Planning board says it can’t reject Glen Cove mansion plan

As Glen Cove residents continued Tuesday night to assail a proposal to subdivide part of the Glen Cove Mansion property into 40 luxury homes, planning board members said they can only tweak the plan, not reject it entirely.

The three-hour public hearing was the second in two weeks on the plan by mansion owner Wei Wang to build the 40 semi-detached homes on nearly 23 acres off Lattingtown Road that is covered mostly by trees and grass. The 108-year-old Georgian mansion is now part of a hotel and conference center.

Resident Debra Kolitz urged the board to stop what she said would be “rampant overdevelopment” that would destroy part of Long Island’s rapidly disappearing open space.

“I don’t understand how you could take this beautiful piece of property and build cookie-cutter condos,” she said. “Does the world need more million-dollar condos?”

But board member John Maccarone said that even though “I’d love to say no,” the board is constrained by a 2013 City Council vote that allowed 40 homes on the site in exchange for prohibiting the demolition of the mansion and keeping the rest of the 54.5-acre property undeveloped.

“Regrettably, in 2013 your elected officials changed this, so now we have to deal with it,” he said.

Maccarone said that, in response to residents’ requests, Wang has modified original plans for the site by, for example, moving the development’s entrance off Lattingtown Road.

“This is the result of them addressing your concerns,” he said.

Board chairman Thomas Scott told the audience the board opted not to vote on the proposal Tuesday night “so that we might digest some of the concerns of the people here tonight and try to mitigate those concerns even further. As far as density, the density is established at 40 units. That’s not going to change.”

Wang on Tuesday repeated his vow to use profits from the development to restore and preserve the mansion, which was first home to Ruth Baker Pratt, the first congresswoman from New York, and her husband, attorney John Teele Pratt.

Carolyne Dilgard-Clark, who recently bought a home near the property, said she is skeptical Wang will use money from the project to improve the mansion, and she said there is nothing preventing the City Council from reversing its 2013 vote and allowing the development of the rest of the mansion site.

“We feel like this is being pushed on us,” she said.