« July 2004 | Main | September 2004 »
August 20, 2004
The Wharf eatery, Huntington Village
There’s no waterfront in Huntington village, but there will be a Wharf
after members of the town’s zoning board approved an application for a
restaurant by that name last week.
The Wharf will be located in the Knight Bros. building, most recently
occupied by Nemo’s sporting goods store on the corner of Gerard and
Wall streets. The brainchild of Greenlawn businessman Fredrick
Wightman, it will be something of a cross between a sit-down
restaurant and fast food eatery, where meals are cooked to order, but
customers will pick up their own meals and bring them to their tables.
The restaurant hopes to take advantage of the foot traffic generated
by the Shore 8 movie theater located across Gerard Street, but in
order to proceed, Wightman required relief from parking requirements
under the town code. Based on square footage, The Wharf is required to
provide parking for 143 cars. But like many businesses in the village
with no on-site parking, The Wharf will rely on the municipal lots
located nearby to provide parking for its patrons.
Greenlawn businessman Fredrick Wightman hangs a sign announcing the
coming arrival oh 'The Wharf,' a resturant at the corner of Wall
Street and Gerald Street in Huntingoton
HUNTINGTON VILLAGE
No Parking? No Problem
Long-Islander Photo Michael R. Sisak
Zoning board approves restaurant application despite parking concerns
By Peter Sloggatt
petersloggatt@longislandernews.com
There’s no waterfront in Huntington village, but there will be a Wharf
after members of the town’s zoning board approved an application for a
restaurant by that name last week.
The Wharf will be located in the Knight Bros. building, most recently
occupied by Nemo’s sporting goods store on the corner of Gerard and
Wall streets. The brainchild of Greenlawn businessman Fredrick
Wightman, it will be something of a cross between a sit-down
restaurant and fast food eatery, where meals are cooked to order, but
customers will pick up their own meals and bring them to their tables.
The restaurant hopes to take advantage of the foot traffic generated
by the Shore 8 movie theater located across Gerard Street, but in
order to proceed, Wightman required relief from parking requirements
under the town code. Based on square footage, The Wharf is required to
provide parking for 143 cars. But like many businesses in the village
with no on-site parking, The Wharf will rely on the municipal lots
located nearby to provide parking for its patrons.
Attorney Michael McCarthy, representing The Wharf’s owner/developer,
told the zoning board at last week’s hearing that the restaurant would
not have an adverse effect on the village’s heavily used parking lots
or traffic because it would not be a destination, and instead would
draw patrons from people already in town to catch a movie, visit a
bookstore or a shop.
That multi-destination reasoning was successfully used by the movie
theater owners in 1996 to get past on-site parking requirements and
has since been used numerous times to allow businesses to open that
could not otherwise satisfy the town’s parking requirements. In fact,
real estate expert John Breslin testified on the applicant’s behalf
that since parking requirements were relaxed for Nemo’s to open, the
zoning board has similarly granted dozens of variances. He showed a
map of the downtown area covered with red dots – 42 in all – each
representing an instance in which the board has approved an
application that relied on the municipal lots to satisfy parking
requirements.
“There have been a substantial number of parking variances granted,”
Breslin said, adding, “It’s my opinion that the economic vitality of
the village has been maintained because of that.”
Still, there were several speakers at the hearing – including zoning
board chairman Christopher Modelewski – who raised the question, “when
do we know when enough is enough?”
Jack Palladino, owner of Christophers and Chesterfields and a member
of the Business Improvement District (BID) board, pointed out that
when the movie theater was granted a parking variance, the theater
paid $100,000 to the BID to fund improvements for parking as well as
other improvements. Palladino ticked off a long list of restaurants
that have opened in spaces that formerly housed retail establishments,
uses that are less demanding of parking, adding that he doesn’t want
to see a repeat of the situation some years ago when a heavy
concentration of bars competing for patrons resulted in a somewhat
raucous after-hours scene in the village.
John Esposito, a resident whose wife owns a business across the street
from the theater, raised concerns about the young people who come to
town for a movie, and wander the streets afterwards. “We can all see
the reality that the village is overwhelmed. There’s too many cars
screaming through, too many kids spilling onto the street from the
sidewalks,” he said. Esposito urged the board to reject the plan
saying, “Put a stake in the ground, reject the application and
preserve the character of the village.”
In the end, despite concerns over parking, traffic and young people,
the reasoning that the restaurant would draw its business from people
already in the village, and thus already occupying a parking space,
satisfied the board. Its members voted at the close of the meeting to
approve the project. It did, however, impose several conditions,
including a requirement that security personnel are provided for
weekend nights.
© 2004 Long Islander Newspapers, Inc.
Posted by omor at 11:20 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 12, 2004
Chinatown Situation
There is the Ketchup Trick: Guy comes up from behind and secretly
squirts ketchup on the unsuspecting target, then points out the stain
and offers to help, eventually picking the flustered person's pocket.
There are the second-story men, breaking into Chinatown apartments
from the fire escape while the residents are out, looting the place,
and leaving from the front door. Thieves from Brooklyn come over on
the train[*], snatch a few purses, and are back across the East River
before an Asian officer with the right dialect can take a report - if
the victim calls the police at all.
Like wide neckties and disco, even the old tricks come back. "When's
the last time you saw the rock-in-the-box?" an officer in civilian
clothes asks, jerking his thumb toward the man locked up in the
holding cell in the back room. The man had tried to sell the officer a
camcorder, still in the box, for $150 on Canal Street. Inside was a
hunk of concrete wrapped in paper.
[*] aka loot rail, NYT
Posted by omor at 02:06 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 03, 2004
Out nabes
While New York is legendary as a place where gays and lesbians can live openly
and free from prejudice, Mr. Briggs's story reveals a great deal about what might
be called the other gay New York. Life in this New York unfolds far from the
chiseled Chelsea boys, funky Village bars and relatively gay-friendly
neighborhoods like the Upper West Side and Park Slope, Brooklyn, that
represent the public image of gay life in the city.
In the farther reaches of the boroughs outside Manhattan, gay life is often harder
and nearly always more complicated. In these neighborhoods, the national
debate over gay marriage can be much less important than the search for a
doctor who does not squirm when talking about homosexual sex.
Cohabitating gay couples are more common in Manhattan than in the other
boroughs, according to the Gay and Lesbian Atlas, which was published this year
by the Urban Institute Press in Washington and used 2000 Census data to
determine where same-sex American couples live. But while burgeoning gay
enclaves exist in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and in Queens neighborhoods like
Jackson Heights, Astoria and Long Island City - all of which have above-average
concentrations of same-sex couples living together, according to the atlas - they
are more the exception than the rule.
For every neighborhood like Williamsburg, there are many more, like Howard
Beach in Queens, Pelham Parkway in the Bronx and Flatbush in Brooklyn, that
have relatively few gay couples living together, according to the atlas. (The data
do not account for single gays.) A map that shows concentrations of gay couples
in the city can be found at www.urban.org/pubs/gayatlas.
The difference plays out even in public celebrations. Hundreds of thousands of
people attended the 35th Annual Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Pride
March in Manhattan last month, and the Queens Pride and Brooklyn Pride
festivals drew their fair share of crowds. By contrast, events in the Bronx and
Staten Island were far more muted. The kickoff night of the Out Like That
Festival at the Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance drew only about 30 people. In
Staten Island, the main observance was a gathering at a Stapleton cafe.
Posted by dc at 12:18 AM | Comments (0)