PARCnassau

Park Advocacy & Recreation Council of Nassau. A coalition of 150 park advocacy and/or user groups with a combined membership of over 250,000 county residents.

Monday, December 20, 2010

Nassau "selling" Bay Park to Private College

Nassau County "selling" the Bay Park athletic fields and tennis courts to Molloy, a private college.
by Bruce Piel

Nassau County is preparing to accept $3,000,000 for virtually the exclusive rights to use the Bay Park athletic fields, present and future, to Molloy College, Rockville Center for up to 30 years.What are they thinking? Where do the current teams, including Little Leagues, Cricket Leagues, Ball leagues, Lacrosse leagues. tennis ;players, etc, etc. go to play? They claim this will provide better access to better facilities to the general public. This is political double speak! In effect they are shutting out the general public!

The specifics of the agreement allow the college to use the athletic fields for baseball, softball, field hockey and the tennis courts seven days a week. In exchange Molloy will pay $3 million (combined with $3 million in public moneys) to be used for artificial turf and a few more tennis courts.The college not only gets to play their NCAA games there for half price fees but can practice on the same fields for nothing.The initial term of the contract is 20 years with a optional roll over of 10 more years. The schedules shown in the contract have the fields and courts committed to the college virtually all day, every day.

This should be completely unacceptable to all Nassau County taxpayers, especially those who use county fields for their sports and other fitness. If this goes through, it will be justification for the county to sell off other park facilities to private interests.

To stop this now, call, write and/or email your county legislators, the county executive and the commissioner of parks. Molly College currently uses Mitchell Field complex and other fields around the island which they must share with other sports interests. Let them continue to do so and not push the public out of Bay Park.


Bruce Piel
Chairman
Park Advocacy & Recreation Council of Nassau (PARCnassau)
246 Twin Lane East
Wantagh, NY 11793-1963
(516) 783-8378