Don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you’ve got
’Til it’s gone
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot.
– Joni Mitchell
Just because it’s legal doesn’t make it right.
The Village of North Hills has issued a permit to tear down the beloved St. Ignatius Retreat House. There is nothing now to stop the Manhasset Bay Group, Inc. – a benign name for the Evil Empire of Nassau County – from razing the magnificent building once known as Inisfada, the Gaelic word for Long Island, and replacing it with whatever it wants on the 33-acre site.
Until last summer, Inisfada was owned by the Jesuits who used it for retreats and as a rehab center. The Jesuits sold the Searingtown Road property for $36.5 without asking for community input. Money talks, nobody walks.
North Hills Mayor Marvin Natiss said he has no idea what the estate’s new owner plans on doing with the property. He told our reporter, “I was away in Florida visiting my children and grandchildren last week, so when I got back I found out they had received a demolition permit. Legally, we cannot stop them from demolishing the building.”
We are told the Evil Empire plans on turning the property into “the jewel of North Hills.”
That’s good. We were afraid that they were planning to build too many condos on too little space creating a burden on the existing infrastructure and having a negative impact on the quality of life for area residents.
Unlike the original owner, we were thinking that their only concern was profit.
Genevieve Brady, the Gold Coast heiress who left her mansion to the Jesuit order when she died in 1938, must be turning in her grave. She and her husband had created a beautiful estate and now it’s about to be torn down by developers who have no understanding of its historic value and its meaning to the people of North Hills.
This is a sad die for Long Island.
