Westchester Supreme Court Rules in Favor of The Nature Conservancy

Meyer Preserve to remain intact

Mount Kisco, NY—November 9, 2006—The Nature Conservancy is pleased to announce that the Supreme Court, Westchester County recently dismissed the claims of Seven Springs, LLC, a part of the Trump Organization, that it has an easement through the middle of The Conservancy’s Eugene and Agnes Meyer Preserve, for access to a proposed seventeen residence development. The Court found that the Town of North Castle had closed Oregon Road in 1990, that the then-owner of the property – Rockefeller University – had consented to the closing and had abandoned any interest it may have had in Oregon Road. The Court ruled that Seven Springs’ claims were barred by the statute of limitations.

Katie Dolan, Executive Director of The Nature Conservancy’s Eastern New York chapter, notes, "The court ruling is very good news for nature lovers in the community who use the Meyer Preserve. Reopening an officially closed and abandoned road, as Seven Springs had proposed, would have degraded the preserve experience for our members and local citizens."

Both the North Castle and the New Castle portions of Oregon Road were officially closed by governmental action in the early 1990s. The intent of the original gift of the properties in this immediate area by the Meyer Foundation to The Nature Conservancy and to Yale University was to create in one area a nature preserve and in the other area an academic, limited-use conference center. Neither of those uses even remotely contemplated any further use or reopening of the abandoned New Castle and North Castle portions of Oregon Road. In fact, when the Trump Organization purchased the now Seven Springs, LLC development property from Rockefeller University in 1995, those portions of Oregon Road had long been officially closed and abandoned.

For further information on the Eugene and Agnes Meyer Preserve and other Nature Conservancy preserves in the area, please contact Ms. Katie Dolan, Executive Director, The Nature Conservancy, Eastern New York Chapter at kdolan@tnc.org.

The executive office of Eastern New York Chapter of The Nature Conservancy is located at 265 Chestnut Ridge Road (inside the Arthur W. Butler Memorial Sanctuary) in Mount Kisco.