GN planners close to approving Clover Drive

Anthony Oreilly

The Village of Great Neck Planning Board is close to approving a proposal by developer Frank Lalezarian to construct an 11-home development on 3.1 across of woodland along Clover Drive following a closed-door session in which four board members dropped their opposition to the plan, acting chair Raymond Iryami said on Thursday.

Iryami said the board members, who had expressed opposition during a special board meeting Thursday morning, dropped their objections after approval for the project was made contingent on state approval of the road’s width and work on the project not beginning until the Village of Great Neck Estates gave its approval to the project.

“We want to make sure that our findings would be sustained in any court findings,” Iryami said after coming out of the executive session.

The board also agreed to require Lalezarian to pay a fee instead of a proposal to provide parkland to the village, Iryami said. 

Board member Michael Fuller, a commercial real estate appraiser, said he believed $190,000 was a fair price for Lalezarian to pay to the village’s park trust fund.

Iryami called for an executive session meeting after four members said they intended to reject Lalezarian’s application during a public meeting that was scheduled on Wednesday for 7:30 a.m. Thursday.

Board member Robin Gordon said during the public hearing that the planning board should hold off on voting for the proposal until it gained the Village of Great Neck Estates’s okay  since the only access to the proposed development went through Great Neck Estates.

“I think that this violates the village precedent in a way that hurts the village,” Gordon said.

Board members Allegra Goldberg, Fuller and Fred Knauer agreed with Gordon’s assessment of the proposal, saying they would deny the application.

Iryami then called an executive session, saying it was necessary for the board to receive advice of counsel.

Following a 50-minute closed-door meeting, Iryami announced that the board would support the project contingent on Lalezarian receiving approval from Great Neck Estates and the state approving a 26-foot wide roadway, which has been the subject of debate among board members and the public.

“Based upon the sense of the board members informally expressed, [the board] directed its counsel to prepare a draft of a decision conditionally granting subdivision approval,” he said in an e-mail following the meeting.

Iryami said a formal vote was not held because several board members said they had to go to their jobs. Planning board members are volunteers and do not get paid for their position.

The board, he said, would formally vote on the proposal at its regularly scheduled meeting Thursday, May 15. 

The special meeting was called following a four-hour public hearing two weeks ago that stretched into the early hours of Friday without a decision.

“It’s late,” Iryami said at the meeting. “We’re going to schedule a special meeting where we’ll decide on the final vote.”

Iryami said the Thursday, 7:30 a.m. meeting was announced on Wednesday because that was the only time the board members and the village engineer would be available.

“We could not find an evening when everyone would be available, so we had no choice to schedule it for an early morning,” he said.

Neither Lalezarian nor attorney Paul Bloom, a former chair of the Village of Great Neck planning board who is representing him on the project, were present during Thursday’s meeting. 

The project has already received approval from the Village of Great Neck board of zoning and appeals.

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