Bond Street building’s environmental impact report disputed

Joe Nikic

An attorney for residents at four buildings surrounding a proposed 61-unit apartment complex at 15 Bond St. in the Village of Great Neck Plaza said Wednesday that the State Environmental Quality Review Assessment submitted by the applicant left him and his clients with questions about the proposed development’s stormwater drainage and community aesthetics.

“We still think there are real issues concerning SEQRA that would prevent the board from making a decision yet,” Chris Prior said at the Village Board meeting.

The Village Board in November had asked Paul Bloom, attorney for Effie Namdar of 14 Park Place LLC, which is seeking to build the complex, to respond to additional environmental review concerns.

The Village Board had voted in July to become the lead agency on the project to handle the State Environmental Quality Review Assessment, which determines if the project would have any significant environmental impacts on the surrounding area. The engineering firm VHB was hired by the village to oversee the SEQRA review.

Village Attorney Richard Gabriele said Wednesday the engineering firm told him that the revised environmental impact report, which Bloom sent the board last month, adequately addressed all of its concerns.

According to the report, the applicant installed wells to monitor underground water levels to ensure the proposed building could sufficiently retain stormwater runoff, preventing damage to any surrounding buildings.

But Prior said D&B Engineers, the firm his clients hired to perform their own impact assessment, told him the four-month period the applicant used to study the monitoring wells was not ample time to ensure safety to the public as water levels rise to different points at different times during the year.

“They feel that picking a few months out of the year can give you a misleading read on what the potential issues are,” he said.

Instead, Prior said, the monitoring wells should be studied for a 12-month period.

Great Neck Plaza Mayor Jean Celender said the request for a year-long review seemed to be an effort to further delay the project.

“You’re making positions and we don’t know if those positions are true,” Celender said. “It just sounds like you want additional time so this doesn’t move forward.”

“We don’t need that long a period to look at conditions to be able to determine where the groundwater levels are,” she added.

Prior also said his clients had “character of the community” concerns about the height of the proposed building.

“We don’t believe the applicant has given this serious attention and we’re talking about the impact of changing the nature of that neighborhood from a predominantly three-story residential community to what’s proposed as a five-story building,” he said.

Residents of the four surrounding buildings — Westminster Hall Apartments, located at 4 Maple Place, The Cartier Apartments, located at 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.

The board voted to adjourn the application to the May 4 board meeting to continue to look at the environmental impact report.

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