County parks department employees working on clubhouse at former Beagle Club

County workers have been working inside the the clubhouse building at the former L.I. Beagle Club site since the County Legislature on May 13 approved a resolution authorizing the county parks department to sign a lease or license agreement with a motorcycle group headed by the Suffolk County superintendent of parks, according to neighbors across the street from the site.

“Except for periodic mowing, we never saw anyone working there until about a month ago — the very next day after the resolution was passed, in fact,” said Jamie Farruggia, who lives across the street from the Beagle Club entrance. “I’m a stay-at-home mom and I spend a lot of time at home with two small children. Suddenly I started seeing work vans there, hearing power saws and other noise,” she said.

Another neighbor, who asked not to be identified, said he works out at a gym with two county parks department plumbers who told him they’ve been working at the clubhouse. 

Three other residents of the subdivision have contacted RiverheadLOCAL to report sighting county workers at the site during the past week.

Four Suffolk County Parks Department work vans were parked behind the clubhouse this morning and several workers using power tools were in the basement of the red brick building.

The employees refused to answer questions about the work being undertaken and one worker, who identified himself as Joe Heintz, told a reporter to get off the property, threatening to call park police.

“This is private property. You’re trespassing,” Heintz said. “You have to leave right now or I will call park police.” He escorted the reporter to the road and locked the chain-link fence.

Suffolk Parks Superintendent Jim Barr, who is president of L.I. ABATE, Inc., the motorcycle club seeking to lease the site from the county, said afterward he heard the call for police on the parks department two-way radio and immediately called the workers on site to find out what had happened.

“I instructed them that this is county property, purchased with taxpayer money and residents have the right to be there,” Barr said. “I apologize for their behavior. There’s no such thing as trespassing on county land.”

Barr said the county workers were “removing sheet rock in the basement because of mold.”

First District Legislator Al Krupski, who sponsored the resolution authorizing a lease or license agreement with L.I. ABATE, Inc. said he had “absolutely no idea” county workers were working at the site.

“I’m very surprised,” Krupski said, because the agreement with L.I. ABATE was for the organization to undertake repairs and maintenance at the site in lieu of rent to the county for non-exclusive use of the property.

Krupski said he’d been inside the building once, this winter. “You can see nothing had been done in there for years,” he said during a phone interview this afternoon.

After being told of the workers on site, the legislator said he called County Parks Commissioner Greg Dawson to find out what was going on.

“[Dawson] said to his knowledge they were fixing up posts on a porch and taking out moldy sheet rock in the cellar,” Krupski said in a subsequent phone call.

“I don’t understand why that building’s sat there for years and all of a sudden it’s being worked on,” Krupski said. “I would have thought they’d let me know.”.

“We have no manpower and today there were four vans there?”

The deal with L.I. ABATE seemed like a good way to address needs at the former Beagle Club site without taxpayer expense, he said.

The property, 150 acres on the west side of Edwards Avenue between Riley and Sound avenues, was purchased by the county from a prospective developer in 2012 for $8.9 million; it was transferred to the parks department for passive recreation uses.

Neighbors became alarmed when they learned of the proposed agreement with L.I. ABATE and complained that there had been no notice to the community or public hearing.

Riverhead Town Supervisor Sean Walter has criticized the plan, saying that the county should have issued a request for proposals rather than simply make an agreement with a private organization, especially one headed by the county employee charged with supervising county park facilities.

Walter says the uses proposed by L.I. ABATE, which include events, classes and use of the clubhouse as a headquarters for its 800-member club, are not appropriate for a site bought with public money for recreational purposes. The Calverton Civic Association shares that view, its president, Rex Farr, said.

Krupski and Barr are both attending the Calverton Civic meeting tonight at 7 p.m at Riley Avenue Elementary School to discuss the plan with the community.

Yesterday Krupski said the agreement with L.I. ABATE is “not a done deal.” After hearing today about work being done at the site by county parks department employees, Krupski said he was “more than a little frustrated” with a situation he referred to as a “fiasco.”

“This changes everything,” Krupski said.