Friday, January 25, 2019
Vol. 79, No. 4
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After heated meeting BCA pulls hotel support
VALENTINES FOR VETS
BY RIKKI N. MASSAND
These students from Jericho High School’s National Art honor Society made over 200 Valentines for Veterans. They will be delivered to the town of Oyster bay to be distributed to veterans.
Special guests visit Syosset Curling Club BY GARY SIMEONE
It was four days of camaraderie and competition last week, as the Long Island Curling Club of Syosset hosted the Windsor Club of Nova Scotia. Sixteen members of the Nova Scotia based Club visited the area on a sightseeing tour and partook in friendly games of curling last Friday and Saturday night at the Long Island Sports Hub. “We played three slates or a total of twelve games with
them,” said LI Curling Club President, Bobby Iadanza. “It was more than just competition, we established a comradery and friendship with their group and I think we made some friends for life.” Iadanza helped establish the Curling Club in 2008, hoping to spread the word about the benefits of the traditionally Canadian sport. “At the Sports Hub, which is our home base, we hold games, have established curling leagues and also do private and charity
events. Our main goals are to promote and foster competition in the sport, attract athletes who may be interested in curling and provide programs designed to educate interested persons on both an adult and youth level.” He said that he worked and coordinated with the Windsor Curling Club for over ten months to make this event happen. “It was a very social event where their group came down and had drinks with us on a See page 18
On January 15 a crowd of 100 Jericho residents, most of whom were outraged at the proposal to build a 93-room Marriott Residence Inn hotel on the Milleridge Inn’s property and adjacent to residential blocks, the library, the Jericho Atrium and the Jericho Commons shopping complex, turned the tide against developers and New Hyde Park-based Kimco Realty, which owns the shopping center and purchased the Milleridge property in 2015. The East Birchwood Civic Association hosted an informational meeting at Jackson Elementary School but the event turned from a presentation by Kimco Vice President of Development Nick Brown into finger-pointing, accusations and frustrations at the Town of Oyster Bay administration, the civic organization, Kimco, and even Marriott as a corporation. A Town Board public hearing on the Marriott Residence Inn project for Jericho was deferred from mid-December to Tuesday night, January 29 at 7pm at Town Hall, 54 Audrey Avenue in Oyster Bay. That schedule is now in jeopardy as Kimco may need to go back to the drawing board or bear the wrath of an infuriated community. An update posted on the East Birchwood Civic Association’s website a day after the community gathered, on Wednesday January 16, presented a new “Statement by the Board of the Directors of the BCA.” It contains the following: “Based on current information available about the proposed construction of a hotel adjacent to the Milleridge Cottage site and the objections and concerns expressed by community residents at our January 15, 2019 meeting, the board of directors of the Birchwood Civic Association cannot support the hotel project at this time.” At the January 15 meeting East Birchwood Civic Association President Roy Chipkin was challenged by Kevin McKenna, an outspoken Syosset resident who advocates for transparency in government. McKenna posed several facts about the Town of Oyster Bay’s recent history with development and deals, and he topped that with several statements about Chipkin’s commercial real estate career in front of the audience of 100 people and Kimco representatives. Two years ago, in January 2017 Chipkin was promoted to senior vice president of the CBRE Group, Inc.’s Long Island office. McKenna said there is a clear conflict of interest involved with the civic association’s stated support of the project, with Chipkin representing the BCA but having professional ties to Kimco and prime Long Island real estate. That issue appears See page 18
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