The Wheatley Hills Golf Club presented a revised apartment plan to the Village of East Williston Board of Trustees on Thursday Dec. 4, which eliminates a previous strategy to build a 12-bedroom, one-story slate-roof extension building for employee living quarters, and the construction of an underground parking garage.
A total of eighteen bedrooms were being proposed, which Walsh said would have been three more bedrooms than what is necessary. The revised plan, which was submitted to the village board the day before the meeting last Thursday, currently has an estimated cost
of $250,000.
The previous plan, which was presented last month to the village zoning board, was to extend the building slightly over 3,000 sq. ft., and was estimated to cost nearly $500,000, with renovations totaling $100,000. Presented by Kevin Walsh, attorney for Wheatley Golf Course with the firm Walsh Markus McDougal & DeBellis, LLP, the building, which extends from the main building towards East Willis Avenue, will remain the same and have a revised number of bedrooms and storage space.
Following the presentation of the original plan, which residents objected to on the basis of bringing potential unneeded traffic and a “Motel 6 feel to the area” – Walsh said the new proposal attempts to rectify.
With single living dormitories for golf club house staff, groundskeeping and the pro-shop only, there will be eight bedrooms on the first floor, one bathroom, and a few common areas; and the lower level will have four bedrooms with two bathrooms, common areas and remaining storage space.
The exterior of the building will have some renovations, like a new entry porch, new stone base to match the existing stone, new stucco veneer to match the existing stucco veneer. The existing slate room will remain the same.
Walsh said that the club currently has between 12 and 15 employees living in the club, some seasonal and all male, and three of the employees live in the main building above the golf course ladies locker room.
If female employees joined the staff, Wheatley Hills Golf Club President Anthony Carillo said that accommodations would be made, and that the space above the ladies locker room in the main building will be converted to either a lunch room for staff or offices.
“This has not been an ideal situation, and the club decided they’d like to get these folks living with the rest on the first floor,” Walsh said. “There has been no intent to hire additional staff, and the current space is not as suitable as the club would like for its employees.”
Raising eyebrows among the residents in attendants, Paul Russo, an architect for the proposal, said there is currently one bathroom for 12 people on the first floor, and the bedrooms range from 6 to 10 feet wide.
“These are not huge rooms, they’re like army barracks,” Russo said.
According to Walsh, Village of East Williston Building Inspector Robert Campagna’s records show the building has been used for housing club staff for many years. However at the meeting, residents expressed a variety of concerns, including the necessity of having employees living at the club, noise concerns and documentation on employees living at the club.
Walsh said the club is wants to stay competitive with other facilities by providing better living quarters, which one resident replied: “This isn’t a medical or educational facility—I’ve been getting to work on time for 50 years, and I didn’t have to live where I worked.”
Other residents mentioned noise from the club involving leaf blowers, which Carillo said he will investigate on the response taken by the club.
Walsh addressed each of the resident’s concerns, saying, “we want to be a good neighbor to the village, and we are taking in all of your concerns as factors in our procedure.”
On the question of how long employees have lived at the club, Carillo said employees lived at the club since he joined in 1995. Former Village of East Williston Mayor Anthony Casella said that when the village created the new law in 1984, he had “no knowledge whatsoever that employees at the golf course were living there—we were extremely careful during those three or four years when we enacted code to ensure it was just a golf course.”
Campagna, who has been an inspector for the village for almost 20 years, that he only became aware that employees were living there last year.
“I pulled the property files, saw the living quarters, and it was an approved set of drawings at a different time,” Campagna said.
East Williston Mayor David Tanner said the village is analyzing the plans, which include employee records, indications of any prior code violations, background check information and more specific information on planned storage space.
