Alex Taylor

artaylor@lohud.com

RAMAPO — Legoland executives visited Suffern on Thursday and have started discussions with officials about building a $250 million mega-theme park on the site of the former Novartis plant and 67 acres of town property.

Representatives of Merlin Entertainments had previously pitched the project for Letchworth Village property in Haverstraw, only to be rebuffed by officials in October amid overwhelming neighborhood hostility.

Behind the scenes, however, Ramapo officials have been trying to keep the county in play ever since.

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Supervisor Christopher St. Lawrence met with Merlin representatives at 2 p.m. at the Crowne Plaza in Montebello along with a delegation of elected and business officials from Montebello, Suffern, Rockland County and the Ramapo Central school district

"It was really a conceptual meeting to see if there was interest in the site and where we could go from here," St. Lawrence told The Journal News after leaving the 90-minute meeting.

St. Lawrence said other locations were still in the running including Orange County and New Jersey.

"They've always liked Rockland County," he said. "The proximity to New York City is very important to them. Access to the site from the Thruway would be a key issue."

Merlin Entertainments, a London-based conglomerate that's second only to Disney in the competitive world of theme-park attractions, already has built Legolands in California and Florida, but wants to build another one on the East Coast.

The gigantic amusement park proposed for Haverstraw in 2014 called for rides, a water park and a hotel.

But residents expressed concern that the crowds - attendance was pegged at 2 million visitors a year - and traffic would overwhelm northern Rockland. There were accusations of backdoor business negotiations. Rumors that town officials had flown to Florida and California to visit Legolands in those states set off a storm on social media that eventually caused officials to back down.

Supporters continue to tout the benefits the complex would bring — mainly millions in sales tax revenue.

If built, the theme park would be a dramatic turnaround for the county's tourist industry as well as cement St. Lawrence's reputation for having transformed the face of Rockland's largest municipality. Projects approved in his eight terms include the $200 million sewer extension project in Western Ramapo as well as the $60 million Provident Bank Park.

In cash-strapped Suffern, Mayor Ed Markunas cheered a potential deal.

"It's enticing," he said, speaking by phone. "The impact - on finances, on jobs - would be beneficial."

Both Markunas and St. Lawrence called for Merlin Entertainments to run a public outreach campaign that would nourish public and community backing for the project from the outset and avoid the kind of opposition that doomed the North Rockland proposal.

"The public would need to be brought into this conversation," St. Lawrence said.

The vast Novartis' campus at 25 Old Mill Road sits on 162 acres in Suffern and Montebello. In 2014, Basel, Switzerland-based company announced it would close the plant and eliminate or transfer 525 jobs.

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