Freeport asks DOT to re-locate

Several dozen residents joined Freeport Mayor Robert Kennedy at the New York State Department of Transportation truck yard in Freeport to demand that they remove their trucks and storage units from the location. “This morning the Village filed an order in state Supreme Court in Mineola asking that the State show why it should not remove all debris, trucks, waste and clean-up this DOT property,” Kennedy said. The property, a 9.9 acre parcel, is located at 22 East Sunrise Highway just off of the Meadowbrook Parkway. The DOT uses approximately 1.25 acres of that site for the storage of trucks and equipment.

The Village owns the property and is in contract with Mill Creek, a developer who plans to build 270 market-rate apartments and a “large anchor store,” Village Attorney Howard Colton said. But the DOT has refused to move.

“The Village could build hundreds of much-needed housing units as well as to protect and preserve nearby wetlands and provide jobs,” Kennedy said. “The Island’s 4.3 percent rental vacancy rate signifies that there are fewer available rental homes in Nassau and Suffolk than in any other suburban area in the New York region. Additionally, since 2000, rents have soared 17 percent while incomes have declined 2 percent.”

But the DOT has no plans to move. “Our concern is for the health, safety and welfare of the residents of Nassau County, and we must use that facility to have access to roadways, especially when there is snow removal,” said Jennifer Post, spokeswoman for the DOT.

Currently, Freeport village is in litigation with the State of New York and the village issued the demand on June 17 to remove the trucks and other structures from the property. “The property has become a community eyesore with illegal dumping in sensitive environmental land,” Kennedy said.

The parcel in question is owned by the Village of Freeport but the DOT has an easement for the property dating back to the 1920s. “We’re challenging the validity of that easement,” Colton said. “And, they have not been able to produce anything that gives them the easement.”