By JOSEPH KELLARD
The Village Board of Island Park denied the unnamed developer's two applications to build condominiums for seniors, categorized as Golden Age Housing ‹ a form of "affordable housing" in which prices are controlled by the Town of Hempstead's Housing Authority ‹ in which Island Park residents were afforded a first option to buy.
The first application called for 16 units with garages, a proposal requiring a change in zoning for a roughly 25-square-foot area, from business to residential use. But the board denied this application, as well as a second, revised proposal for 14 units that required only a special permit, not a change in zoning.
"They were turned down for unknown reasons," said a representative of the developer who identified himself only as Dave in a message left on a Herald voicemail last week.
"I'm not going to say why it was denied," said Mayor Jim Ruzicka, "but the developer wanted to put 16 units in there. Right now, it was the feeling of this board that we didn't want to see it so developed."
Joe Aniano, a trustee of the American Legion who manages the post, said he sees no reason why the board would have any problem with that development.
"This would have been a good thing for the village as I see it," Aniano said. "This is the first time they would be getting people in individual homes on the tax roll there."
Aniano said some neighbors expressed concerns about the added traffic issues. "But the only reason there's heavy traffic on that street is because the Long Island Rail Road station is right there," Aniano said. "You have people who park there who don't use the lot there, and the condos weren't going to add any more traffic. They were going to have off-street parking and garages. So, the village just didn't want it to go."
American Legion Post 1029 is a corporation, and Aniano along with John Marino and Willie Carrollo are trustees who paid off the mortgage there years ago. They put the building and property up for sale this past spring, a decision due, in part, to their membership dwindling to "a precious few," Aniano said.
This decision came after the legion, in recent years, renovated the post's catering hall to rent it out for parties and other occasions to generate more revenue. Following the renovations, the Island Park Senior Center, which operated out of the post for 27 years, was forced to move out in January 2005, when Catholic Charities, which co-sponsored and funded the senior program with Nassau County, decided to save money on rent and merge it with the Oceanside Senior Center at St. Anthony's Church.
"We just can't handle it anymore," Aniano said. "The only way we sustained ourselves there was to rent the hall for parties ... The building doesn't just carry itself and we have expenses."
Aniano said the legion plans to keep the charter going but will move perhaps to a storefront in the village, where they will carry on their veterans-related operations and activities without the catering business.
Comments about this story? JKellard@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 287.
