Malverne appeals to town to stop condo rezoning

As Malverne residents wait for the Town of Hempstead to make a decision as to whether the lots at 494 and 1104 Hempstead Ave. should be rezoned as a Residence C-A district — which would allow condo development — a petition with the names of over 400 Malverne residents was submitted to the town board last week, expressing “absolute opposition” to the plan.

“We love our neighborhood and … our only nemesis is the awful traffic on Hempstead Ave.,” wrote Malverne Park resident Susan Wilcox to the town board. Along with the petition, Wilcox submitted Nassau County Police Department accident records for the area, a letter from the Nassau County Planning Commission stating that they had initially denied the rezoning request, and other items. “We hope you will take all of this into consideration, and make the right decision, which would be to disapprove of the proposed condo development and vote against it,” she said in her letter to the town.

Meanwhile, questions still remain as to why the county’s Planning Commission, which denied the rezoning during its April 16, 2015 meeting, decided only three weeks later to rescind its objections. In minutes from the commission’s April meeting, Martin Katz said of then rezoning request, “Staff recommends denial, as this is a higher density multi-family development that is out of character with the surrounding single-family area, and represents an over-intensification of land use on a narrow site.” A motion was made to approval the staff recommendation, and approved unanimously.

During its May 7, 2015 meeting, however, Planning Commission attorney Bob O’Brien, who is also part of the law firm, Nizza & O’Brien in Valley Stream, told the Planning Commission that he was mistaken about the configuration of the lot. “This was a matter that actually floated around about five years ago,” O’Brien said during the meeting. “At that time, it was considered a flag lot situation. When it came back to the calendar last time, I was under the impression it still was.” He continued, “What had happened was in the interim, the developer had purchased —we’ll call it the smaller lot to the south of the flag. So the flag no longer exists. There is sufficient frontage and access. And — this matter will not go back to the Zoning Board of the Town. It will go back to the Town Board as a rezoning.”

When asked why the Board’s discovery that the property was no longer a flag lot prompts a call for a Local Determination, Mary Studdert, a spokeswoman for the Nassau County Department of Public Works, said it is no longer considered a flag lot, and falls under “local zoning laws.” There is, however, no county ordinance that requires non-flag properties on county roads to be turned over for a Local Determination, she said. “Once we discovered it was no longer a flag lot, we rescinded our objections,” she added.

A request for further clarification of the county’s decision — and if traffic studies were going to be done in the area prior to the town’s decision — went unanswered as of the close of this newspaper.

Copies of the meetings’ transcripts can be found on the Herald website at www.liherald.com.

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