Avalon stuck in traffic

AvalonBay recently released a rendering of its proposed Phase II development for Rockville Centre, which would be on Banks Avenue, at the former site of Rockville Racquet.

Courtesy AvalonBay

AvalonBay Phase II, a 177-unit expansion of the 349-unit Banks Avenue apartment complex, will move forward — with one condition.

The Board of Zoning Appeals approved its completed environmental-impact review at its Oct. 22 meeting, but AvalonBay is awaiting the completion of a traffic study by the state Department of Transportation, which has not yet determined the development’s potential impact on the intersection at North Centre Avenue and Sunrise Highway, 500 feet away. The DOT controls the traffic light at the intersection.

“There is an open issue as to the traffic impact, particularly the signalization and timing of the intersection of North Centre Avenue and Sunrise Highway,” said A. Thomas Levin, the village attorney. “That issue is frankly not capable of getting resolved rapidly by the state DOT that controls these lights.”

The BZA gave AvalonBay a “conditioned negative declaration” — which means there are no more required environmental studies, but the developer must follow any state or village recommendations to reduce the project’s impact on traffic. If it does not, the BZA can start the environmental review process again.

“Basically, it’s a bad intersection,” said Robert Grover, of the firm Greenman-Pedersen Inc., which has done its own review of the plans, acting as a village consultant. “And the addition of any traffic whatsoever is going to make it worse. How much worse, we’re talking very, very, very small increments.” However, Grover added, changes in the timing of the traffic light might be needed, which the DOT would have to approve — not only because it controls the light at North Centre and Sunrise, but because other traffic lights along Sunrise would also be affected.

“And in the ideal world, we would have done our review in conjunction with the state DOT,” said Grover. “It all would have been done at the same time.” It would take the DOT “a substantial amount of time,” he said, to complete the traffic study, and there is a “reasonable chance” that it would not want to change the light, because the new AvalonBay would have a small impact on traffic, while changing the light would have an impact up and down Sunrise Highway.