Long Island News

Philip Tavella had big plans for Cedar Creek Park.

The financial consultant-turned-developer from Massapequa envisioned new athletic fields, a miniature golf course, driving range, an indoor recreational “sportsplex” center and go-cart tracks, among other new facilities at the 259-acre county park that borders Wantagh and Seaford.

For the past four years, Tavella says, he’s been the director of the nonprofit Darryl Strawberry Foundation. The project at Cedar Creek would feature continuous programs for children like his son, who has special needs.

The total price tag for his dream: $26 million, he tells the Press, all to be financed by himself and four private companies, whom he declines to name. The cost to taxpayers, he says: zero. And it wouldn’t affect operations at the park for regular users one bit, he says.

“We don’t take away 1 percent of any public usage on that park,” says Tavella. “We would be increasing public usage of the park.”

But not everyone shares Tavella’s vision.

Although already shelved by the Suozzi administration due to lack of public input, Tavella’s plans have ignited a firestorm of controversy among environmentalists, residents, civic leaders and lawmakers from the area not quick to be extinguished, with its recent culmination a public meeting held at Wantagh High School on Oct. 21 in which participants called for a permanent moratorium on development projects within the park.