Why Five Towns residents want Town of Hempstead building ban extended

Update: March 12

After a Town of Hempstead meeting, the moratorium was extended until June 21 to conduct traffc studies. The Anazon warehouse that sits on the westem end of the Five Towns Shopping Plaza will not be operating in full force — more than 500 trucks on a daily basis — concerned residents will be petitioning the town not to conduct the studies until Amazon rolls out its entire fleet.

Community members seated in the ballroom of the Lawrence Yacht & Country Club at a Lawrence Civic Association meeting on Feb. 29 held printed signs proclaiming their support for extending the Town of Hempstead moratorium on transit-oriented development.

The building ban expires on March 14. The next town board meeting is on March 12.

“Our situation is dire, and needs emergency action by the Town of Hempstead,” Lawrence Deputy Mayor Paris Popack said at last week’s meeting. “I’m not anti-development. Development is not bad, in the right areas.”

The focuses of residents’ concerns included the Woodmere Club, the Inwood/North Lawrence transit-oriented townhouse and row house overlay district, and high-volume roadways such as Central Avenue, Broadway, Peninsula Boulevard, Rockaway Turnpike and Washington Avenue.

“As Village of Lawrence residents, the safety and comfort of living here and in their surrounding communities are top priority,” Popack said, “not more apartments or townhouses or roadhouses with horrific traffic, congestion and legitimate safety issues. Certainly not without more planning or infrastructure as operative emergency evacuation routes.”

Popack added that she fully supported Nassau County Legislator Howard Kopel’s plans for the completion of State Route 878, the Nassau Expressway, in order to alleviate some traffic concerns.

She expressed her disapproval, however, of proposals for transit-oriented development in Inwood and North Lawrence under the Town of Hempstead, including multifamily properties, and blamed a lack of zoning coordination between the villages and town for development plans that raise residents’ ire.

Assemblyman Ari Brown, who also serves as Cedarhurst’s deputy mayor, said at the meeting that in speaking with Town Supervisor Don Clavin, he learned that the town was considering extending the moratorium for three months, and Clavin requested that residents attend the Town Board meeting, scheduled for 10:30 on Tuesday at Town Hall, to show their support.

“The Town Board two days ago approved the public hearing to extend the moratorium to June 18,” Kevin Denning, a representative from Clavin’s office, said. “There’s extra time because there’s an analysis being done by our engineers.”

“Our community, including Inwood, North Lawrence and Rockaway Turnpike, is not the right area for multiple-family development,” Popack said. “The Five Towns currently experiences regular gridlock.”

Transit-oriented development would reduce available parking, she said, given that the areas proposed for development now have hundreds of parking spaces for tenants.

Popack said she anticipated that this kind of development would result in more traffic, accidents, inaccessibility for emergency vehicles traveling Five Towns roads, pollution from idling cars and, as a result of all of the above, more vehicle-related deaths.

Murray Forman, president of the Lawrence Board of Education, said that there have not been any proposed solutions for the issues related to overdevelopment since the moratorium was first passed in 2016.

“It should not be a request in the community for this moratorium to be extended,” Forman said. “The Town of Hempstead should be approaching the community and offering up an automatic extension.”

One attendee, Rena Saffra, spoke about the proposed development of the Woodmere Club, saying there appeared to be a lack of consideration for a May 2021 proposal by developers Efrem Gerszberg and Robert Weiss, which included age-restricted condominiums and a nature preserve.

“This plan was seen as a fair compromise, and it would be a win for everyone involved,” Saffra said, directing her comments to Denning. “Unfortunately, despite our best efforts, despite your insistence that you hear us, despite your promise to serve on our behalf, you have done nothing to bring this well-thought-out plan to fruition.”

Denning did not comment on the 2021 proposal, but said the Woodmere Club developers are again working with the town Board of Zoning Appeals to plan for the future of the property.

Forman said he was unaware of anything from Town Hall regarding modification or abandonment of what he called the “ill-fated zoning rules for transit-oriented development.

“I think that, clearly, the petition is a good start,” he said, referring to a “Stop Massive Overdevelopment of the Five Towns petition” created by Judith Bernstein, “but we should follow this meeting with as many emails, letters reaching out to the Town of Hempstead to remind them that we should not have to beg for an extension of this moratorium.”

Have an opinion on development issues in the Five Towns? Send a letter to jbessen@liherald.com.