A golf course that has sat quiet since 2018 finally has a number attached to its future, and the number is smaller than the acreage alone would suggest.
The property is the former Cedarbrook Club at 32 Oak Lane in Old Brookville, 125 acres designed by architect Al Zikorus and opened for play in 1960, renovated in 1985, and shuttered as a going concern in 2018. That year the club went up for sale as a development site, and the listing brokers floated a simple estimate: given the village's residential zoning, the land could likely support somewhere between 30 and 34 single-family homes. In January 2026, the Village of Old Brookville Planning Board made public a Draft Scope for what the filing calls the Royal Peninsula Subdivision. The plan calls for demolishing the golf course, the clubhouse, and the tennis courts, replacing the club's private road entrance with new access cut from Cedar Swamp Road, and creating 31 residential lots.
Thirty-one. Not forty-something, which is what the acreage and the zoning minimum alone would imply. That gap between the number a spreadsheet produces and the number a village planning board actually approves is the most useful thing this property has to teach anyone evaluating large-lot land on the North Shore.
The Math Everyone Does First
Anyone looking at a big property in a village zoned for large lots runs the same arithmetic almost without thinking. Take the acreage, divide by the minimum lot size, and you have a ceiling. At Cedarbrook, that math is straightforward: 125 acres on land zoned for one house per 3 acres works out to a theoretical ceiling in the low 40s.
The brokers who marketed the site in 2018 already knew that ceiling was optimistic. Their own projection, 30 to 34 homes, quietly discounted the raw division by roughly a fifth before the property had even changed hands. That discount is the first number worth paying attention to, because it tells you the acreage-divided-by-zoning calculation almost everyone runs in their head is a starting point for negotiation, not a forecast anyone should build a purchase decision around.
What the Acreage Actually Gives Up
Seven years later, the village's own Draft Scope landed at 31 lots, essentially the low end of the range the 2018 brokers projected and meaningfully below the raw zoning ceiling. Land that looks buildable on a plat map gives up acreage to things a simple division never accounts for: the footprint of a 45,000-square-foot clubhouse that has to come down, the elimination of an existing private road connection, and a brand new access point that has to be engineered from Cedar Swamp Road to replace it. Every foot of new road, every setback, every requirement that survives village and state environmental review takes buildable land off the table before a single foundation gets poured.
This is the pattern worth carrying into any conversation about subdivision potential on Gold Coast acreage. When a listing or a broker's flier cites a lot count based on zoning minimums, treat that number as a ceiling that real engineering, access requirements, and environmental review will almost always push down, not up. The property that actually clears review tends to land closer to what a conservative broker guessed years earlier than to what the zoning code technically allows.
Seven Years, Not Seven Months
The other thing the Cedarbrook timeline makes plain is how long this kind of conversion actually takes, and how early a Draft Scope really sits in that process.
| Year | Milestone |
|---|---|
| 2018 | Club closes; listed for sale as a development site; brokers project 30 to 34 homes |
| January 2026 | Village of Old Brookville Planning Board issues Draft Scope for the Royal Peninsula Subdivision, specifying 31 residential lots |
A Draft Scope is not an approval. It is the document that defines what an environmental impact statement will study, which under New York's State Environmental Quality Review Act comes before the draft impact statement itself, before public comment on that draft, before any hearing, and before final approval of a subdivision plat. Seven years after the club closed, this project has reached the stage of agreeing on what questions to ask, not the stage of answering them.
That timeline matters for anyone pricing a large parcel with subdivision upside into their offer. The gap between "listed as a development opportunity" and "an approved plat ready to sell lots" was measured in years here, not months, and nothing about the process suggests it moves faster once public comment and further review begin.
What Changes on the Ground Before a Single House Is Built
Some of what this project changes has nothing to do with how many homes eventually get built. The Draft Scope eliminates the club's existing private road connection and replaces it with new access from Cedar Swamp Road. That is a road cut through land that has functioned as a buffer for the estate parcels along Oak Lane and Cedar Swamp Road for six decades, whether or not those parcels have anything to do with the club itself.
For anyone evaluating a home that borders a large parcel with development potential, the access point is worth asking about specifically, separately from the lot count. A new curb cut and the construction traffic that comes with grading and road work arrive well before any new house does, and they arrive regardless of how many lots the final approval allows.
What This Means If You're Pricing Land Near a Former Club
If you're comparing large-acreage properties in Old Brookville, Upper Brookville, or anywhere else on the Gold Coast where a club, estate, or large single holding might eventually subdivide, the Cedarbrook timeline suggests three habits worth adopting.
Treat any lot count based on acreage divided by zoning minimum as the top of a range, not the number to plan around. Ask what stage of environmental review a nearby project has actually reached, since a Draft Scope and a filed subdivision plat represent years of difference in timeline and risk. And look specifically at whether a project changes access points and road connections, because that disruption shows up on the ground long before the first new home is listed for sale.
None of this is a prediction about where the Royal Peninsula project lands from here. It is a record of where one specific, well-documented Gold Coast property has actually gone so far, and that record is a more useful benchmark than any hypothetical math.
A Few Common Questions
What is a SEQRA Draft Scope? It is the document a lead agency, in this case the Village of Old Brookville Planning Board, uses to define what topics an environmental impact statement will study before that statement is written. It is an early procedural step, not an approval of the project itself.
Does this mean new homes at the former Cedarbrook site are for sale now? No. The project remains in environmental review, with a draft impact statement, public comment, and further village approvals still ahead before any subdivision plat could be filed or lots offered for sale.
Should I expect this to affect values on streets bordering the former club? That depends on details specific to each bordering parcel, including proximity to the new access road and the length of construction disruption once work begins. Anyone weighing a purchase or sale near a large parcel in active review should raise these specifics directly with an advisor who knows the property and the village's process, rather than relying on the acreage math alone.
If you're weighing a purchase near land with subdivision potential, or considering what a large parcel of your own might be worth once you look past the zoning math, Cottie Maxwell has spent her career reading exactly this kind of Gold Coast property. Schedule a private consultation with Cottie to talk through what a specific parcel's history and pending approvals actually mean for its value today.
