Near or Far, Golden Age Venues Star
In air travel, it’s considered a big deal when you switch from turning right from the boarding door to economy to turning left to go to business and first class. With Long Island, that upgrade works just the opposite. From John F. Kennedy International Airport, you turn left for the city, the traffic and the ever-increasing hotel prices and right for the serenity of historic mansions on the beach just for your group.
“What I educate people on is that when you land at the airport, you’re already on Long Island,” said LaRosa. “You don’t have to cross a bridge. You just make a right instead of a left.” In the western part of Long Island, near the airport and just 30 miles from New York City, groups can already find Gatsby-style mansions converted for use as hotels and meeting venues.
The Glen Cove Mansion, Hotel and Conference Center has all the luxuries you would expect a modern mansion to include — racquetball and tennis courts, a private bowling alley, both indoor and outdoor pools and an on-site massage therapist — except that it dates back to 1910 and has been hailed as one of the best country houses in America for over a century.
Glen Cove’s 29,500 square feet of meeting and event space includes 27 meeting rooms, among them the 2,850-square-foot Embassy room for receptions for up to 200, just the right fit for a group doing a buyout of the hotel’s 187 rooms.
While the conference facilities have received commendations from all the top meeting award sources, the Georgia mansion and gardens of the 55-acre estate have also served as a setting for countless films, including “Sabrina.” A renovation to bring it even closer to its golden era opulence has already been approved by local officials and will commence soon.
Off the next bay east from Glen Cove, groups can convene in a royal setting the likes of which they’d typically need to travel to Europe to find. The French-style, 109,000-square-foot, 127-room Oheka Castle, known in modern times as the lavish setting of the cable television drama “Royal Pains,” hosted European royalty and heads of state and top Hollywood stars in its heyday.
After a complete refurbishment in 1984 in concert with historians and restoration researchers, including two months on the handcrafted wrought-iron grand staircase railing alone, and joining the Historic Hotels of America, Oheka Castle now specializes in helping groups “party like it’s 1920,” complete with fireworks if desired.
Five indoor meeting spaces can accommodate from 18 to 700 people depending on the arrangement, and in season, groups can take advantage of an additional five outdoor spaces ranging from the 2,400-square-foot pool deck to the 292,000-square-foot great lawn.
