The Village of Great Neck Board of Trustees decided against placing a guard rail to protect a row of houses, which residents said have been hit numerous times by cars leaving a Middle Neck Road parking lot.
Instead, residents living near the parking lot situated behind the Everfresh supermarket at 533 Middle Neck Road were authorized during Tuesday’s board of trustees meeting to install the protective guard rails or concrete bollards at their own expense.
“There is no legal liability or responsibility for the board to put up the guard rails,” Village of Great Neck Attorney Stephen Limmer said. “The accidents that occurred, as reported to me, are not based upon any negligent design or defect of the parking lots. They are caused by the negligence or defect in the drivers, or the cars, they were driving.”
During the Village of Great Neck Board of Trustees meeting on July 3, Margot Place resident Emmanuel Kashi said his family’s home was left with a crack in an exterior wall nearly three years ago after a car backing out of the parking lot first struck it. He said last month a car crashed through a nearby fence and nearly hit the Kashi’s home again.
Village residents Ken and Olga Sperber said the fence between the parking lot and their Croyden Avenue home has been struck twice by cars backing out of the parking lot.
Ken Sperber earlier this month estimated that patrons from up to seven Middle Neck Road businesses use the parking lot, along with customers from the Everfresh supermarket.
“I think it’s very unfair,” Olga Sperber said of the board’s decision. “When you move to … the Village of Great Neck you (should) feel protected. You feel that it is going to be a very nice place to live.”
“This is not because people make mistakes,” she added. “Sure people make mistakes, but what is the protection that I have from the (village).”
Aside from authorizing residents to place their own guard rail or bollards, Trustee Jeffrey Bass said the village’s building department will assist in the installation of the protective barriers.
Bass said village officials will also “look into whether those bollards can physically, and safely, be placed on the other side of the fence” and not on the residents’ property.
“We are trying to do what we can do, reasonably and logically, with respect to you and with respect to the resident of our village because we have that responsibility,” Bass said.
Village of Great Neck Deputy Mayor Mitchell Beckerman said residents’ concern over cars hitting businesses and homes is shared throughout the village.
“We had one accident where a driver went through a window on Middle Neck Road,” Beckerman said. “Does that mean now we need to put up bollards, or guard rails, on Middle Neck Road because what if someone was walking on Middle Neck Road and happened to have been walking at the wrong place at the wrong and got hit by that car?”
Placing protective guard rails across the village would be too much of an expense for officials to pay, Trustee Mark Birnbaum said.
“We’ve decided, agonizingly so, that we cannot incur the expense to do this to make people feel better,” he said. “Right now, it is not legally been determined, or advised, that there is any legal deficiency (with the lot).”
For Kashi, however, the expense is also too high for he and many of his neighbors to protect their homes. He said it would cost between $5,000 and $6,000 to have a guard rail placed along his entire 100-foot-long yard.
“I know you guys are very interested and very concerned about the residents of the village,” Kashi said of the trustees. “I don’t doubt that, but you have to understand that you’re dealing with safety. When it comes to safety, you can’t just go straight to counsel and (say) ‘that’s it. We don’t need to help you.’”
It is only a matter of time, Ken Sperber said, until an injury or major damage is caused through another accident involving a car leaving the parking lot.
“It will be up to a jury who will determine right and wrong in that case,” he said. “I think tonight’s public meeting, and the one that we had two weeks ago, will go a long way in letting everyone know (what) the mindset of the public officials in the Village of Great Neck is.”
