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Neighbors Say Village of New Hempstead Violated the Open Meetings Law, the State Environmental Quality Review Act, Village Law, and a 2009 Forbearance Agreement
A neighborhood association, made up of residents of the Village of New Hempstead and the Town of Ramapo, along with residents living in close proximity to the New York Country Club, located at 103 Brick Church Road, have banded together and filed a lawsuit in Rockland County Supreme Court, hoping to stop the redevelopment of the 150-acre golf course and country club.
Plans proposed by the developer include somewhere between 318 and 425 large single-family homes on 10,000 square foot lots. But, before the developer can proceed with its plans, several obstacles stand in its way, including the lawsuit against the Village of New Hempstead, charging that village trustees violated the Open Meetings Law (OML) and the New York State Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQRA) by advancing the development application illegally.
The property is currently zoned 1R-40, which would allow single-family homes on 40,000 square foot lots, except that back between 2007 and 2009, the Village and the then-owner of the golf course entered into a “Forbearance Agreement” that transferred most of the site’s development rights to the Village of New Hempstead in exchange for permission to subdivide the property into two lots and construct a senior community on about nine of the original 165 acres. The goal of the Village at the time, consistent with its Comprehensive Plan, was to preserve the golf course’s acreage as open space.
The Village allowed the subdivision and accepted the development rights to all of the remaining acreage, except 25 acres which were carved out for a future development application. That future application could not be made until five years lapsed from the approval of the senior community. The current proposal covers all of the 150 remaining acres, though the owner may not hold the development rights to the bulk of the property.
Presumably, those development rights are worth millions of dollars, and the Village, which owns those rights, would have to surrender them back to the new owner/developer of the site. The forbearance agreement contemplated that those development rights could only be relinquished by either an affirmative vote of the village trustees or the dissolution of the village.
The other obstacle is the zoning. The developer is asking for the entire property to be rezoned to 1R-10, a new zoning district which would only be applicable to the golf course site.
Plaintiffs charge that the Village has made a series of both procedural and substantive errors, that they are misapplying and misinterpreting the law, and conducting an improper review. They also claim that the village appears to be conducting an environmental review of the zoning change with a single property and development plan in mind, and not conducting a meaningful review of the project itself.
In a six-count complaint, the plaintiff-neighbors say that the Village failed to keep proper minutes, post minutes, notice resolutions, and that non-noticed resolutions were passed without public participation.
The heart of the neighbor’s complaints are that the re-zoning petition will have dire environmental consequences and that no serious or meaningful study of those impacts is being undertaken by experts and that the public has been shut out. They also fear the loss of open space.
The Village, which entered a positive declaration under SEQRA earlier this year, has also accepted a Final Scoping Document for an Environmental Impact Statement. Neighbors say that the positive declaration is faulty as it does not list any potential environmental impacts. They also complain that the resolution accepting the Final Scoping document appears limited to a review of the zone change and not the project, and that the approach the Village is taking effectively illegally segments the environmental review. Segmentation, illegal under SEQRA, is the breaking up of the review into smaller parts to avoid a hard look at the overall impacts of the project – in this case, both the zone change and the project review.
Neighbors also complain that alternatives to the development plan are not being considered.
Other SEQRA deficiencies detailed in the court complaint include failure to notify interested entities that are entitled to weigh in on the review, including the NYS DEC. The property has recognized and mapped wetlands that fall under DEC’s jurisdiction.
Neighbors also say the density of housing being contemplated far exceeds other zones in the Village and contravenes both the 2006 Comprehensive Plan and the 2020 Comprehensive Plan (which was tossed by a court for failing to conduct a SEQRA review).
In a letter dated September 4, 2025, the developer’s attorney says that the neighbors “do not understand the nature of a Scoping Outline or its purpose.” He adds, “Their problem is that they don’t like the result, because it allows for further review of the project rather than stopping it.”
The golf course’s previous owner proposed a development plan with the Village that included a mix of housing types under the Village’s optimized cluster development program, but that plan never advanced.
The golf course property sold in 2023 to 103 Brick Church LLC for $35 million. The 18-hole, par 72 course was built in 1996. The property features a refurbished clubhouse, wedding venue, pro shop, bar & grill, and other amenities.
Other golf courses in Rockland County have been targeted for development that include residential components, including the Paramount Country Club in New City, and the Minisceongo Golf Course in Pomona. Minisceongo is being redeveloped as Millers Pond with 637 residential units and 67,000 square feet of non-residential, mixed use commercial space on 143 acres of land. At the Paramount Country Club property, the pending proposal is to add housing and preserve the golf course as open space with a deed restriction that would preclude further development in the future.
A shortage of large parcels in Rockland County has made golf courses, summer camps, and former bungalow colonies attractive redevelopment projects.
