The Paramount Country Club rezoning.

What is being proposed

A petition to rezone land at the Paramount Country Club in New City from R-160 to R-22 was filed with the Town of Clarkstown in July 2025 by The Dells, Inc. The Planning Board's file identifies the parcels as 34.11-1-1 and 34.10-1-50. Reporting describes the roughly 36 acres of vacant land at issue as sitting within a property of about 217 acres owned by the Mandelbaum family. The site is the former estate of Adolf Zukor, the founder of Paramount Pictures.

The current application is for 230 residential units. It was reduced from an earlier 247-unit plan. As reported in November 2025, the 230 units comprise 128 townhomes, 70 condominiums, 30 golf villas and two single-family homes. The applicant has said roughly 65 percent of the 217-acre property would remain open space, that the golf course would be preserved with limited public access, and that the project would include amenities, units set aside for first responders, funding toward improvements at nearby Zukor Park, and more than $3 million a year in new tax revenue. Those last figures are the applicant's own projections, not findings by the Town.

What the R-160 district is for

R-160 is the Conservation Density Residence District, the most protective residential designation in the Clarkstown Zoning Code. The Code states its purpose directly:

The ten stated purposes that follow include minimizing development near streams, marshes, rock outcrops, high places and steep slopes; minimizing erosion and flood or runoff damage; minimizing the loss of forest cover on steep slopes and escarpments; and, expressly, "to protect the watershed of the Hackensack River." By contrast, the Code describes R-22 as a district "in the middle of the range of single-family residential districts," acting as a transition between the fifteen-thousand-square-foot subdivision areas and lower density areas.

The practical effect of the change is a substantial increase in permitted density. The Code lists R-22 as "Medium Density Residence (22,500 square feet)," and the Town's own Zoning Map gives the R-160 minimum lot size as 160,000 square feet. That is roughly 3.7 acres per home under the current zoning against roughly half an acre under the requested zoning, about seven times the density. The controlling figures sit in Table 12, General Bulk Regulations, which the Code publishes as a separate attachment.

Where it stands

The Town Board referred the petition to the Clarkstown Planning Board, which reviews it and makes a non-binding recommendation. The Town Board makes the final decision, and must hold a public hearing before adopting any local law granting the change. The petitioner would then still have to return to the Planning Board for site plan review and further public hearings. Reporting has also noted that a permissive referendum could put the question to voters.

The Planning Board took the matter up on June 10, 2026 and did not make a recommendation. Its minutes record that the review was continued to a date uncertain, pending further material from the petitioner including case law, additional weekday and weekend traffic counts at the Phillips Hill Road intersections with Little Tor Road and Main Street, and a road widening analysis. The motion carried 6 to 0.

Board members divided. The minutes record that member Gilbert Heim "stated this could be considered spot zoning," said he did not think the project "is a fit for this area and for the residents that bought in the area," and said the decision should be made by referendum rather than by the Town Board. Member Peter Streitman agreed, and questioned how a private golf course can count as open space. Member Roxanne Perrone said she liked the project, citing community access to the course, added housing, housing for first responders, and the club's role as a large local employer.

The Town's own Principal Planner, Jose Simoes, raised a Comprehensive Plan problem. The minutes record his statement that the Plan calls for additional density only in previously disturbed and built-out areas, commercial corridors and hamlet centers, and that the Town would not be changing zoning or adding density in single-family residential neighborhoods. He said the Plan "never looked at changing the zoning for the conservation district," and that an amendment to the Comprehensive Plan "may be required to resolve that conflict."

One exchange cuts the other way, and belongs here. When Heim raised spot zoning, counsel for the petitioner answered that the property adjoins R-22 and R-15 zoning and so the change would not be spot zoning. Simoes said the parcel sits between R-22 and R-40 zones. What the surrounding zoning actually is will bear on how that question is resolved.

This page reflects the public record as of September 10, 2026. A rezoning application can change between filings, and the figures above have already changed once. Confirm current status with the Town of Clarkstown before relying on anything here.

What the Town Board has to decide

Eugene Bondar, an attorney who has represented municipalities in land use matters, has asked the Town Board to reject the application. He calls it spot zoning.

Spot zoning is what it sounds like: carving out one parcel for treatment the land around it does not get, because of who owns it rather than because the town planned it that way. New York courts have long treated that as the opposite of real planning.

So the question in front of the Board is not complicated to state. Does changing the zoning on these 36 acres fit a plan for Clarkstown as a whole, and the reasons the Conservation Density district was created in the first place? Or does it exist because one owner asked for it? Courts give town boards wide latitude on zoning, which is exactly why the reasons the Board puts on the record matter more than the vote count.

Where Eugene stands

Bondar has asked the Town Board to vote no on the application, and has published a proposed 12-month zoning moratorium that would pause development approvals under the new Hamlet Center districts until the town completes the project-specific environmental review New York law requires. He has argued that this application cannot be assessed in isolation from the traffic and infrastructure load of projects already approved or in the pipeline, and that approving it would signal that the town's most protective zoning designation is negotiable.