Amherst, N.Y. (WBEN) - The sale of the former Westwood Country Club by the Town of Amherst to Erie County for $1 remains a polarizing issue for lawmakers and residents in Amherst.
The plan to restore nine holes of golf and build passive park space, to be called Willowdale Park, is at the center of the race for Town Supervisor between Democrat Shawn Lavin and Republican Dan Gagliardo.
Current Supervisor Brian Kulpa has pushed for the park to become a reality.
"It's taken us eight years of our work, my town board's work to get to this moment, and enough is enough. It's time to make it a park," Kulpa told WBEN in a September interview, shortly after the deal with the county was closed.
Gagliardo filed a lawsuit against Amherst's Town Board and Erie County soon after, alleging backroom deals and secrecy surrounded the sale. Kulpa was dismissive of that lawsuit.
"Hide behind the courts, put something into a lawsuit, even if it's overwhelmingly popular in the town. Even after a decade of the town trying to get to this point lets jam it up so that minority positions say it shouldn't be a park, that it should be developed. It takes a desperate act to put it in a lawsuit. It's to slow down the process.'"
Erie County Legislator Frank Todaro, a Republican, disagrees that the park is "overwhelmingly popular."
"It's a bad deal. The local town I feel made an error under Brian Kulpa," Todaro tells WBEN. "Another golf course? I don't want to speak on behalf of the Amherst residents, but I'm having people come to me saying 'this is a bad deal, we have no voice, what is going on? We don't want this."
Kulpa classifies the opposition as political, saying the site has been in the hands of developers before, but their plans eventually fell through.
Election day is November 4th.