The expert hired by the Village of Great Neck to determine if the proposed demolition of rent-stabilized Academy Gardens would create racial disparity is still in the early stages of conducting his study, village attorney Chris Prior said Thursday.
Prior told the Village of Great Neck Planning Board at its meeting that not much has changed with regard to what the expert, Queens College professor Andrew Alan Beveridge, has done with the study.
“I checked with him earlier in the week,” Prior said. “He is in the process of conducting the study and will hopefully have a draft of something soon.”
Prior said he did not have a specific date as to when the village will see a report.
Working alongside the engineering firm Nelson, Pope and Voorhis, Beveridge has asked for no more information from the village to conduct their study, Prior said.
Kings Point Gate Associates, a management company based out of Manhattan, proposed last year to demolish the Academy Gardens apartment complex and replace them with market-rate units. Many of the tenants of Academy Gardens are low-income minority families who have said they could not afford to live in Great Neck if they were evicted from the apartments.
Beveridge said he is deferring all comment to the village.
Beveridge was one of three experts considered by the planning board, and was the closest one that would be available to conduct the study in a timely manner.
Beveridge was hired to determine if the proposed demolition of the rent-stabilized apartment complex, located at Middle Neck and Steamboat roads, and the construction of market-rate units in its place would be in violation of the Fair Housing Act of 1968, which makes it illegal to deny residency to a person because of their background.
Academy Gardens tenants, local residents and civil rights groups have protested the proposal in the last year at meetings of the Village of Great Neck Board of Trustees and the planning board. Academy Gardens tenant association president Julie Shields has also said that the building manager, Susan Sahim, has neglected the building and “harassed” the tenants to have them move out of the building.
A similar proposal to replace Academy Gardens was made in 2007 by one-time Kings Point resident David Adelipour, the owner of the property. That proposal was halted by Adelipour because the building would have required a zoning variance.
Attorney Paul Bloom, a former Village of Great Neck planning board chairman who is representing Adelipour on the project, has stressed at past planning board meetings that the tenants are being treated fairly and would be paid six-years worth of rent after they would move out of Academy Gardens, if the project is approved.
Beveridge is a sociology professor at Queens College, part of the City University of New York system, and was the sociology chair from 2006 to 2011. He is the co-director of the Annual Housing Survey Project at Columbia University’s Center for the Social Sciences and is president of Andrew A. Beveridge Inc. “a demographic and social science data consulting firm that provides consulting in litigation and other settings,” according to his online resume.
Nelson, Pope and Voorhis, a Melville-based engineering firm, will address environmental issues related to the project.
Originally, Columbia University professor Lance Freeman was poised to study the issues related to the fair housing law, but dropped out of the study when a dispute between the planning board and the developers over the consultant’s payment left what Freeman said was insufficient time for him to do his work.
