By Scott Brinton
The Merrick Park Home Owners Association, the 179-member civic group representing Merrick Woods, intends to build the fence as a memorial to all Merokeans who were killed at the World Trade Center.
Barry Fox, the Merrick Park president, said that, to date, church and synagogue memorials have been erected in the Merricks, but they list only members of those houses of worship. Fox would like all Sept. 11 victims from the Merricks to be remembered hereafter in their hometown.
The Merrick Park president unveiled plans for the community-wide memorial, which were developed by civic association member Elaine Warshaw, during the group's March meeting last Wednesday at the Merrick Library.
The Merrick Park group is to receive a $10,000 state grant, secured by Sen. Charles Fuschillo Jr. (R-Merrick), and a $5,000 private grant, obtained by Nassau County Legislator David Denenberg (D-Merrick), to build the memorial. Fox told the roughly 100 people who attended the March 19 civic meeting that the memorial "would be a very fitting and appropriate use of this money."
The civic group, however, must settle a key question before moving ahead with the project: ownership of a parcel of land directly behind where the fence is to be erected.
The memorial is to stand in front of a strip of land between homes in the Maiciola Ranches neighborhood and Merrick's Long Island Rail Road parking lot. The Town of Hempstead owns most of the land, which measures about 60 feet wide and runs for roughly a quarter-mile east to Smith Pond. A small piece of the property, though, is privately held.
A chain-link fence, which the memorial fence would replace, now separates Hewlett Avenue from the forest.
The Town of Hempstead recently designated its portion of the property as a wildlife refuge that can never be touched by development. The town's decision to create the sanctuary followed an incident last summer in which a group of contractors broke the town's locked gate to the property and clear-cut a section of the land, which measured about 40 feet wide and 100 feet long.
The contractors said they were given permission by a real-estate agent to raze the town land and park their heavy equipment there.
The Bellmore agent, Constance Klein, said last July that she was helping, though not representing, New Woods 6 Corporation. Over the years, the company has bought county lien certificates for unpaid taxes for a tiny, triangular piece of the forest, which is privately owned and abuts Hewlett Avenue on the property's north side. The section of woods, which is said to be less than 1/16 of an acre, was apparently owned last summer by a Baldwin-based attorney, as it had been for several years.
Klein said she had given the men the OK to enter the private section of forest, for which New Woods 6 had purchased the tax liens, but not the town part of the land. She also insisted that she hadn't told them they could knock down trees and underbrush.
Now New Woods 6 Corporation has apparently taken a tax-lien title to the Baldwin attorney's land, or intends to do so, according to Thomas McKevitt, deputy Hempstead Town attorney. In taking title, the corporation would effectively own the land.
The Town of Hempstead would like to buy the parcel and incorporate it into the wildlife refuge, said McKevitt. "Hopefully, we'll quickly purchase it," he said.
Buying the land would serve two purposes. One, it would protect it from development. The property, which is zoned residential "B," has no curb cut. So, according to town code, nothing can be built there now. Nearby homeowners, though, fear that at some point in the future, a developer could get hold of the land and obtain a building variance for it that would allow construction there.
Purchasing the property would also allow the Merrick Park Home Owners Association to stretch the Sept. 11 memorial across the width of the forest and maintain a unified appearance for the refuge's Hewlett Avenue entrance. Fox noted, though, that if the town cannot buy the parcel, his group would move ahead with the memorial and build it only across the town-owned section of land.
Hempstead wants to purchase the property directly from its current owner rather than go through condemnation proceedings that could land the town in a costly court case.
McKevitt said the town is seeking to negotiate a purchase price with the property's owner. But he noted that, at this point, the town isn't sure who that is. "We're still in the early investigative stages" of buying the land, he said.
Another question has arisen: How much is the 1/16 of an acre worth? According to Fox, similar size parcels in Merrick Woods -- and Merrick in general -- run about $150,000. But Cole Layer Trumble, the firm that recently reassessed all Nassau County properties, set the value of the parcel in question at $15,000.
County Legislator Denenberg speculated that may be because the property's size falls just under 1/16 of an acre, and thus nothing can be built there, according to code. As a plot where no construction can take place, the land would be considered as simply an empty lot and would be worth far less than a "buildable" property.
McKevitt said the town must conduct its own assessment of the parcel and, by law, offer a fair-market price for the property. It cannot rely on the county's assessment when negotiating a price with the owner.
Finally, during last week's civic meeting, Fox awarded a plaque of appreciation to Hempstead Town Councilwoman Angelina Cullin (R-Freeport) because she sponsored the resolution before the Hempstead board last fall to designate the town forest off Hewlett Avenue as a wildlife refuge.
Before that, the town had tacitly agreed to keep the property wild, but it had never formally recognized it as a refuge. Fox said the Merrick Park association had fought for more than two decades to get the property designated as a refuge.
Cullin's aide collected the award on her behalf, as she did not attend the civic meeting. Fox noted that the Merrick Park group had never before awarded such a plaque to a political figure.
