Residents flocked to the Roslyn Village Town Hall on Tuesday, Oct. 15, to dispute an ongoing proposal for a new 54-unit apartment complex.
The proposed building is L-shaped and will hug the coast east of the William Cullen Bryant Viaduct. The building will be three stories on West Shore Road and follow the downhill slope of the land to create six floors viewable from the waterfront.
The building plans call for 21 one-bedroom apartments, 28 two-bedroom apartments, and five three-bedroom apartments. Seventy-nine parking spaces are proposed, with 19 in a private garage. The building will also have a rooftop deck.
The proposal was first brought to the board in September by attorney Michael Sahn, representing Albertson Avenue LLC (who owns the land), alongside an architect, civil engineer, and traffic engineer.
At that meeting, Sahn said the developers plan to seek a special-use permit, development incentives, and variances to construct the residential rental building. The incentives they seek include the construction of a walkway connecting the proposed property to the existing walkway on the waterfront, landscape improvements, and a proposal for an affordable housing component.
“We do have a letter of non-jurisdiction from the DEC that we filed so that no proposed construction would require any further DEC approval,” Sahn said. “That leaves the jurisdiction entirely to the village board to approve the application or take other action that the board deems appropriate.”
While the board stated at that meeting and this October meeting that a decision will take many months, residents have already begun to express their opposition.
A commonly voiced concern was about increasing Roslyn’s already voluminous amount of traffic.
Keyan Cody from R&M Engineering explained that traffic impacts were determined using pre-Covid data from 2017 to 2020. With this data, estimated changes to traffic flow were not deemed substantial.
Residents said that since COVID-19, traffic has gotten much worse.
“We have significant issues… I can’t even get out of my driveway sometime between 4 o’clock and 7 o’clock because of southbound traffic,” Russel Bayland, who lives across from the proposal sight, said. “So the idea that there would be 20, 30, 40, 50 more cars turning into a left-turn it’s gonna be a situation, it’s not even a question.”
Derek Chan, another resident, said, “Some of the traffic items stated were from pre-COVID…the post-COVID, I think we’ve all seen, there’s just an increase in traffic on the road. I’ve lived here for ten years, and I’ve seen Roslyn Road just get more and more congested. There are days I can’t even pull out of my own house.”
“Whatever the data says, we live here, we see it every day,” he added.
Ann Kopple, a Roslyn resident for 78 years, agreed. “Commuting in the evening from Port Washington, with their five elementary schools, the high school, the middle school, after 3:15, you cannot be traveling south on West Shore Road.”
Residents also expressed environmental concerns.
“Living on the opposite side of the harbor, looking toward the project, I will see six stories. And you cannot tell me that that will not affect the wildlife and the wetlands in that area,” said another resident.
“To me, [the proposal sight] is wetlands. And I’m so disappointed, I can’t believe it,” said another resident. “It is a beautiful spot, and the last place where I’d think you’d build something.”
Residents present also wanted to know why the town board has not made this information available on its website.
“I just learned about this [proposal] a few days ago,” Bayland said. “I guess we got a letter from Flower Hill? That was the first time I had seen anything about it.”
“There are very few documents on the village website,” said a Roslyn Heights resident. “The minutes aren’t posted. The agendas are posted very late. So I would request to have pdf copies [of the proposal] uploaded to the village website… so we can be well-informed because we’re not.”
The board agreed to upload information about the project to its website for residents to access, though this has yet to happen as of this writing.
The board ruled that the proposal discussion should be kept ongoing. The next board meeting will take place on Tuesday, Nov. 19 at Roslyn Village Hall in the Village of Roslyn at 1200 Old Northern Blvd. The village website is accessible at https://www.roslynny.gov/
