By:Jeff Lipton
More than 100 residents have signed a petition to force the cancellation of the auction of the state Department of Transportation site, vacant land on the northeast corner of Doughty Boulevard and Central Avenue, running alongside Route 878, the Nassau Expressway. Signatures were obtained from residents in the Five Towns, across Nassau County and Far Rockaway. The petition urges state elected officials, including Gov. George Pataki, Sen. Dean Skelos (R-Rockville Centre) and Assemblyman Harvey Weisenberg (D-Long Beach), to stop the Feb. 18 auction of the surplus land.
The bidding on the state-s surplus property, which is scheduled to take place at 10 a.m. at the DOT-s main building, at 250 Veterans Memorial Highway in Hauppauge, will start at $257,000.
Residents said they want to keep the property as open space or put it to use as a commuter parking lot for Long Island Rail Road riders, since it is so close to the Inwood train station. The state should also keep the property for possible use for future highway improvements, residents said.
This is supposed to be an expressway, and it should be kept an expressway, said Victoria Simao of Atlantic Beach, who is leading the petition drive. We want it to be kept green space. If this goes through, then houses will be built, and then pedestrian traffic will be crossing the street.
Residents said they only recently found out about the DOT auction, when a local resident who is on the DOT mailing list was sent information on it.
I think the property should be kept for trees and grass, said John Squeri, also of Atlantic Beach. I don-t want that it should happen in 20 years that developers will change things and expand outside Manhattan. I don-t want to drive down the expressway and see gas stations and office buildings. It would look horrible.
A large rabbinical college and campus were recently built along the expressway. If the auction takes place and the lot is developed, it will encourage other developments along the highway, which has prime real estate potential, opponents of the sale said.
We want to stop the overdevelopment along the 878 expressway, said Simao, who ran an unsuccessful bid for Atlantic Beach trustee last June.
Elisa Hinken, an Inwood resident, said residents desperately need the plot to be maintained as a commuter lot, given the increase in development in the Five Towns and the Rockaways. Public transportation will become more vital, Hinken said.
Stephen Mahler, mayor of the Village of Atlantic Beach, questioned whether the state knows what it-s doing. What kind of planning do they have? Mahler wondered. I wonder if Nassau County knows about this.
Of course that should be kept as open space, the mayor added. What do they want to do, build on both sides of the road?
Assemblyman Weisenberg, who has been contacted by residents, said he-s trying to get a handle on what is going on. If it-s state-owned, they have a right to have an auction, he said. I personally would like to see a park there or something. Absolutely, I would like to see it preserved as open space.
A state DOT official said the property has been vacant for as long as he can remember, and the intent of the auction is to get rid of surplus property owned by the DOT.
It-s a perfectly beautiful highway, said Squeri. Everyone I-ve spoken to is against [the auction]. The state has given us a week-s notice, which is not much time to be informed about it.
Martin Oliner, a Village of Lawrence trustee, said that about three months ago the state offered the site to the village. But he recalled that the village said it did not need more space, because the site was next to a village parking lot. We had space and did not want to take on any additional space, Oliner said.
The state then said it would offer the site to a charity and we had no objections to that, Oliner said.
Since the announcement that the property will be auctioned off, Lawrence Village Administrator Peter Overs has been re-evaluating the village-s position with regard to that parcel of land, Oliner said.
