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Nassau Herald 02-02-2023

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HERALD

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Funny man wins an award

Steve Mangeri is state honoree

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Vol. 100 No. 6

FEBRUARY 2 - 8, 2023

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All the news of the Five Towns

With its lease ending, 5TCC ponders what happens next By HERNESTo GAlDAMEZ hgaldamez@liherald.com

Hernesto Galdamez/Herald

A STRoNG coNTiNGENT of community members attended a Jan. 25 meeting to discuss the Five Towns Community Center’s lease with Nassau County.

Five Towns Community Center employees, volunteers and neighbors gathered for a meeting on Jan. 25 in the center’s gymnasium with one question on their minds: What’s next? “The purpose of tonight is very clear,” the Rev. Gregory Stanislau, of St. John Baptist Church in Inwood, said. “We are here to find out what is going on with our community center.” The building and property at 270 Lawrence Ave., in Lawrence, are owned by Nassau County, which has leased the site to the center since 1974. After 50 years, the lease is set to expire in July 2024, and there has been no offer from the county to renew it. A request for proposals sent out by the county Jan. 2 seeks people or entities to provide youth-oriented activities and Continued on page 7

Lawrence Woodmere Academy’s future is up in the air By HERNESTo GAlDAMEZ hgaldamez@liherald.com

As they learned two weeks ago that Lawrence Woodmere Academy could be closing, and that its summer camp had already been shut down for the year, alumni of the school took to Facebook to share their memories. “I attended Woodmere Academy for 12 years and also worked for their summer camp for another several years,” Jennifer Weisel-Lillo, a 2003 LWA graduate, posted. “Woodmere Academy was my second home, where I was always treated like family. I will never forget all the tears I

shed at my last drama show, last concert and most of all my high school graduation. I would do anything I can to keep them open.” She and many other are being asked for their ideas on ways to keep the private school open, after it announced that the current school year could be its last. In a Jan. 20 email to LWA alumni, the board of trustees wrote that the school may not reopen in September. “A proposed sale and leaseback of the remaining LWA property may no longer be feasible,” the email stated, adding, “Fortunately we have secured funding to complete the current

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hope they are able to figure a way to stay open.

DAViD FRiEDMAN Five Towns

academic year in good order.” The school enrolls students from preschool through 12th grade. Its origins date to 1891, when Lawrence Country Day School was founded. The Woodmere Academy opened in 1923, and the schools merged in 1990 to form Lawrence Woodmere

Academy. Over the past two decades, the school has had a difficult time sustaining its enrollment, relying on students from beyond the Five Towns — some from as far away as China and South Korea. Before the pandemic, it was planning to establish a sister school, the LWA Asia International School, in Shenzhen,

China, a city that borders Hong Kong and is in an area known as China’s Silicon Valley. In recent years, LWA has sold portions of its 10-acre property in Woodmere. In 2018, the Friedman Group purchased 1.33 acres of the land for $2.5 million, and planned to build a 33-unit residential development, but the Continued on page 8


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