It”™s back to the drawing board for the town of Stony Point after a referendum to sell its municipal golf course to a private investment group failed on Election Day.
It”™s a drama that”™s been playing out for nearly four years since longtime Stony Point resident Raja Amar, CEO of T-Mobile Portables Unlimited in Nanuet, approached the town in 2017 to discuss the possible purchase of its Grille Room, the catering facility in Stony Point-owned Patriot Hills Golf Course.
That encounter opened the door to further negotiations with Amar that included possibly purchasing the golf course and its clubhouse along with the catering facility. As the process moved along, 26 acres abandoned by New York state in the mid-1990s were put in the mix.
By 2019, Stony Point and Patriot Hills LLC had negotiated a Memorandum of Understanding outlining the terms of the potential sale. The MOU gave Amar and his two PHLLC partners, Brian Hayman and Laurence Melchionda, three months for the partners”™ due diligence on renovating the aging 18-hole course and its clubhouse; renovating and completing needed construction on The Grille Room; building a new $3.5 million senior/community center for the town to replace the RHO building; and leasing back Kirkbride Hall to the municipality for $1 a year for sports and community events.
The last ”” but certainly not least ”” item included in the MOU was the removal and remediation of what”™s left of shuttered Letchworth Village, an Industrial Age evangelical vision to house the mentally disabled that eventually ended up being branded as “another Willowbrook.”
Once a major employer in north Rockland County, the brick-and-mortar buildings that remain on Letchworth Village”™s 26 forlorn acres with its underground maze of asbestos-laden tunnels are a favorite of teens during Halloween.
In exchange for one dollar, that property would be reclaimed and remediated for the rateables that Stony Point projects need to keep taxes down and keep the next generation in place. After several delays due to the Covid-19 pandemic, town officials and Patriot Hills entered into a contract in April 2020 with much fanfare.
That contract led opponents of the sale to create Stony Point United, whose members believed the $6.4 million price tag too low ”” despite the additional $15 million Amar and his partners had pledged to invest in remediation and upgrades to the property that would finally see commercial rateables heading its way.
Stony Point United also stoked fear that Patriot Hills would “flip” the property to a high-density housing developer.
The federal Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA) has made it that much easier for religious groups to purchase large tracts of land for members only. That possibility has put all of the Hudson Valley”™s suburbia on edge, particularly since some high-profile religious entities ”” including the Hasidic Jews and the Jehovah”™s Witnesses ”” have discovered that selling property in the boroughs offers the opportunity to buy much more land outside city limits but remain within driving distance of the Big Apple or Albany.
RLUIPA has also seen many properties taken off the tax rolls as “houses of gathering/worship” that have small villages and towns scrambling to strengthen their building and zoning codes.
Stony Point United decried the sale, insisting the golf course property would end up a “mini-city” if the deal with Patriot Hills went through. After the group gathered enough signatures to force a referendum on the sale, town Supervisor Jim Monaghan asked that the vote be held on Election Day to save taxpayer funds and to attract the widest number of participants.
Amar met with residents at The Grille Room once more to answer every question they had regarding the deal. On a Zoom meeting with members of the Rockland Business Association prior to Election Day, Amar said he felt he”™d been on a rollercoaster with his neighbors over the upcoming vote.
“I could have walked away,” said Amar of the town”™s proposal to buy the golf course, “but I enjoy coming to work. My passion is to build and I believe we can make a big change in Stony Point where we need a big change. I answered all the questions. If the opponents can guarantee they will bring rateables to this town, I will walk away.”
Amar has walked away. When the polls closed on Nov. 6, voters had turned the sale of the golf course down by 118 votes (2,265 to 2,217). Monaghan was re-elected, easily defeating his opponent, Stony Point United”™s Mike Diederich.
Monaghan saw the sale as the type of investment the town needed to bring in rateables and put a dent in high property taxes, saying others ”” including Merlin Entertainment and Great Wolf Lodge ”” had passed on North Rockland and taken their business elsewhere. “Now Raja Amar is gone,” he said, “and the people have spoken.”
Monaghan said he plans to form a group of business owners and private citizens to determine how to proceed with bringing the golf course and its facilities up to par. What”™s left of Letchworth Village will remain “as is” for the foreseeable future.
As for the division among voters, most hope both sides can come to some equitable agreement on how to best move forward with what has the potential to be either a gold mine or a white elephant.
