Simon Gelb now has provisional approval from the Town of Mamakating Planning Board to subdivide his property near Wurtsboro and build a house just across from the one that he erected last year, amid controversy.

While it was being built, the first house provoked worries that it would actually be an Orthodox Jewish religious school, or yeshiva. But with the house now completed for months, no one has come forward with any suggestion that it is anything other than what it was approved to be: a single-family home. At the board’s May 13 meeting, where Gelb appeared to iron out final details for subdivision approval, the only public commenters who spoke praised his plan.

One, a young woman named Bailia Weiss, described “coming to this property for all my life.” She said she had visited Gelb for “camping, weekends, vacation days, and I hope to continue coming here.” Weiss called the time she spent on the property with family and friends of Gelb “my fondest childhood memories.” To anyone who implied that she and others were outsiders to Mamakating and Wurtsboro, she said that they “are and we always have been” part of the community. A young man, Aaron Pollak, spoke briefly and seconded Weiss’s comments. No one offered negative comments about the subdivision plan.

This was different from last month’s meeting. Public comment had been contentious, with some praising Gelb and urging neighbors to get to know him, and others worrying that his participation in a controversial building project in another county suggested he didn’t care about environmental issues. At the April 9 hearing, board attorney John Capello repeatedly warned commenters that the only thing up for discussion was the immediate question of whether or not Gelb’s current plan to subdivide was acceptable.

Now, at the May 13 meeting and after Weiss and Pollak spoke, Cappello responded. “I heard the comments” he said, and noted that Gelb had told the board he intended to have two single-family homes on the subdivided property. If his actual plan was for something different, like a campsite or other commercial use, “then we need some clarification on that issue,” Cappello said.

Gelb replied that he had been living on the property for the past 20 years, and family and friends had always been welcome there. “This is how I was raised,” he continued. He said that his father and grandfather had “always invited other family members or other people who came to them for the weekend or holidays.”

Cappello asked if the people Gelb hosted would be houseguests, or if he had a camping or commercial facility in mind.

“Absolutely not,” Gelb said.

“If in your single-family home you want to have a guest, you’re absolutely permitted to do so,” Cappello said, just as anyone else in Mamakating would be. Gelb then assured the board that if he were ever to plan on making the site commercial, he would come before the board. “But I am not planning to do that,” Gelb said. “I’m just trying to keep it how it was for the last 20 years… Sometimes I’m here by myself, but sometimes I’m here with family members and friends.”

The state Department of Environmental Conservation’s Division on Environmental Permits has determined that Gelb’s proposed subdivision would have no negative environmental effects. Sullivan County’s Division of Public Works has conditionally approved the subdivision, pending the retooling of some entrances to the property that Gelb told the board he would do. With these declarations and conditions in place, the board voted for conditional approval of Gelb’s subdivision – and the vote was unanimous.