LETTER: Historic Jay Cemetery Threatens to Revoke Easement Amid Marshlands Park Expansion Dispute

In a letter to MyRye.com, Peter Doane, the president of the Jay Cemetery and a descendent of Founding Father John Jay, says his board is “deeply concerned” with the County’s plans to expand facilities in the Marshlands Conservancy park. The Jay Cemetery is a key neighbor of the park – it exists inside the park and owns the access road from the Boston Post Road into the park. The county uses this road via an easement – something that can be revoked by the cemetery’s board.

For more context, see: Skepticism and Calls for Transparency Greet Marshlands Conservancy Expansion Plans.

The letter:

The Jay Cemetery is the 3-acre private family cemetery reserved for descendants of John Jay that has been operating in Rye since 1805 and organized since 1815.

I am writing because the Jay Cemetery Board is deeply concerned about the current $10.845 million proposal (up from $5.4 million in 2024) for expanding the Marshlands Nature Center with apparently little or no concern for; the original charter of the Marshland Conservancy, impact on the environment, and protection of the historical artifacts that are undoubtably buried there.

The Conservancy land was given to the County in order to protect the wildlife, provide people with a quiet place to enjoy nature, and ensure this environmentally fragile landscape was not violated. Members of the Jay Family and the Jay Cemetery Board worked as part of the Jay Coalition to keep this area from being developed in the early 1970s. When that battle was won and the Nature Center established, the Jay Cemetery issued an easement for the first 400’ of the Cemetery Lane (that connects the Cemetery to the Boston Post Road) to be used by the Public to access the Nature Center.

The Cemetery Board and the Nature Center Staff have worked together for the good of the area ever since. The former Head of the Nature Center (Allison Beal) kept a copy of the Cemetery key so that descendants of John Jay could borrow it for burials or visits. Even though the Cemetery has switched to combination locks, our relationship with Mike Gambino (the current Head of the Nature Center) is always respectful and considerate of each other. Mike and his helpers have notified me of Cemetery tree/fence damage before any of our personnel would have otherwise been aware of it. I have agreed to let the County use our entire Lane for doing Marshland work that would otherwise be difficult to access.

Our relationship with the rest of the County Parks organization is not so symbiotic. In 2018, plans to expand the Nature Center were discovered that significantly expanded the building into a convention center, increased the parking area many times over (which also invaded the Cemetery Lane owned by the Cemetery), but did not create a separate Boston Post Road connection using the lane designated for/owned by Marshland.  None of the stakeholders in the area were consulted and it took a “stop work” from then County Executive George Latimer to end the project until “all affected parties could be included in the planning”.

No Good Neighbor meetings were held to include the stakeholders input into the current plans for expanding the Nature Center that will now cost twice as much as a year ago. County Parks has attempted to keep us from seeing the plans and only held a single on-site meeting on Earth Day after a Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) request was issued to demand access to the documentation. Since then, no additional meetings have been held to explain whether the budget increase is due to rising costs or increased scope of work. Since preliminary work has already started on the site without any of the environmental or historical procedures being adhered to, it is painfully obvious that County Parks considers it better to “ask for forgiveness” than “ask for permission”.

The Jay Cemetery Board does not object to the idea of a moderately larger the Nature Center building to accommodate the current charter and provide much needed space for storage, but cannot support large scale expansion simply for the purpose of generating profit for the County Parks organization without any consideration for the environmental and historical sensitivity of the area.

If County Parks is not willing to consider Nature Center expansion plans that do not violate the Marshland Conservancy’s original charter and meet all environmental and historical requirements; then the Jay Cemetery will be forced to give the required 6-month notice that we intend to cancel the Easement that allows the Public to use our Lane for access to the Nature Center. In the meantime, we would be forced to limit the use of our Lane to only the Public (as the Easement states). We would block any construction vehicles from using our Lane to do the work on the Nature Center that has been planned without consideration for our input.

Considerably more funds would be required to create a separate Boston Post Road access for the Nature Center, if the City of Rye would allow it. County Parks personnel have acknowledged to me how hard and expensive that would be, but continue to exclude the Jay Cemetery (or any stakeholders) from their planning decisions. Perhaps the additional funds in their new budget proposal are to cover that cost.  Or to pay for all the environmental and historic procedures that are legally required before any expansion can take place. Maybe the cost of remediating the toxic waste sites in the area (that the County is responsible for) has been included. If County Parks does not share any of their long-term goals or short-term construction plans, none of us will know until it is too late.  All the issues with the current site/facility can be worked out if we all work together.

Peter Doane, President
The Jay Cemetery