PINE BUSH – Anyone who knows Cherie Ramsey knows she's a very determined person. A generation's worth of young girls have passed through her Quest Cheerleading operation in Pine Bush, matriculating into the Pine Bush High School Varsity and JV teams and dominating the nascent competition amongst Cheer teams in Section IX.

Indeed, those same Pine Bush Cheer teams have since gone to national competitions, finishing eleventh the first time out, and ninth this year. When you consider the caliber of the opposition at those events, coming from gigantic schools in California, Texas, and Florida, this is amazing.

Actually, it comes down to hard work, concentration, focus and great coaching.

And if you hadn't caught this yet, you can put away the old ideas about "cheer leading." Today it's "Cheer" and the girls spend their time learning how to tumble, do backflips and build "towers" on which the top girls demonstrate somewhat terrifying balancing abilities. It's more organized group gymnastics than waving pom poms.

At the Town of Crawford Planning Board last week, the next stage in this saga of upwards and onwards was revealed. Ramsey, represented by engineer Larry Marshall, brought her application to the board for a building to house her growing business. And not just any building, but a 7,500 square foot building with a 600 square foot entryway.

"Six thousand square feet will be the gym, and then there'll be two retail spaces available," Ramsay explained. "Or one if a large enough business wanted it."

The site is on the north side of Route 52, just to the east of the hamlet before the junction with Blackhawk Road. And it has some environmental history, which initially provided an issue with the state Department of Environmental Conservation.

"A previous owner filled in some wetlands there, thirty or forty years ago, and cleared the front of the property removing the trees," Marshall explained. "A new owner came in and was going to put a beer distribution center there, but though the Army Corps of Engineers said it was okay the state DEC remapped the wetlands and added 100 foot buffer zones. The problem is that the property is only 250 feet wide, so since there are wetlands on either side that basically wipes out the whole property from the point of view of development. So the DEC wasn't keen on this project originally."

But white knights rode to the rescue. Realtor R.J. Smith provided an extensive history of the property to the DEC and the point was made that this use was not an industrial use and would have a minimal impact on the environment.

As Larry Marshall put it, "There's not even going to be a dumpster, just a regular size blue bin. The DEC came back to us and said, 'You know what, we like this.'"

There are still heavy restrictions on the property, and Ramsey has committed to planting forty good sized trees and one hundred bushes to help mitigate the original disturbance, Marshall explains.

Linda Zwart, chair of the Crawford planning board, recused herself from consideration of the proposal since she is also its architect. The remaining board members, with Rory Holmes in the role of chair, seemed supportive of the project. As Marshall noted, there's no reference to "gymnasium" in the town code, nor anything for a "cheer leading" facility. But, with that minimal impact factor, and the blessing of the DEC, the project is off to a good start.

At its meeting the planning board began the SEQR process to allow the applicant to go to the state Department of Transportation to begin the process for getting an entry road cut off Route 52.

Marshall explained that there would never be more than one hundred people in the building and that the operation would be one of "drop off and pick up" as parents brought their girls in for cheer classes... making for a total of thirty-four parking spaces. Fire lanes would reach around the building and the driveway and parking areas would be very limited in terms of impervious surfaces. And the building does not meet the threshold required for a SPDES permit, regarding storm water.

Cherie Ramsey said she is both excited and somewhat nervous.

"We hope to get in there this summer. We've tweaked the plan many times; the DEC held us up for several months, but that's cleared now," she said. "It will be a steel building; it's pretty simple and it will be right at the back of the property, hardly visible from the road."

Meanwhile, Ramsey has been in the forefront of pushing her sport to full recognition at the state level in New York.

"Now we're a recognized sport... that came on November 1, 2014," she noted. "There are some changes coming in Section IX; we're thinking of moving our championship event from Kingston High School to a neutral venue like Sullivan Community College. There are so many aspects to something like this. For instance, we had to develop the rules and come up with score sheets, all as part of earning recognition."

Ramsey sees this new Cheer center as a regional attraction, allowing Quest Cheer to expand and take on more classes, more students and become the heart of a new sport, and industry, in New York State.