Talk:West Meadow Beach

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This entry is politically quite biased, and makes it sound like Steve Englebright decided to tear down the cottages, going against the will of the citizens of the town. West Meadow Beach has been public land since the founding of Brookhaven Town in colonial times. From the time that the cottages were first built, as political favors to friends of the town trustees in the 1920's and 1930's, many residents of Brookhaven, including Frank Melville, spoke out about the inappropriateness of using public land for private cottages. The beach was made into a public town park (and therefore subject to state laws about parkland) in the mid-1970's. As a result of a lawsuit in 1994, the cottages were declared illegal. After the cottage owners lost their appeal in 1996, State Assemblyman Steve Englebright brokered a compromise, in which the cottage owners would sign over their deeds to the town, but would be allowed to continue leasing the land and cottages for 8 more years, before the cottages would be demolished. No leases were to change hands (i.e., be sold) during that time. The funds that were raised from the leases during those 8 years were put into two accounts, one to pay for the demolishing of the cottages and restoration of the beach, and one for maintenance of the beach after the cottages were taken down. Without this compromise, the cottages would have been torn down immediately, but there would have been no money to pay for the demolition or restoration of the beach. The cottage lease-holders continued to fight the demolition, especially as 2004 approached, and some of them sold their leases illegally during that time. Those who did were able to get large sums for them because of the general assumption that somehow the leaseholders would be able to avoid demolition again, as they had for decades. Much to everyone's surprise, at the end of the 8 years, in 2004, the town of Brookhaven followed the agreement and the cottages were removed.

As I was firmly in favor of removing the cottages, and made small contributions to publicizing the benefits of taking them down, I don't want to be the one to edit this stub. However, readers should recognize that the current entry does not give a very full view of the glory of West Meadow Beach, which has now been returned to the public as a wonderful park. Someone with less personal feelings about the park should edit the entry.