Residents blast unconventional two-family home

Courtesy Project 11561/Facebook

Residents are complaining about a two-family home on West Market Street that they believe is two separate structures. They are attached at the roof, a configuration that, according to city code, constitutes a single home.

Courtesy Project 11561/Facebook

Nearly a year after the Zoning Board of Appeals unanimously denied a developer’s request to subdivide a residential property on West Market Street to build two new homes, construction of what at first appeared to be two separate structures is under way on the property.

Though the two units have distinct foundations, they are attached at the roof and will share a courtyard, a configuration that city officials said constitutes a single structure that does not require a variance.

Residents crowded a ZBA meeting last August to voice their concerns about a plan to raze a two-family home at 535 W. Market St. and build one single-family and one two-family home on the property. The developer, Kamran Pourgol, of Old Westbury, was seeking a zoning variance to subdivide the property, which was denied by the board.

Now, however, many West Market residents are angry about the construction that has begun on the property. According to city officials, the structure is considered one two-family house, not two distinct units, and the blueprints violated no existing city building codes.

According to Gregory Kalnitsky, the ZBA’s corporation counsel, the Building Department will present Pourgol with a single certificate of occupancy, and the parcel will remain a single property, which can be sold only to one person or entity.

“It’s functionally the same as the side-by-side two-family houses that we have in town, except now there’s a courtyard that separates the two structures,” Kalnitsky said. The building permits are set to expire after a year, he added, and he expects construction on the property to be completed by then.

But many residents see the structure as two separate buildings, and the fact that construction has commenced on a project so similar to the one they fought to stop last year isn’t sitting well with them. Deacon Thomas Evrard, who lives nearby, said he worries that both of the new structure’s units will be converted into illegal two-family homes, effectively doubling the number of residents who would live there legally.