Ray Kinnaly and his wife Evelyn have enjoyed the view of the forest across Robinsonville Road since moving from New York City to the Chase Oaks development near Lewes a year ago.

“The nature is beautiful,” said Kinally on a sunny Sept. 8 afternoon, as he stopped to take a break from spreading mulch in a garden in front of their home on Pitch Pine Court. “Keep it the way it is.”

He said they were relieved to hear early in the summer that the 32-acre forest across Robinsonville Road from their home will remain undeveloped. 

A ceremony was held Sept. 8 to celebrate the dedication of the Chase Oaks Preserve, land donated to the Sussex County Land Trust by Chase Oaks DE LLC with support from DRB Homes.

The donation will permanently protect the site, located in a rapidly developing area of Sussex County.

“We’re very proud to be part of this,” said John Ciavarra, division president of DRB. 

Ring Lardner, chair of the land trust board, said his group will draft a master plan for how to use the donated land that stretches 2,570 feet along the south side of Robinsonville Road.

“We may leave it as it is,” he said before the start of the ceremony. “We may extend hunting rights. … We’re not sure. We’ve only owned it for a month.”

The land is bounded by the Brentwood housing development to the west, and hunting lands to the east and south. 

DRB Homes has committed to donate $500 from each home sale after July 1 this year to expenses related to the preserve. Lardner said that will include the creation of a master plan and long-term maintenance costs for the property. 

There are about 110 home sales that will contribute to the fee to support the preserve, said J. Hutchins “Jack” Haese, managing member of Chase Oaks DE LLC.

Plans for the donation began in 2017 when a contract was signed to buy the first of three parcels that would become Chase Oaks. 

Haese credited two people with influencing the development of Chase Oaks and the land donation – Michael T. Rose and Frank Kea. 

Haese worked for six years for Rose, a prominent developer and environmentalist who had a love of trees. Rose died in 2017. 

“He hated to cut trees down,” Haese said of Rose. “The emblem on his business card was a picture of a tree.”

Preserving trees was a focus of Kea, managing engineer for Georgetown-based Solutions IPEM, the engineers for the Chase Oaks project, Haese said.

Kea’s framed plans for Chase Oaks hang in the community clubhouse, Haese said. It was Kea’s last project before he died of a massive stroke on a business trip, Haese said.

“Sussex County, this is our gift to you,” Haese said at the conclusion of the brief ceremony.

Seventeen of the donated acres are wetlands, and the preserve serves as a natural stormwater management system for the surrounding land, Haese said. Any overflow passes through a ditch leading to Love Creek.

The developer is planning to plant twice as many trees as were cleared for the Chase Oaks project, he said. 

Kinnaly, 67, said he was glad to retire to a beautiful area, with nearby woods where there are birds and deer. But he said he hopes housing development slows down to preserve the way of life in Sussex County.

“Enough is enough,” the former Queens resident said.