Its a nice looking article with great visuals and a well crafted story but it sure leaves out a lot and makes some tenuous connections
Its forgets to mention that immediately adjacent to the east is the Gorham Town Forest which has been a town forest since the early 1900s. Much of the Gorham Town Forest is in Randolph. Adjacent to the east of the Gorham Town Forest is Moose Brook State Park, a mostly undeveloped parcel with a former CCC camp on the south end. Hub North's business is far more oriented around the Gorham Town Forest and Moose Brook State Park than the Randolph Town Forest. The Gorham Town Forest was recently enlarged substantially to the north.
Prior to the Randolph Town Forest there were previously a few large parcels held by family trusts, they still remain and are not perpetually protected but many go back to the 1800s. The town enacted zoning rules prior to the town forest to effectively prevent new subdivisions. They impose a very high hurdle that makes it economically unattractive to build new subdivisions. Of course those same rules mean that affordable housing is non existent. The last traditional subdivision was around 1990 with 5 acre lots.
The land was originally owned predominately by Brown Company in Berlin. When one of successors of Brown Co was selling off their remaining land, a unit of John Hancock Insurance company bought the land. They made a lot of promises that they were planing to own the forest "forever" and was going to manage it sustainably for the long term. The didn't own it long (less than 10 years) and after the ice storm of 1998 they put it up for sale to highest bidder with no concern for who was buying it, if Randolph did not buy it, it would most likely have went to JR Dillon that has pillaged Success and the adjoining towns. There was also a block of land ripe for development owned by Gorham Land Company at the end of Randolph Hill Road. Gorham Land had been slowly selling off parcels in the area to generate money for the family and I expect at some point this block would be sold for development. There was also a concern for industrial wind turbines on the ridge line (which now exist to the north in Berlin. There was also a general fear that the ridge line land boom in Jackson and Bartlett would come north.
Due to political concerns long ago, much of the Brown Company lands had been excluded from the WMNF declaration boundary. It would have taken congressional action for the WMNF to buy the land outside the boundary and reportedly Hancock was unwilling to wait to dump the land. I don't think residents of Randolph had interest in allowing the land outside the existing Declaration boundary on the south slope of the Mt Crescent range to fall into National Forest control as it would mean they would lose local control. Ultimately they did resell the land on the north slope of the Crescent Range inside the declaration boundary to the WMNF as part of the complex funding for the forest. This area is the Pond of Safety which the WMNF has stated at one point would get a large campground complex but to date is undeveloped except for some remnants from the Brown Company days.
The odd part is that there is little or no interest in Randolph to allow tourist businesses in town to capitalize on the forest. Existing long term businesses like the moribund Lowe's complex and the tourist cabins in the "low rent" district on the west end of town are definitely not thriving. Both of the businesses featured in the article are located in Gorham, they are a minority to the much bigger ATV boom in the region. A major point of contention in the area is that Randolph has no interest in the ATV boom and the ATV folks are very unhappy that they cant access the Presidential rail trail and the Jimtown logging road which runs through the Town Forest east to west. Randolph does allow snowmobiles in town and in the forest over long established trails as they do not impact the summer residents. Other than a few Air B&Bs that are run as a hobby on occasion there are no really active tourist businesses in town and the locals and summer residents would prefer it to stay that way.
Their stewardship plans are very detailed interesting read.
http://randolphforest.org/documents/