The Village of Great Neck Plaza Board of Trustees adjourned discussion Wednesday on an application for a proposed 61-unit apartment complex at 15 Bond St., after the applicant’s attorney requested more time to respond to state environmental report questions.
Village of Great Neck Plaza Mayor Jean Celender said the board would allow Paul Bloom, attorney for Effie Namdar of 14 Park Place LLC, which is seeking to build the complex, more time to gather necessary information for the project.
“We’re still working with the applicant’s consultant on addressing environmental and other zoning information and their expanded environmental assessment report,” Celender said.
Discussions on the proposed building have stalled since November after the board said important environmental review questions were left unanswered.
In July, the board voted to become the lead agency on the project to handle the State Environmental Quality Review Assessment, which would identify if the project would have any significant environmental impact on the surrounding area.
The engineering firm VHB was hired by the village to oversee the SEQRA review.
Residents of the four surrounding buildings — Westminster Hall Apartments, located at 4 Maple Place, The Cartier Apartments, located a 21 Bond St. 22 Park Place and 25 Park Place — have voiced concerns at past meetings about the applicant’s zoning variance requests.
The developers are seeking a height variance that would permit a four-story, 45-foot high building. Village zoning laws permit only three-story buildings that are 45 feet high.
The developers also asked for a 13-foot-high room on top of the building that would be used as a recreation room. Bloom had said at a previous village Board of Zoning Appeals meeting that many buildings surrounding 15 Bond St. are more than three stories high.
Celender said the board anticipates that all information would be available to them “soon.”
The application was adjourned to the March 16 meeting.
Bloom also requested to adjourn discussion on an application for a conditional-use permit by the owner of the Shop Delight supermarket to operate a butcher shop three stores down on Welwyn Road, who he also represents, Celender said.
At the Feb. 3 meeting, Village attorney Richard Gabriele asked Bloom to return at Wednesday’s meeting to address the trustees’ concerns regarding a comparison of ownership between the proposed butcher shop and Shop Delight, food delivery information including frequency of deliveries, identity of deliverer, what they deliver, delivery times and size of trucks and if Shop Delight owner Edward Yakupov would fund a code enforcement officer either through the store or through the village.
Trustees have voiced concerns about the proposed butcher shop relating to safety and code violations.
The application was adjourned to the March 2 meeting.
Also at the meeting, the board voted to repeal a law allowing the village to override the state-mandated property tax cap during their budget.
Since the board approved the 2016-17 village budget on Jan. 20 without piercing the tax cap, Celender said, they need to repeal the law.
The village’s tax levy limit was .45 percent.
Gabriele said repealing the law allows residents to become eligible for property tax refunds.
The next board meeting is on March 2.
