Woodmere Club owners have an alternative route. Learn what it is here

Roughly 90 people filled the second-floor conference room at the Lawrence Yacht & Country Club on July 19, with overflow into the hallway. There, at a village Board of Appeals hearing, one of the two owners of the Woodmere Club, Efrem Gerzberg, and attorney Christian Browne presented an application seeking a variance to build on the club’s land.

Gerzberg and the club’s other owner, Robert Weiss, are looking to build outside the perimeter of a Coastal Conservation District that was created in 2020, in what Browne called “open space.”

In 2019, the developers proposed the construction of 284 single-family homes on the land, a plan that was met with strong opposition from area residents. The club property occupies three municipalities, and the plan called for 247 of the homes to be built within the boundaries of the hamlet of Woodmere, in the Town of Hempstead; 24 in the Village of Woodsburgh; and 13 in Lawrence.

To prevent such dense construction, the Town of Hempstead and the two villages approved the creation of the Coastal Conservation District. The new zoning divided the 118-acre Woodmere Club into three “subdistricts.” An 83.3-acre parcel was designated an open space/recreation subdistrict; 29.4 acres were classified as a single-family residential subdistrict; and 5.7 acres were designated a clubhouse/hospitality subdistrict.

“The reason we’re here tonight is because we are asking this board for a use variance to allow us to develop single-family homes in the area outside the perimeter” of the conservation district, Browne said, “where those homes are otherwise permitted.”

Browne said that he and the club owners have submitted applications for a similar use variance to the Town of Hempstead and Woodsburgh to build homes in open space outside the single-family home residential district.

The Woodsburgh application will be heard at a village board meeting on Aug. 2 at 7 p.m. As of press time, a date for the town hearing date had not been set.

The Coastal Conservation District reduced the number of homes to be built to 59 — 41 in the Town of Hempstead and 18 in Lawrence and Woodsburgh. The developers filed a federal lawsuit in September 2020 against the town and the villages, but the suit was dismissed last December.

At last week’s meeting, Lawrence Board of Appeals member Elliot Moskowitz hit Browne with a barrage of questions, including whether traffic, environmental and flood studies would be submitted to support Gerzberg and Weiss’s application.

Browne said that as of now, he and his clients would not be submitting evidence.

“This site has been studied extensively from an environmental perspective, because an environmental impact statement was prepared by our engineers to contemplate the full development of the entire golf course with over 280 homes,” Browne said. “I’m talking in the broad sense — can we develop anything outside of that single-family home line?”

During a brief executive session, there was a suggestion to convene a joint session at which all three boards — the Town of Hempstead, Lawrence and Woodsburgh — would hear the presentation. The Board of Appeals then adjourned the hearing.

Though the meeting room was filled to capacity, and the hearing had been moved from Lawrence Village Hall to the country club to accommodate the community, only one person spoke in opposition to the project.

“In essence, you are now married to each other,” Cedarhurst resident Rena Saffra said, referring to the Coastal Conservation District. “Joined at the hip, all for one and one for all. The Village of Lawrence does not have the right to act unilaterally. You cannot possibly render a decision on a project of this magnitude on your own.”

Lawrence resident Josh Justic, president of the Community Coalition of the Five Towns, who attended the hearing, wrote in a text to the Herald that it once again showed a concerned community.

“In the Five Towns there is near universal rejection of more development,” Justic wrote. “Every resident has the clear knowledge that our roads, our infrastructure, our sewage systems and our ability to absorb a flood is at its capacity limit.”

Everyone in the audience raised a hand when the Board of Appeals asked who opposed the club co-owners’ new proposal. Only Gerzberg signaled his support.

“We urge the owners of the Woodmere Club, work with the community to find a mutually beneficial way forward or, failing that, to sell the property to another party that will take the community’s needs into account,” Justic texted.

Have an opinion on the Woodmere Club? Send a letter to jbesen@liherald.com.