By Angela Marshall
The board enacted a six-month moratorium in June 2001, halting all non-residential development in excess of 40,000 square feet while trustees worked to update the village code. After extending the moratorium twice, the board is finally finished with what it calls phase one of the code revisions.
The bills that will be presented Jan. 13 call for reducing maximum building heights in the business districts at least 12 feet, from 60 feet to 48 feet. One board member, Mary Bossart, would like to see the maximum height reduced even more.
The bills will also allow apartment buildings, or multi-family dwellings, to be developed within the business districts. Some Rockville Centre Public School District officials are concerned that allowing new apartments will bring in more children than the district can handle. The board of education was expected to discuss how it would respond to the bills at a meeting on Tuesday, Jan. 7, after the Herald's deadline.
The board decided to allow apartment buildings downtown after some of its members attended meetings about smart growth, which advocates mixing residential and business districts to keep communities vibrant.
The board instituted the moratorium in order to prevent development that might eventually be disallowed while it studied possible revisions to the code. At least one developer, Home Depot, filed suit against the village for blocking its project. The suit is still pending. In the end, no permitted development was eliminated.
The bills also give the Rockville Centre Planning Board power to issue special-use permits and require that
a developer planning to put a commercial project on the first floor of an apartment building apply for such a permit.
Plans for all buildings over 10,000 square feet are already required to be submitted to the planning board for a site plan review hearing.
Phase two of the village board's revision process will deal with a possible reduction in the number of districts within the village from 16 to 10 and include a comprehensive review of all districts. The board will also decide what, if any, other kinds of development should require special-use permits and which board should handle the hearings.
The village board has also expressed an interest in redrawing the lines of some of the districts and creating a Little Town district with lower maximum heights. Meetings on phase two are expected to begin this month.
