By Brandon Cruz
A slew of changes are making their way to the village of Farmingdale in the coming months.
From this season’s Farmer’s Market ending in November to the renaming of a parking lot to
“Nutty Irishman Way,” down to the approval of over $544,000 in road and landscaping upgrades
throughout Farmingdale — the village is bustling with changes to come.
However, one thing that residents can expect to stay the same, is the controversial zoning of a
two-family house in a residential neighborhood on Prospect Street.
The house, which had a special-use permit issued in 1954 that allowed it to operate as a two-
family home — a practice outlawed in the village in the 1980’s — burned down about a year
ago.
But now, the homeowner is seeking to rebuild the property and get the previous special-use
The permit was reinstated on the new property, which the board approved on Monday.
Before the vote, neighbors appeared before the village board to express their frustrations and
concerns about their vote to reinstate the home’s two-family status.
Neighbors like Pat Dankowitz, who has lived right next door for over 30 years, shared a plethora
of complaints she has had to the board regarding the home’s tenants and owner.
“What constitutes a family?” Dankowitz asked the board, claiming that the homeowner has
been renting individual rooms to people as opposed to “two families,” as she claimed is
intended.
But according to the village’s code, there is no legal definition of what constitutes a family —
only clarifying that the definition of a two-family home within the code is a building containing
“two or more dwelling units” — an answer many were unsatisfied with.
“Not even the Supreme Court can define what a family is, so the village board certainly isn’t
going to try,” said Manjinder Kaur, a legal counsel who stepped in for the absent Village
Attorney Claudio DeBellis at Monday’s meeting.
Residents claim that because of these individual rentals, parking issues run rampant on the
block as well as the smell of marijuana coming from the backyard — which is no longer illegal —
and the constant nuisance of movement and noise coming from the property,
Dankowitz and other residents even went as far as to complain about the mental health of the
tenants in the home.
“These [tenants] have mental problems that we have had to deal with,” Dankowitz explained.
She went on to tell a story to the board of a time when the police had to enter her house armed
due to a presumed suicide attempt at the home in question.
“He had somebody upstairs who was going to, I don’t know, shoot himself, or maybe somebody
else,” she said.
But the board has no say in who the homeowner rents to and pointed out that having mental
health issues is not against the law.
“We can’t control these things,” said Mayor Ralph Ekstrand. “We can’t discriminate against who
the homeowner decides to rent to.”
Anthony Addeo, the father of the woman who owns the home, also appeared before the board
to defend his daughter’s property and the rebuilding of her home.
Addeo told the board that the newly proposed blueprints are up to current code, and the property would even be slightly
smaller than the one that burned down a year ago.
According to the board, due to the village’s code, as long as the newly proposed property meets
the state and village requirements for a two-family home, the board has no choice but to
approve the special-use permit that was previously in place before the fire – something that
neighbors were unhappy about.
“I don’t want this again and I don’t even know how the board even allowed this to happen,”
Dankowitz said.
Steve Fellman, the village’s superintendent of buildings and ground, said this new property
would be much nicer than the previous one — which he believes, in turn, would attract tenants with
higher incomes to the area.
“The previous house was kind of run-down,” he said, telling Schneps Media that the owner
has put in a lot of money for the rebuild.
“He’s going to get some real affluent tenants with the money he has put in,” Fellman
hypothesized.
Construction on the property is expected to start in the coming weeks and conclude within 8-12
months.
