Ending a saga, the Village of Roslyn’s Board of Trustees unanimously voted on Tuesday night to approve a proposal for a four-to-five-story mixed-use development on Warner Avenue and ruled that its construction would not cause any negative environmental consequences.
In October, the board passed a change of zone for 281-301 Warner Ave. from commercial to mixed-use. The property currently houses a strip mall of empty storefronts and was zoned for commercial use only.
J.K. Equities, headed by Roslyn resident JerryKarlik, submitted an application for a transit-oriented mixed-use development on the site, comprising one floor of retail and either three or four floors of 54 residential apartments.
Residents of the area, as well as the Roslyn school district, have been critical of the idea.
Representing the schools during the public comment session was attorney Carrie-Ann Tondoof Hauppauge-based Ingerman Smith LLP, who said that no fiscal benefit or increase in tax revenue would come to the district as a result of the proposal.
“The district fully appreciates that the board is charged with approving, disapproving or modifying projects proposed in the village,” Tondo said. “And we understand that while the applicant may not be concerned with the impact on the district and its community resulting from all projects, the district must consider this cumulative impact as should the village.”
Residents of Roslyn Heights also spoke, calling the project “outsized for the location” based on the number of apartments, and bringing up concerns with traffic and parking.
Once the public hearing was closed and deliberations began, Mayor John Durkin said that the village had been “very deliberate” in its two-year process.
“We are attempting to accommodate new residents, make a better place for them and also make Roslyn, a better place for people who live there already,” Durkin said. “We’re aware of the problems that people surrounding it have. We think we’ve taken that into consideration to upgrade to a very big extent and we’ve done really well with that. I think we were very deliberate in our process. We didn’t rush through this. We took a tremendous amount of input from everybody.”
Deputy Mayor Marshall Bernstein said that he supported the project and said it would be in the best interests of the village, naming its aesthetics, the proximity to the Long Island Rail Road, the developer’s collaboration with the village on the project, the support of the business community and Roslyn Chamber of Commerce, the cleanup of a brownfield in that area which would be required if the project does not go forward, the addition of low-income housing to the project and an addition to the village’s tax base, as reasons to support it.
He also said that the school board had urged the trustees to take a “hypothetical” increase in school-age children into account, which he noted the developers said would be between six to eight.
“I don’t know how to take a hypothetical into account,” Bernstein said. “Two and a half years we’ve been fighting about this. Two and a half years we’ve taken testimony, we have to do what’s best for our village, take into account the realities of today, not some hypothetical additional issues that the school board might have. So for all of these reasons, I intend to vote in favor of this application.”
Trustee Marta Genovese concurred, and said it would solve a longtime problem for the village.
“Having been sitting on this board for some time, there’s not developers knocking down our door to come and do something with this site, which has been a problem for quite some time,” Genovese said.
Trustee Sarah Oral, herself a resident of Roslyn Heights, echoed her fellow trustees.
“I’ve been staring at this ugly property for 11 years and saying, ‘When are things going to change?'” Oral said. “Things can’t change unless you change them, and change is hard … And while it’s really hard, this is our chance to actually do something. We don’t want to sit here 30 years from now and still be looking at an empty Bobo’s Kitchen. We want the gateway to Roslyn from the south to be as beautiful as the gateway from the north, and this is our chance to actually make that change.”
Durkin said that in his 25 years on the board, the size of proposals had long been an issue for residents.
“Every time a project that I was involved in or had to approve something, the people who are not happy or nervous about it always said, ‘Hey, it’s OK but it’s too big,'” Durkin said. “We had to negotiate that and think about that and I think it’s really important to negotiate and think about the size of a project, it will have an impact on the village and it will shape and change the nature of our village, but I believe this project will have a very positive impact on the village as we go along.”
