In July, following the group’s first public presentation at a Planning Board meeting in February, Cortese’s attorney, David Steinmetz of Hillside Street, LLC, announced that his client would be donating the two lots of land to the Village. Four lots were originally planned for development, but Cortese is no longer under contract to purchase two of them.

“Despite the fact that Hillside has maintained, and still contends, that it has the right to open The Knoll and develop those two lots, Mr. Cortese has decided that it is in the best interests of Hillside, the Village, and the surrounding neighborhood to withdraw these applications for development,” the statement reads. “We formally offer to dedicate free ownership of both lots to the Village, provided these lots are maintained and preserved as open space in perpetuity.”

After multiple contacts over a three-week period, Steinmetz and a Village government representative did not respond to a request for comment. Allison Eggleston, an Upper School Spanish teacher whose home neighbors The Knoll, largely attributes the group’s success to the February presentation.

“There were probably about 30 people, maybe more, that were really coming together,” she said. “We even had a few extra dress rehearsal run-through meetings in advance. I think we had prepared and just practiced as much as we could have, because we felt like these stakes were really high.”

Since Cortese purchased the land in early 2024, Protect the Knoll has grown to include an arborist, journalist, engineers and a graphic designer – all of whom contributed to the group’s success at the meeting.

“[Having people with different expertise] lent a lot of credence to what we were saying. I think it made us, rightly, appear very professional. We weren’t just a group of neighbors with a complaint,” Eggleston said.

Arborist Mark Sudak joined the legion of Protect the Knoll presenters at the February meeting. He called the Board’s attention to a nearly 200-year-old Black Oak tree that lives right along the “paper street” – an undeveloped road that was marked out in a subdivision nearly a hundred years ago – proposed for construction.

“In a forest that sees wind events, if [the trees are] all surrounded by their neighbors, the wind tends to kind of, you know, be deadened as they get farther into the canopy,” Sudak said. He explained that when trees are cut down, forests are more susceptible to damage from foul weather.

Since Cortese donated the land, no legal agreement has been drawn up to confirm the preservation of The Knoll, according to Adam Eggleston, husband of Allison Eggleston.

“We have to hold their feet to the fire now. So that’s the ‘now’ project [for Protect the Knoll],” Adam explained.