A lot at stake: Parking a major obstacle for new Malverne restaurant

Picture the residential streets surrounding downtown Malverne lined with cars parked bumper to bumper. Imagine traffic overflowing from the parking lots onto Hempstead Avenue and drivers circling the streets looking for available spots. Now visualize the scene’s backdrop: empty storefronts.

A number of Malverne merchants described this scenario after learning that a new business wants to move into the village and ask for the Board of Trustees’ approval to utilize 99 existing parking spaces. That would not only exacerbate the village’s parking shortage, the merchants claim, but also eventually cause many of them to lose business.

“It’s going to kill Malverne,” said Gerry Hughes, owner of the Connolly Station pub and restaurant. “Malverne’s a quaint little village and … I think that if this goes through, it will just cripple parking for everybody.”

Because he is a business owner himself, Hughes said, he can relate to the challenge facing Elcid Melconian, owner of the Hempstead Avenue building into which the new business — a 114-seat restaurant — would move, but that doesn’t change Hughes’s opinion. “I just think this one building is asking for too much,” he said, “and it’s going to impact so many different businesses, I just don’t think it’s fair.”

Melconian has been trying to rent his available space for about three years, ever since he downsized his company, Tri Color Imaging, and began using only a small portion of the back of the building. Now he wants to rent part of it to Happy Hour Enterprises Inc., which would build an upscale restaurant and piano bar and lounge there. Melconian also hopes to bring in a tenant that would convert the building’s basement into office space. According to Malverne building code, the restaurant would require 57 parking spaces and the office space, 42 spots.

“Finally we got people that are very excited about it and they’re looking to bring a good thing to the town,” Melconian told the Herald. “It’s been six months already since the tenant signed the lease, and we’ve been trying to do this and everything keeps on getting postponed, which is unfortunate. … We just have to try and prove our case that there is adequate parking in town.”

Melconian and his attorney, Vincent Muscarella, a Nassau County legislator representing the 8th District, said they believe they proved that at a Board of Trustees’ special exception hearing on Oct. 20. “We have, as part of our variance case, provided an expert that has testified that considering the use and what’s required, there are available parking spaces in the village in municipal lots and on the commercial streets, not using residential streets,” Muscarella said. “It’s our feeling that the business that we want to bring in would be an asset to the village.”

At the conclusion of that hearing, the board asked Muscarella’s consultant to conduct several more traffic studies — the two he completed were not enough, trustees said — and return with results on Nov. 17.

Some of the merchants agree that a new business could benefit the community, but its addition should not come at the expense of existing businesses. “Of course we want the building rented — of course we want the owners of the Tri Color building to enjoy a profitable existence,” said Henry Stampfel, president of the Malverne Merchants and Professional Association and owner of the Malverne Cinema. “They should have every right to rent their building … it’s just, what’s the proper approach?”

Stampfel went on to say that he is concerned that while the restaurant would draw new customers, it would alienate regular customers of the surrounding businesses and anger residents of the blocks bordering that part of Hempstead Avenue. “Now the parking is going to push into the residential areas,” he said. “You can’t get around that until the village figures out a way to fix that.”

Like Stampfel, Malverne Funeral Home owner David Walsh said he believes parking problems will persist, regardless of what businesses move into the area, until the village takes action. “The village really has to look to the future and try to find more parking for the visitors that come into Malverne,” Walsh said.

The majority of the parking lots in that area of the village are privately owned or the property of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. In Walsh’s view, the village should create some of its own parking, and he suggested that trustees consider utilizing part of the parcel of Crossroads Farm at Grossmann’s that it received when the county purchased that land.

If Muscarella’s consultant proves that there is enough parking in the village and the trustees approve the application, there may be some backlash. Tammy Tuller, co-owner of some of the privately owned parking lots and a number of retail properties on Hempstead Avenue, including the Malverne Diner, said she doesn’t want the new business using her lots. Tuller leases the lots to the village, which maintains and polices them, but she believes that allowing an outside business to use them would negatively affect her tenants.

“The lease of the parking spaces to the village is intended to make sure that there is ample parking spaces available for our tenants and their customers,” she wrote in a letter that was presented to the board at the hearing.

Hughes, other merchants and some residents are adamant that the board should deny the variance request, regardless of traffic study results — and more than 150 of them signed a petition to support their stance. “There was a reason why the parking codes were put on the books and that was, among other things, to protect the availability of parking for merchants doing business in the village at present,” the petition reads. “If we, the merchants of the Village of Malverne, want people to come and see a movie, shop, bowl or dine … and they can’t find parking, they won’t be back …. This will have a detrimental effect and the merchants will suffer.”

The petition went on to say that, in these economic times, “the village should be taking steps to help Malverne merchants, not hurt them.” Hughes altered the petition to offer an alternative to denying the request: provide enough parking, so merchants and residents don’t see it as a problem.

Melconian, who has been in the village since the early 1980s, said he can’t see why the board would deny his application after his consultant returns with the results of additional traffic studies. “All we want to do is bring something good into town,” he said. “It will drive more people into town and help the economy of the town.”

The restaurant, according to Melconian, will cater to an older, more mature crowd. There will be live music — something soft, like jazz — and a higher-end clientele. “We’re not looking to be another Rockville Centre,” Melconian said, noting that while the restaurant could help generate business for the movie theater and bowling alley, the potential office space could create some business for the smaller eateries in the village, like Angelo’s Pizza.

“I would hope that [the merchants] would support something like that,” Melconian added. “It would be nothing but a benefit to everybody, and I can’t understand why they’re concerned so much with the parking when there’s so much parking in town already.”

Although Melconian knows that the some merchants staunchly disagree, he said he doesn’t want to pick a fight with them or create any bad blood. “I want to just prove nicely that there is valid parking and this will be beneficial,” he said. “I’m just a regular guy. … I’m just trying to make a living in this tough economy.”

The board will hear Melconian’s case again on Nov. 17 at the Village Hall courtroom, at 99 Church St., at 7 p.m. Residents are encouraged to attend the meeting to offer their opinions.