the weekly Woodstock Times, blasting proposal. According to the group Friends of Catskill Park, the resort would bring traffic, sprawl and increased pressure on local resources while adding little except low wage service jobs for area residents.

Gitter said the resort would bring 750 jobs to the area, add millions of dollars to the tax base of the two towns and turn Belleayre Mountain Ski Center into a "world class facility."

"(The resort) will totally upgrade the image of the central Catskills," he said.

He said the environmental impact statement clearly shows that the resort could be built and run in a way that would not harm the environment.

According to Gitter, the Department of Environmental Conservation's acceptance of the environmental impact statement marked a "major milestone" in the approval process, but he concedes the project is still a long way from approval. Before work can begin, the resort must still pass muster with New York City's Department of Environmental Protection and the town of Shandaken.

The public hearings will be held on Wednesday from 4 to 5:30 p.m. and at 7 p.m. at Margaretville Central School and Thursday from 4 to 5:30 p.m. and at 7 p.m. at Onteora-Middle Senior High School in Boiceville.

The deadline for written comments to be submitted to the Department of Environmental Conservation is Feb. 24.