By Andrew Coen
Logan Bus Company and Quick Courier, a messenger service business, are both planning to construct facilities on a 20-acre parcel to the corner of Guy Brewer and Brookville Boulevard in Rosedale, an area currently with nothing but trees and open space. The construction would include a 100,000 square-foot industrial building for Quick Courier, taking up five acres and a 20,000 square-foot building for Logan on 15 acres, with space for the storage of 400 buses and a maintenance facility. Logan, a company which services school buses for handicapped children in New York City, has their current facility in Ozone Park, Queens.
The stretch of Queens located in the vicinity of John F. Kennedy International Airport is ground zero for recently planned construction projects which happen to be in the middle of a future planned expanded Nassau Expressway (Route 878) and as a result, local officials are seeking ways to halt development in the area around Rockaway Turnpike until plans for the highway are in place. The project has already been approved by officials from New York City and is awaiting approval from the Port of Authority and the Federal Aviation Administration, who both have jurisdiction over the project due to the proximity to John F. Kennedy International Airport.
"This impacts us heads on," said Lawrence trustee Martin Oliner of the planned development. "Until the 878 is built there should be no further development because that is our evacuation route."
The Logan Bus Company and Quick Trip proposals is the latest battle for Oliner, who with the help of State Senator Dean Skelos (R-Rockville Centre), was recently successful in helping to halt a proposed Super Stop N Shop that would have been built at the corner of Rockaway Boulevard and Brookville Boulevard. Oliner also pressed to delay construction of the ICC Building on Rockaway Boulevard, which led to restructuring the proposal to local Five Towns officials liking including changing security and turning lanes.
"That [planned project] is going to be a negative impact on the health and welfare of the people of Nassau County," said Assemblyman Harvey Weisenberg (D-Long Beach), whose district encompasses the Five Towns and the Long Beach barrier island residents who often travel on 878 and Rockaway Turnpike. "This is an evacuation route that they are making more difficult."
Atlantic Beach mayor Stephen Mahler, who has joined Oliner in recent fights to halt construction projects on Rockaway Turnpike, is angry about the idea of Logan and Quick Silver moving in to the area, since it would add traffic congestion to the village's evacuation route. "They just keep installing on that one roadway more obstacles to the free flow of traffic on a roadway already too congested," said Mahler. "It's going to create bottle necks that will be a nightmare."
The current emergency evacuation route for Atlantic Beach and residents in the Five Towns and Far Rockaway as well as the western portion of Long Beach goes from 878 to the end of Peninsula Boulevard onto Hempstead Turnpike towards Hofstra University and then into the Nassau Coliseum parking lot in Uniondale.
Oliner said he plans to attend every meeting in Queens dealing with the planned construction and to hire consultants in an attempt to halt it.
Officials from Logan Bus Company, Quick Courier as well as Assemblywoman Michele R. Titus (D-Far Rockaway) and State Senator Malcolm A. Smith (D-St. Albans) who represent the area of the proposed development could not be reached for comment.
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