Lido Beach Golf Club and Hempstead Town settle lawsuit over Sandy repairs

The Town of Hempstead has reached a settlement with the former operator of a town-owned golf course in Lido Beach after a two-year legal dispute over  more than $2 million in capital improvements and post-superstorm Sandy repairs.

Joshua Hecht, the Jericho-based attorney representing Lido Golf Club operator Double Eagle Golf, Inc., said Tuesday that the company and the town reached a monetary settlement in early April during a brief trial, although he said he could not provide details.

“They’re living with it,” he said of the Lido Beach-based company’s opinion of the settlement.

Angelo Bisceglie, a Mineola attorney representing the town; Town Attorney Joe Ra; and Lucien Clerico , a  principal at Double Eagle, did not respond to requests for comment.

Double Eagle sued the town in May 2017, one month before the town took back ownership of the 18-hole Lido Golf Club and sought to evict Double Eagle.

In its complaint, the company said it had carried out $1,576,400 in repairs on the course after Sandy, but the town had offset only $800,000 of those costs by waiving licensing fees from 2013 through part of 2017. The 2012 storm ravaged the course, which faces the South Shore of Reynolds Channel.

The company started operating the course in 1997, and its contract was scheduled to expire in June 2017, court records show.

The lawsuit also said the town requested a $363,000 payment from the company in early 2017 “in order for the Defendant to consider Plaintiff’s bid for the continued management” of the course but then “withdrew the entire bidding process” after receiving the payment, deciding instead to manage the course itself.  

The town countersued the controlling members of Double Eagle in July 2017, arguing that the original 1997 management agreement placed responsibility for capital improvements and maintenance on Double Eagle. The town called for the company to make $2,179,800 million in capital improvements. Instead, “under Eagle’s management of the Lido facility it had deteriorated to the point that it was unsafe for its intended purposes,” the town’s third-party complaint reads.

Hempstead would have had to make a “substantial investment of public monies in a comprehensive renovation and capital improvement project” of the course after assuming control of the facility, the town’s complaint reads.

Hecht said the settlement will not impact the operations of the course, which the town continues to run.