By Kathy Savolt -
It wasn’t difficult to hear a few exchanges coming from the special Executive Session of the Board of Trustees (BOT) on Saturday, December 2nd in the Regatta conference room. Voices were raised a few times and when Trustee Nora Lucas asked Trustee Lou Young if he had met with Hampshire (Country Club), his response was very clear. He said that he hadn’t met with Hampshire, he met with Dan (Pfeffer of Hampshire LLC). Lucas responded that Dan was Hampshire.
Hampshire Country Club has been involved in lawsuits against the Village of Mamaroneck since 2014 when they requested a zoning change to the Marine Recreation Zone portion of their property to allow the construction of a 125 unit luxury condominium development. This request, after a group of investors purchased the 106 acre property in 2010 for $12.1 million, was denied by the BOT. Hampshire sued and the Village prevailed in that lawsuit.
In 2015 Hampshire applied to build 105 homes and townhouses bringing in more than 80,000 cubic yards of soil to raise the development out of the flood zone. After an extensive review under the New York State Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQRA), this application was unanimously denied by the Planning Board in 2022. Hampshire once again sued the Village and the Planning Board. This lawsuit is still making its way through the courts.
Meanwhile, in 2020, Hampshire filed another lawsuit against the Village claiming monetary damages of $58 million. This suit is also active in the courts.
In a follow-up phone interview with this reporter, Young repeated his statement that he hadn’t met with Hampshire, he had “coffee with Dan (Pfeffer). I didn’t meet with Hampshire, no.”
When told again that Dan Pfeffer was Hampshire’s representative, Young responded that he had met Dan (Pfeffer) before, and he (Pfeffer) wanted to talk so he talked to him. Young explained, “I told him I had no interest in discussing, or entertaining any discussion about, the lawsuit in any way, shape, or form.”
Young continued by saying, “the advice for him was that neither one of the proposals I had seen as an outsider from a distance and even as a Trustee would not (sic) possibly fly and they would have to come up with something different if they ever wanted to do something there.”
Regarding the Mamaroneck School Board’s recent agreement with Hampshire (See HERE), Lou volunteered the following statement: “I told him this thing with the school board means nothing and that the school board might as well have signed the Treaty of Versailles – write that down.”
Young said that Pfeffer clearly wanted to discuss the “court hearing” but that he didn’t discuss the lawsuits. He said he told Pfeffer that “he (Pfeffer) had a problem.”
Young then asked that we include the following statement: “I know people bought this property (Hampshire) in hopes of making money. I also bought Boeing stock in hopes of making money. Sometimes investments don’t work out. It’s not my job to make sure that their investments work out.”
When Trustee Lucas was asked why she even asked Young about Hampshire, Lucas replied that Pfeffer had approached her at a public function right after the election. He asked to meet with her and Mayor Torres (then Mayor-elect) saying that he had met with (now former) Mayor Murphy and Trustee Young and they had information she did not. Lucas declined his invitation.
Editor’s Note: Kathy Savolt and Cindy Goldstein were members of the Planning Board that reviewed the Hampshire application and unanimously rejected it in 2022 for various reasons including the threat to human life and property from flooding.
