Mr. Douglas Durst
President and CEO
The Durst Organization
New York, NY 10036

Dear Mr. Durst,

Your Manhattan skyscrapers are honored for their commitment to conserving energy and preserving natural resources. You own the largest organic farm in the state, and you serve as an advisor to the Trust for Public Land, a leading non-profit advocate of protecting agriculture, open space and parkland. When you and your family donated 320 acres of land in the Town of North East to the Nature Conservancy, you commented that you were “pleased to be able to assist in protecting this beautiful place…which will be enjoyed now for many generations to come. ”

What my readers are asking is “Why?”

Why does a man of your environmental vision, your tremendous wealth and your civic generosity want to develop a 951-unit residential subdivision that is likely to double the full-time population of Pine Plains, impose huge new property taxes on existing residents, and open the entire region to a competitive building frenzy that will turn our rural way of life into the next front line of suburban sprawl?

Perhaps you are doing it because you believe that the project, as described in public documents your company recently submitted to the Pine Plains Town Planning Board, will be welcomed as a great boon to the area. Your preliminary Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) now under review envisions the build out of the former Carvel estate as a high-end, golf-oriented retreat for weekenders or, alternatively, an upscale full-time residential community with a median house price of $800,000 and relatively few school age children.

But not one of the many real estate and planning experts I interviewed believes there is a market for either scheme your EIS describes. These experts, pointing to 30 years of development trends in the Hudson Valley, expect that the primary demand for your proposed one-to-five acre building lots and clustered condos would come from families fleeing New York City and its suburbs in order to find cheaper homes, a quieter community and better public schools.

Even if the proposed 951 homes sell for an average price of $500,000—well above any forecast I have found-- my research indicates that the property tax revenues they generate will fall short of the cost of educating the kids living in them by some $10 million per year. The bulk of that deficit will have to be borne by homeowners who currently live in the nine Dutchess and Columbia County towns that comprise the Pine Plains Central School District.

Your representatives have refused to discuss their financial analysis presented in the EIS, which, among other major flaws, severely underestimates the costs of providing public education to the future Carvel households. They claim that it is “premature” to comment on any part of the EIS with the press or the public at this stage of its review. They suggest instead that citizens address any questions to the planning board or wait until a period designated for official public comment begins, perhaps later this year.

My readers and I welcome the chance to discuss the financial details of your EIS at the earliest possible date. We want to understand how your vision-- 951 homes and a golf club that will draw, on your estimates, 328,000 visits per year-- fits with the vision that the majority of citizens here have in mind for the future of their towns. In the meantime, the question of your motives continues to perplex us.

One natural motive that comes to mind is the basic instinct for making a financial killing. Indeed, your decision to purchase the 2,200-acre Carvel property for a reported $7.5 million looks like a brilliant investment. If, after receiving approval for 951 home sites, you re-sold the entire estate and let other developers build it out, my guess is that you could walk away with a profit of $80-100 million.

Such a fortune would be hard to resist for most of us. But for a man whose Manhattan real estate holdings are already worth over $2 billion, according to published estimates, you might excuse those who wonder if monetary rewards alone are sufficient to drive your interest in such a contested project.

“Environmental values are important to me in everything I do,” you said last year, explaining why you chose to drive a fuel-efficient “hybrid” SUV.

Would those same values allow you to consider an alternative proposal for the Carvel land, one that would make a far smaller financial profit but would earn you an enduring legacy far more consistent with your ecological priorities and with our towns’ future fiscal health?

If sufficient funds were raised to pay you twice your current investment in the property, would you consider working with the community to develop it as a combined town park, experimental farm, and environmental education center, a living showcase for the civic principals you hold most dear?

We eagerly await your response to these and other questions about the Carvel development. Like you, we want to protect this beautiful place “for many generations to come.”