Residents pan self-storage facility proposed for New Hyde Park

The Island Now
The New Hyde Park Board of Trustees hears a presentation from Jack Wilburn, the architect of the proposed storage facility. (Photo by Maria Perez)

By Maria Perez

Many New Hyde Park residents made it clear Tuesday night that they do not want a four-story self-storage building in their community.

The proposed facility, which would be located at 1401 Fourth Ave., has many residents living in the area concerned that the building and the noise from unloading trucks would disrupt their way of life and change the community’s character.

“We’re about to undergo some seismic changes in our village. We need to do everything possible to preserve our neighborhood,” a longtime resident, Diane Pentivania, said at a public hearing before the village Board of Trustees on Tuesday.

The facility would be built over a parking lot adjacent to an existing car storage facility just south of the Long Island Rail Road tracks. The site is in an industrial area but is across from a residential neighborhood.

The applicant, Chris Lynch, needs a special use permit from the Board of Trustees to operate a storage facility at the site. Lynch is a manager with Storage Deluxe, a Manhattan-based company that owns and manages self-storage facilities.

The architect of the proposed facility, Jack Wilburn, said the largest trucks using   the proposed facility would be standard box trucks.

“There are almost no tractor-trailers involved with self-storage units,” Wilburn said. “It’s usually vans and small trucks, and the occasional box truck.”

Residents who live on Fourth Avenue argued that with the coming construction of the third track on the LIRR and existing truck traffic from the neighboring World Courier Inc. facility, the storage building would only exacerbate problems in the area.

Christopher Devane, the New Hyde Park village justice, who also lives in the area, said the people involved in the project do not understand how the facility would affect the neighborhood.

“These gentlemen are here to make money, but this is our neighborhood and this is what we care about.” Devane said.

Matt Hawkeiser, who lives directly across from the site of the proposed facility, said he and his family would be greatly affected if the building were constructed on Fourth Avenue.

“It’s bad enough we have to deal with all these other problems, but now you’re adding this new big structure and it’s another added problem,” he said. “There’s no real upside to this.”

Residents also said that because the hearing was in the middle of the summer, many residents who live on Fourth Avenue were not able to attend and speak against the project.

The Board of Trustees tabled the application on Tuesday night. The proposal also needs an exception to village zoning rules from the Board of Zoning Appeals.

A zoning board hearing on the project is scheduled for Aug. 9.

 

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