The Village of Great Neck Plaza Board of Trustees on Wednesday proposed to extend its moratorium on businesses that profit from on-site smoking for 10 months.
The purpose of extending the moratorium, village attorney Richard Gabriele said, is to allow trustees to study the health effects of hookah smoking before deciding if the village would enact a permanent ban on hookah lounges and other smoking-related businesses.
“Over the next several months there will be a lot more research and evidence that’s generated on these kind of activities and it probably makes sense before enacting any kind of regulations that are final so that we review that and study that,” Gabriele said.
The village’s first moratorium, introduced in September, was spurred by the opening of a hookah lounge in the Village of Great Neck on Middle Neck Road, Village of Great Neck Plaza Mayor Jean Celender said in a November interview. The moratorium would allow the village to discuss possible restrictions on alternative forms of smoking, like hookah pipes and e-cigarettes, that Celender said could pose public health risks.
The extension of the moratorium needs to be reviewed by the Nassau County Planning Commission before it can be enacted, Gabriele said. The planning commission in November said the proposed moratorium should be left in the hands of local municipalities.
The Village of Great Neck Board of Trustees in November enacted a similar moratorium after approving a conditional use permit for a hookah lounge.
Fountain Blue Hookah, located at 435 Middle Neck Road, was approved by the board last July despite public comments urging the board to deny the application.
The property’s landlord is Mike Yeroush, a Great Neck-based developer whose company A1 Universal Development Group has worked on dozens of properties in Queens, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Long Island and Upstate New York, according to the company’s Web site.
Efforts to reach Yeroush were unavailing.
Village of Great Neck Mayor Ralph Kreitzman said in August that village attorney Stephen Limmer had told the board it had no legal recourse to revoke the permit or regulate the smoking of non-tobacco products.
Kreitzman said the board would be responsive to complaints if the lounge was violating its permit conditions, which included noise restrictions and a prohibition of outdoor smoking by customers.
