By:Doug Miller
A group called EBM of Long Beach wants to buy the Brighton Hotel adult home at 403 E. Boardwalk and build a 10-story condominium tower featuring 46 two-bedroom apartments and two levels of parking.
This was a change from the group's original application - denied by the building department - which requested variances to build a 13-story, 54-unit tower.
But last Thursday's audience, which consisted largely of residents of the surrounding apartment buildings on the 400 block of Shore Road, did not seem impressed with or placated by the downsizing of the proposed building. As EBM's attorney, Albert A. D'Agostino, of Minerva & D'Agostino P.C. in Valley Stream, announced the project's changes - and several times afterward during his presentation - the sixth-floor meeting room of City Hall filled with jeers and boos. More than once during the presentation, Zoning Board Chairman Rocco Morelli had to remind members of the audience to keep their mutterings of indignance to themselves. More than once, D'Agostino used the phrase, "If I might be allowed to continue..."
Other than the height change - and the removal of a luxury penthouse from the project - the rest of the project remains unchanged, and the developers still require seven variances in order to proceed, for such issues as density and lot use. The project provides adequate parking, in the form of a two-level garage beneath a third-story sky lobby.
While the alteration of a proposal between the original application and the public hearing gives the board something else to consider, it is not unprecedented, even among recently approved projects. A resident's application to tear down a home and rebuild on West Bay Drive was approved even after the application changed.
The Brighton is currently an adult home, with about 100 residents. Its owners, two families, will sell most of their stake in the building to EBM while retaining a share. The price is $7.8 million. The developers said they hope the proposed apartments will fetch as much as $800,000.
Experts testified for the developer that the project would add at most nine school-aged children to the public-school system, and that the project "would not cause traffic or safety concerns on that or adjacent roads."
No resident spoke in favor of the application, but a parade of neighbors rose to speak against it. "You need to consider who benefits from this," said Joseph Mancuso, a resident of 420 Shore Road, next door to the Brighton. "Does the city benefit? Do the residents? Or just the builders?"
Mancuso dismissed the Brighton's traffic expert's testimony that the project and all the new people moving onto the block would not tie up the surrounding roads. "Nobody better visit them," he said.
Other residents voiced concerns about the stress the project would put on the city's already overtaxed sewer system.
Jodi Liebrock, an art teacher and painter who is also a resident of 420 Shore Road, pointed out that the Brighton's location, between Shore Road and the Boardwalk at Lincoln Boulevard, is right on top of one of the city's choice surfing beaches, and that surfers take many of the best on-street parking spaces. "If I don't get home from school by 3:30 p.m., I have to park with my groceries on Broadway," two blocks away, she said.
Across Lincoln Boulevard from the Brighton, at 360 Shore Road, is Sea Pointe Towers, a 10-story luxury condo tower with a pool. According to building records, a sixth-floor apartment similar to those being proposed at the Brighton sold for $680,000 last summer.
Comments about this story? DMiller@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 213.
