An Eastwoods Drive couple who have publicly argued that their road is too narrow to serve as access to the proposed Zena Homes subdivision received a warning from the developers over road use, along with a $1,040 maintenance bill.
Eddie Greenberg and Evan Kleinberg, the developers behind Zena Homes, sent a May 15 email to Tana O’Sullivan saying her rights on Eastwoods Drive are limited to entering and leaving her property. The developers said the bill was for her share of road maintenance costs.
“They are interpreting it to have meaning that it does not state,” O’Sullivan wrote in an email to The Overlook, saying the easement allows the road to be used by adjacent landowners and does not prohibit walking, taking photographs, inviting guests or documenting road conditions.
Kleinberg said the developers do not object to O’Sullivan walking on the road or having guests visit. Their concern, he said, is that she has used access to Eastwoods Drive to document the developers’ property as part of her opposition to the subdivision.
“She’s been very obviously very vocal about her position on this project, which she has every right to have,” Kleinberg said.
But, he added, O’Sullivan has used the road “not just for ingress and egress, but also to build a campaign, an opposition campaign against our project.”
The dispute underscores how Eastwoods Drive has become central to the review of Zena Homes, a proposed 30-lot subdivision on the Ulster-Woodstock border. The O’Sullivans sent a letter to the Town of Ulster Planning Board, the Woodstock Planning Board and the Woodstock Town Board saying the road is too narrow and environmentally constrained to serve as the project’s only access road. The letter was dated May 11, but O’Sullivan said she emailed it May 7.
At the Ulster Planning Board’s May 12 meeting, Max Stach, whom the town appointed as town planner last year, said concerns about habitat fragmentation and septic feasibility did not merit a full environmental impact statement. His recommendation, a reversal of his previous position, moved the project closer to clearing a key environmental review.
Greenberg and Kleinberg said in an interview that the May 15 email was not related to the environmental review.
“This is like a neighbor to neighbor issue,” Greenberg said. “This is not a project issue.”
Kleinberg said the developers are not trying to interfere with O’Sullivan’s access to her home, but believe she has gone beyond what the easement allows.
“We simply want to enforce the document as it’s written,” Kleinberg said.
O’Sullivan also raised the issue at the Woodstock Town Board on May 19, saying she believed the developers’ actions were meant to intimidate and “strong arm” residents participating in the planning process. O’Sullivan said Woodstock police visited her and Stop Zena Development co-chair Zoe Keller on May 14 after trespassing complaints from the developers.
She said she believes she was the only Eastwoods Drive resident to receive both the invoice and the warning about road use.
In their letter to the planning boards and Woodstock Town Board, the O’Sullivans said the first roughly 500 feet of Eastwoods Drive is only 13 1/2 feet wide and would remain as-is because it lies in a wetland buffer area. They also raised concerns about construction traffic, winter conditions, drainage, fire access, and waivers Zena Development is seeking from Woodstock road standards.
“Eastwoods is a substandard road that is proposed to remain substandard,” they wrote.
Kleinberg said the developers have already spent money maintaining the road and plan to improve it further if the project is approved.
“We’ve spent a lot of money to improve the condition of the road,” Kleinberg said. “We also are about to spend a lot of money, assuming we get our approvals, on making the road wider, making the road safer.”
The developers said the bill was based on a shared maintenance obligation. Kleinberg said they had paid for road work since buying the land and had not previously charged residents.
“We’ve sort of taken on that cost as a courtesy,” he said.
The Town of Ulster Planning Board is expected to decide June 9 whether to issue a negative declaration, which would allow the project to proceed without a full environmental impact statement.
Noah Eckstein is the editor-in-chief of The Overlook. Send correspondence to noah@theoverlooknews.com.