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Overcast Island Park residents fight King Kullen
Appeal to zoning board to stop parking variance for supermarket
Representatives of developer John Vitale went before the Town of Hempstead’s Zoning Board of Appeals on Aug. 18 to request a parking variance for a proposed King Kullen supermarket in Barnum Island, but were met with resistance from a handful of Island Park residents.
The main concern of those who came to speak out against the variance — many of whom live at the Bridgeview Yacht Club, across the street from where the King Kullen would be built — was that shopping center parking would spill over onto nearby Petit Place, an already narrow and crowded road.
Vitale’s company, Barnum Land Development LLC, was applying for a variance to have 22 fewer parking spaces than needed — a total of 265, as opposed to the 287 required by the town for a development of this size. According to Arthur Nastre, Vitale’s attorney, a traffic study showed that the supermarket would actually need fewer than 265 spaces, so the variance should not be a problem.
But some residents said they were concerned that the traffic from the clubs in the area — Paddy McGee’s, Warehouse 5 and others, all owned by Vitale — could cause too much congestion.
“My first concern is the safety of my community,” said Patti Ambrosia, who has long spoken out against the proposal, “and then, am I going to sleep on the nights when these clubs and the food store are open at the same time?”
“I’m for a food store in Island Park,” Ambrosia added later. “I just don’t think mixing bar people with food stores and other little convenience stores is a good idea.”
But Nastre and Harold Lutz, the engineer who conducted the traffic study, assured the board that the parking for the clubs and the supermarket would not overlap. Lutz testified that the busiest times for the King Kullen would be Saturday and Sunday mornings and afternoons, and would taper off as the day went on. By evening, when the clubs opened, the supermarket would be quiet, he said, creating plenty of parking for club-goers.
“When we’re talking about sharing parking,” Lutz said, “the needs don’t overlap.”
