Tale Of Two Towns

If Only The Courtesy Was On Knoll Lane

The Town’s response vis-à-vis the Courtesy Hotel – or lack thereof – brings to mind events of yesteryear (as in, “déjà vu, all over again):

In the mid-1990s, West Hempsteaders were fighting to close an after-hours club (Café Wandyful) situated on the Turnpike near Mayfair Avenue, its parking lot abutting residential properties. Noise, lewdness, and rough-housing spilling into the streets until dawn; nude, table-top dancing; you name it, Café Wandyful was dishing it out – all without license or permit.

Up in arms, the community – with Scott Jablow (President of the Cathedral Gardens Civic Association) and Seth Bykofsky (then Executive Vice President of the fledgling West Hempstead Civic Association) leading the charge – enlisted what it hoped would be the aid of the Town of Hempstead (Greg Peterson, then Supervisor) to help close the club, which was operating outside the variances and conditions issued by the Town’s Board of Zoning Appeals.

The Town issued summonses, and eventually brought suit against Café Wandyful, which lawsuit languished for what seemed like an eternity.

Then, out of the blue, and some two-years into the war on Wandyful, a story appeared in Newsday, detailing the seemingly overnight closure of a similar after-hours club with like untoward propensities located on the Turnpike in East Meadow, which club was shut down by the Town of Hempstead, swiftly, summarily, and apparently without resort to protracted litigation.

The difference between West Hempstead’s Café Wandyful and the East Meadow “gentlemen’s” club? The East Meadow club was just a stone’s throw away from the East Meadow home of one Greg Peterson, Supervisor of the Town of Hempstead.

Seizing upon this injustice and the negative ensuing press highlighting the blatant inconsistency in the Town’s actions, West Hempstead’s civic leaders prevailed upon Supervisor Peterson to immediately take up the community’s cause.

Righting the wrong – and taking center stage before the media (flashy jewelry, and all) – Greg Peterson himself argued the case against Café Wandyful before the State Supreme Court in Mineola, and, lo and behold, within a matter of weeks, the doors to the notorious after-hours club were shuttered forever.

We'd venture a very strong guess here, that if a no-tell hotel similar in nature to West Hempstead’s Courtesy was in operation but a stone’s throw from the Levittown house on Knoll Lane in which current Town Supervisor Kate Murray resides, its doors would have been padlocked, the wrecking ball swinging away with abandon, years ago.

Unfortunately, in the unincorporated areas of Hempstead Town west of Levittown, it is the residents and taxpayers who are left abandoned, having to fend for themselves to hold on to what little remains of that ever-diminishing quality of life!