A dispute over the future of Kings Point Park is shaping the race for Great Neck Park District commissioner, pitting incumbent Tina Stellato against challenger Nancy Sherman, a leading advocate for preserving the park.

Stellato, 50, is seeking a fourth term as commissioner. She was first elected in 2017 and began her term in January 2018. Before joining the board, she spent more than 17 years as a tennis professional at Parkwood Tennis and received a tennis scholarship to St. John’s University, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in elementary education. During her tenure, the district has acquired new parkland, renovated facilities, expanded recreational and cultural programming and increased recreation revenue.

Sherman, in her 60s, is a Great Neck attorney who moved to the community in 1995 and raised two daughters there. She has served on the Village of Thomaston Board of Trustees since 2023. She is also the founder of Save Kings Point Park, a grassroots community organization formed in 2025 to oppose proposed changes to Kings Point Park and advocate for preserving the park and its recreational and natural resources.

The Kings Point dispute centers partly on the unusual ownership arrangement at the roughly 170-acre park. The Village of Kings Point owns the property and leases it to the Great Neck Park District.

In 2025, the village sought state legislation to alienate 2.48 acres of the park for a proposed nearly 400-space parking lot serving a community center being built by the United Mashadi Jewish Community of America. The legislation called for replacement parkland, while the Park District said the proposal would ultimately provide substantially more parkland than was being removed.

The Park District’s official statement said the proposed exchange would remove 2.48 acres from the Kings Point Park lease in exchange for 5.67 acres of the former Wildwood Pool and Tennis Club property. Stellato said the Wildwood property was privately owned and that the proposal represented an opportunity for the district to gain parkland that was not previously public parkland. The district said the new property, along with nearly 8 acres of contiguous village-owned wetlands, could provide about 13.5 acres of additional parkland.