NY Wiki

« Huntington Station 1 | Main | Homeless Camps »

August 20, 2003

Huntington Station 2

http://www.newsday.com/mynews/ny-lihunt133412196aug13,0,4204411.story
Plans to Revitalize Draw Opposition
Residents concerned proposal will harm Huntington Station

By Alfonso A. Castillo
STAFF WRITER

2003 August 13

When some of Huntington Station's old-timers remember the area's glory days in
the 1930s, they talk about the bustling downtown where people lived over shops
- a community of merchants and residents all in one place.

Huntington Town officials hope their latest vision to renew the hamlet will bring it
closer to those days, and have proposed building rental apartments over stores.
And like revitalization plans that have come and gone in the past several years,
this one has drawn the ire of many residents who fear it would only exacerbate
the community's problems.

At a four-hour public hearing on Aug. 5, residents blasted the proposal, saying it
would burden already crowded school districts with more children and invite
more poverty and crime into the area.

"They want to turn Huntington Station into more of a Queens environment," said
Huntington School Board member Rich McGrath, who is running for town board
and led a group of residents opposing the plan. "Queens Boulevard and Jericho
Turnpike are the same thing."

The initiative calls for amending Huntington Station's zoning code to allow
developers to build as many as two one-bedroom apartments - up to 750 square
feet each - on top of businesses as long as they meet on-street parking and fire
code guidelines.

Town officials said the plan targets many of the community's needs by boosting
local businesses, providing homes for young families who want to stay in the
town and expanding the tax base.

"You're talking about giving some young couple a start in the community here, so
they can begin, be part of the economic base and give back some of the tax
dollars we've spent on them," Supervisor Frank Petrone told the packed house
last week.

Many residents are skeptical of the plan - one of many the town has pushed
since it launched its most recent effort to revitalize the community, which town
officials and police have said is the center of crime and illegal housing in the
town. A plan the town proposed last year that included several high-rise
apartment buildings was soundly shouted down by a crowd of 1,500 in an April
2002 meeting.

The town-appointed Huntington Station Revitalization Committee went back to the
drawing board before proposing the "mixed-use buildings" plan. Among
residents' biggest complaints is that the town did not perform studies to gauge
the impact of the new rental apartments - which some residents believe are out
of sync with the rest of the town.

"They attract lower-income individuals," town resident Heinz Rosen told the
board. "If you increase the [rental] apartments, you increase the low income,
you increase the crime."

Other residents, who supported the plan, said much of the sentiment at the
meeting was thinly veiled bigotry.

"[Opponents] are saying, 'We don't need poor people. We don't need people who
can't buy homes. Let them live somewhere else,' " said Huntington housing
activist Charles Werner, who added that he would urge the town to allow for
more bedrooms in apartments to accommodate larger families.

Town officials said town law allows for apartments over stores in much of the
town and this would only regulate it. They also said the apartments would not
necessarily constitute "affordable housing" and could be market priced.

Nonetheless, Petrone told the crowd he would arrange meetings with officials
from all the involved school districts to discuss the impact of the plan.

The town board was scheduled to vote on the proposal at the Aug. 5 meeting, but
chose to postpone a decision. "The consensus is they may need to take a closer
look at it," town spokesman Don McKay said.

Copyright © 2003, Newsday, Inc.

Posted by dc at August 20, 2003 01:47 AM

Comments

Post a comment