Citing a lack of support from fellow board members, Todd Zarin has resigned as the president of the Roslyn Country Club Civic Association.
“I didn’t have the support that warranted my staying on the board,” he said.
Zarin, who took a lead role in the town’s proposed purchase of park facilities on the Roslyn Country Club, said his resignation was made effective June 23, when he was already beyond his three-year presidential term.
“The board had agreed in 2014 to delay elections to permit then current leadership to push the [Roslyn Country Club] project forward without interrupting the planning and negotiation my team [was] engaged in with the [Town of North Hempstead],” Zarin said. “[That] is why I was so committed to managing by consensus and when support weakened I stepped away from the role.”
He said in 2014 he wanted to remain president “until the process of getting [Roslyn Country Club] was substantially complete.”
But at board meeting on June 14, Zarin said, former board members showed up uninvited, saying his time as president needed to come to a close.
Zarin said the former board members told him that his efforts to re-open Roslyn Country Club were taking too long.
He said he did not want to continue if he did not receive a “significant, if not unanimous support [from the board].”
Nine days after the former board members came to the meeting, and after not receiving the support he desired, Zarin made the decision to resign, he said.
“It would be disruptive to try and hold new elections at the same time as trying to finalize the process to re-open Roslyn Country Club,” Zarin said.
Zarin said that he does not know who is the current president of the Roslyn Country Club Civic Association.
Efforts to reach Heather Schwartz and Diane Hersch, civic association board members, were unavailing.
The association’s website still lists Zarin as president.
Woodbury-based Cameron Engineering & Associates was hired in April to oversee the design and engineering of tennis courts as part of the $14.2 million project to renovate the Roslyn Country Club.
The firm was approved unanimously during the North Hempstead Town Council’s March 31 meeting for a $789,000 project, but officials said work cannot begin until after the town’s acquisition of more than 7.2 acres of the property for $2 million is completed, pending ongoing litigation.
The property is currently owned by the Mineola-based Corona Realty Holdings, whose owner, Manochehr Malekan, unsuccessfully sued residents over longstanding easement rights in the 1990s that gave them access to the country club’s pool for $100 in annual dues and then shuttered the club in 2007.
Several residents then counter-sued, though Zarin has said all but a few residents have dropped their lawsuits in favor of the town’s acquisition of the country club and proposed renovation.
Under the land acquisition deal, Corona Realty Holdings would retain approximately three acres and continue to operate the Royalton at Roslyn Country Club catering hall.
North Hempstead town spokeswoman Carole Trottere said designs and bids for the tennis courts have been prepared and could take effect immediately following the resolution of the litigation.
“We wanted to get it geared up and ready so we can just say, okay, start tomorrow,” she said. “…We’re very confident it will happen.”
North Hempstead plans to create a new special park district for the Roslyn Country Club, with the renovations including repairs to the club’s pool area as well as the construction of a new locker room facility, playgrounds and a basketball court.
The redevelopment would be financed using about $2 million from its general fund and $12 million in borrowed funds, which town officials have said would be repaid over a 20-year period.
The town would also utilize bond anticipation notes in the first five years of the project due to current low interest rates.
Town of North Hempstead Board under then Supervisor Jon Kaiman agreed to purchase the country club in 2012 first as a town park and then as a special park district.
