A plan for a luxury housing subdivision on the former site of the St. Ignatius Retreat House in North Hills is one step closer to becoming a reality, but it still has quite a way to go.
The Manhasset Bay Group has submitted another revised plan and a draft environmental impact statement for the 30-acre, 46-home gated community on Searingtown Road to the village planning board at a public hearing Dec. 9.
While the most recent changes directly respond to board’s suggestions, Planning Board Chairman David Kass said there are still several details that could change before the project is officially approved, such as size of the lots the houses will sit on and how the developers will protect a group of endangered trees on the property.
“If you’ve read the (draft environmental impact statement), you don’t have to have a rocket scientist to see there’s a lot of questions,” Kass said.
The Manhasset Bay Group, a company incorporated in Delaware, bought the property for $36.5 million in July 2013 and has been working to develop the subdivison, known as “Manhasset Crest,” since March 2014.
The proposal has gone through several changes in that time, but the concept has remained the same: high-end homes in a gated community targeted at buyers who want “a lifestyle that combines modernity, practicality with ultimate luxury,” the developer’s website says.
The original plan was for 51 houses, more than the two per acre allowed under the village’s residential zoning code. Manhasset Bay Group pared the number down to 46.
In May, Village of North Hills Mayor Marvin Natiss said the developer had also added more green space to the site plan. It also now includes a second emergency access road in addition to the entrance on Searingtown Road, which the village had suggested.
The most recent changes, as outlined in the revised plans submitted in September, were made in response to feedback from the village planning board, said Anthony Guardino, the attorney representing the developer.
The revisions are not highly substantive, but both Guardino and Kass said the project will likely change more as it goes through a series of public hearings.
And because the project requires five zoning variances, it will have to go before the village zoning board before the planning board can approve it.
“While we’re hopeful that the preliminary approval will be forthcoming, we don’t anticipate that will come on Dec. 9,” Guardino said.
Efforts to reach the Manhasset Bay Group were unavailing.
According to its website, the Manhasset Bay Group is led by four business magnates with backgrounds in luxury real estate and investment finance.
Hong Kong native Thomas Lau, the developer’s principal shareholder and chairman, is CEO of Lifestyle International Holdings Limited, a company that runs high-end department stores in China’s major cities. The company is worth $3.5 billion, Manhasset Bay Group’s website says, and Forbes lists Lau’s net worth as $1.01 billion.
CEO Irene Ho has managed luxury real estate developments in Hong Kong since the early 2000s, Manhasset Bay Group’s website says. Before that, she was an executive director in Goldman Sachs’ Fixed Income, Currencies and Commodities Division in Asia.
Vice chairs Rumiko Hasegawa and David Voon also worked for Goldman Sachs in Asia.
Hasegawa led the firm’s non-financial institutional sales division from 2000 until she left in 2012. Voon was a partner managing director and head of the Asia Private Wealth Management division until his departure in 2011.
Kass said the group’s cooperation with the village has been “as good or better than” any project with which he has been involved.
“They have led us to believe that they will do everything to not irritate everybody in the environment, in the village, in whatever they can do to be good neighbors,” he said. “It’ll be a beautiful project for the Village of North Hills.”
The plans are in line with North Hills’ 23 other subdivisions, Kass said. But the property has a unique history as the former home of the Inisfada Retreat House.
The house, whose name means “Long Island” in Gaelic, was built between 1916 and 1920 for Nicholas Brady, son of industrialist Anthony Brady, and his wife Genevieve on a property that then spanned 300 acres.
After Nicholas died in 1930 and Genevieve in 1937, the land was left to Manhattan’s St. Ignatius parish, part of the Jesuit order of the Catholic Church. The Jesuits maintained the house from that time, but sold much of the property over the years as it became more expensive to keep.
When the order sold the remaining 31.5 acres to Manhasset Bay Group in July 2013, developer decided to tear down the historic house because it was in such bad repair. It was demolished in December of that year.
The destruction of the house was what created the greatest controversy in the village, Kass said, not the plans for a subdivision. Residents’ concerns about traffic, construction noise and flooding in the area are typical for these projects, he said.
“Basically they want it to be over with,” he said. “They’re not looking for piles of dirt and trucks running in and out.”
Natiss said approval is ultimately likely because the property is in a residential zone and the developers are “doing all their homework” to make the proposal fit village specifications.
“They’ve gone through all the hurdles that are necessary in order to get this accomplished, so I would think it’s going to happen,” he said.
