By Angela Marshall
Trustee Mary Bossart said she was against closing Monday's public hearing because she thinks the new height limits are still too high and that a number of changes need to be made to the bills.
The new laws, which will take effect upon their filing with New York state, reduce maximum building heights from 60 to 48 feet or four stories. Bossart called for reducing heights to three stories or 36 feet, saying taller buildings loom over neighbors and block air and light.
She said the board needs to move cautiously, especially now that multi-family dwellings are going to be allowed downtown again. Longtime residents say a previous board voted to eliminate the right to build apartments downtown 40 years ago.
The current board moved to allow apartments back in after some of its members attended a series of conferences on "smart growth" in the downtown. Smart growth is a development theory designed to stop sprawl and bring vitality back to downtowns. It advocates allowing a mix of commercial and residential developments.
Eric Alexander, program director of Vision Long Island, has led many smart-growth seminars and praised the legislation. "This is a significant step forward for the village as well as a model for Long Island and hopefully New York state," Alexander said at the hearing. "Throughout Long Island and older suburban areas across the country, stringent zoning regulations have coded out of existence the very uses and building types that give a community character and enhance walkablity."
Community realtors also supported the legislation, saying there isn't enough housing in the village to meet demand and that many older residents are forced to move out because there is nothing available for them to downsize to.
Bossart was one of the main proponents of the plan to allow apartments in the downtown, but she believes that it must be done cautiously in order to make sure the village's infrastructure, including schools, sewage, water and electricity, can handle it.
Two members of the Rockville Centre Public School Board of Education, who attended the meeting, share this concern. Board President Meg Koch said whatever increase in population the new apartments bring will have a direct impact on the schools. Covert School already needs additional classrooms, and the high school is moving some of its art programs to outside buildings to make more classroom space available. Koch said the district needs at least two years of lead time to build if the village's population is going to see a big increase.
Based on numbers provided by the school district, Trustee Greg Rinn said an apartment building like the one being proposed for Banks Avenue, behind the King Kullen on Sunrise Highway, could bring in between 53 and 200 students. The Banks Avenue proposal calls for 350 apartments. Rinn based the worst-case numbers on the apartment complex with the most schoolchildren now. There are 111 students living in the 164 apartments at Old Mill Court. Other apartments in the village are not as densely populated with children.
Deputy Mayor Wayne Lipton said population changes don't happen overnight and that the board would work with the schools.
Another smart-growth proponent, Neal Lewis of Neighborhood Network, agreed with Lipton, saying during a break in the meeting that potential school impact is always a concern. But, in his experience, Lewis said, there is not "a dramatic or fast impact" on the schools.
The legislation requires that all apartment buildings with plans for commercial development on the ground floor be submitted to the Rockville Centre Planning Board for a special-use permit. Some residents believe all multi-family developments should be required to get the permit.
Jeanne Mulry of Arlington Avenue reminded the board that during its initial meetings with the Banks Avenue apartment developer, there were suggestions to convert some of the three-bedroom apartments to one-bedroom units in order to lessen the impact on the school district. Who, she wondered, without requiring special-use permits, would ensure that changes like that are made?
Rinn said he would be interested in making that change, but that it would have to wait for the board's second phase of village code changes. Throughout the meeting, Rinn, Lipton, Trustee Jack Matthews and Mayor Eugene Murray expressed a desire to pass the bills Monday night without making any changes that would require sending them back to the Nassau County Planning Commission. Referring the bills back to the planning commission could have meant a delay in passage until the end of the month or early February.
Board members, with the exception of Bossart, defended the bills, saying they believe it's time for a change and that there is a next step involved in the process of updating the village code that will add more protections.
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 zones and creating a "Little Town" district with lower maximum heights. Although, the board has not decided on the Little Town district lines, it has said that the zone will, at a minimum, include portions of Maple Avenue.
A member of the Maple Avenue Task Force asked the board to institute a moratorium on development on Maple Avenue until phase two of the code revisions is completed. He is worried that a developer will come in with plans to build a 48-foot apartment building there while the board contemplates the change. "[Forty-eight feet] may be good on Sunrise Highway, may be good on Merrick Road, but it would not be good on Maple Avenue," he said.
Lipton said it was the board's intention to begin soon and "rapidly finish." He said if they saw a plan for a four-story apartment being developed for the area, the board would enact a moratorium. "We hear your concern and we share it," Lipton said.
