STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- After a reprieve extended the lease of the Cedar Grove Beach Club for one last summer, it seems there’s nothing left to save it now: Not a designation deeming it eligible for listing to the State and National Registers of Historic Places, nor the call of elected officials who have asked the city Parks Department to reconsider plans to remake it into a public park.
The seaside bungalows, some of which have passed down to generations of family members for nearly a century and stand as relics of the borough’s heyday as a resort community, are slated for demolition.
But eight months after Parks announced it would reclaim the privately leased beach at the foot of Ebbits Street in New Dorp, the agency could give few details about its future plans for the land once it pushes out its 41 summer tenants at the end of September.
“It’s illogical for the city, at a time of severe budget pressures, layoffs and cuts, to kick out a community that provides revenue to the city,” said Rep. Michael McMahon (D-Staten Island/Brooklyn), who was joined by state Sen. Andrew Lanza (R-Staten Island) and Councilmen Vincent Ignizio (R-South Shore) and James Oddo (R-Mid-Island/Brooklyn) in sending a letter to Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe on behalf of Cedar Grove.
In 2008, Cedar Grove residents paid the city $134,000 to use the land from the middle of May to October.
McMahon said a review of the city budget found no funding for additional resources and said Parks doesn't have the money for its current resources, most notably repairs for the Cromwell Center in Tompkinsville, which fell into the water in May.
Still, Parks -- which initially gave their tenants 30 days to vacate in December, but extended the lease to Sept. 30 after they were reviled as Scrooges -- is moving on.
“We look forward to increasing public access to Cedar Grove and making it a recreational amenity,” said Parks spokeswoman Meghan Lalor. She added that tenants have long been aware the city could reclaim the beach and “were properly informed well in advance of this decision that this would be their last summer at the site.”
Cedar Grove Beach, which turns 100 next year, was condemned and acquired by the city in 1958 when Robert Moses, the city’s master planner, envisioned a shore parkway running along the borough’s coastline.
As with other failed Moses visions, the parkway was never built and the city agreed to lease back the land with the understanding it could take it back whenever it wanted. The residents own the bungalows, not the land underneath.
Ms. Lalor said a designation by the State Historic Preservation Office -- which labeled the community “a rare surviving property type in New York City” in naming it eligible for state and national historic listings -- shouldn’t prevent the agency from establishing a park there.
She could provide no further details about what will become of the site, except to say that Parks will bring its plans to the community board this fall.
But that’s not enough for the borough’s elected officials or the residents fighting to retain the rights to their summer home.
“They have no plan, no capital dollars, they don’t have anything,” said Ignizio, whose district houses Cedar Grove Beach. “The Parks Department is so focused on extricating people from their homes at a time when they are short on money.”
A letter written by Benepe in response to McMahon, Lanza, Ignizio and Oddo outlines construction of the park in phases with Phase 1 -- the demolition of some of the bungalows -- beginning in the fall.
Phases 2 and 3 would see the remaining eight structures converted into lifeguard headquarters, district maintenance and operational headquarters, food concession, comfort station, equipment and supply storage and seasonal headquarters for Parks Enforcement Patrol Officers. The clubhouse would become an “East Shore Recreational Facility.”
A bike path, playground and softball and soccer fields would be constructed, and gates and fences would be installed along Ebbits Street.
The letter provides no timeline for the second and third phases and makes no mention of cost.
Longtime Cedar Grove resident William Dugan -- a spokesman of sorts for the community and the keeper of the “Save Cedar Grove Beach Club” Facebook page and its 826 friends -- fears his cottage will become a scene of nighttime keg parties, like those on neighboring New Dorp Beach, long closed to the public, debris washing up on its shores.
“I don’t want my childhood home to become a hangout with all the windows broken and the doors ripped out,” said Dugan, 37, whose parents purchased a place there when his dad returned from the Navy in 1970.
“This is a 99-year-old community, we’re on the eve of celebrating one century. What’s the point of pushing us out of the community when there is already vacant land, city-owned land that is undeveloped?”
Edith Holtermann, who has spent 73 of her 81 summers there, remembers swimming, playing sports and doing arts and crafts with her younger sister and the rest of the Cedar Grove children in what she called a setting much like a typical day camp.
Her own children went on to do the same.
“My kids grew up here,” she said. “They had a wonderful time. You used to be able to sit on the deck and watch the kids swimming. It was a different way of life. I have accumulated a lot of memories and the city wants to knock them down. It’s sad.”