Long Island builder seeks OK to turn office into 20-unit apartment building near Nautical Mile

A local builder will have to scale back his proposal to convert his company's Freeport office and adjacent construction yard into a 20-unit apartment building, the village's zoning board said during a public hearing last week. 

Ben Jackson, who has owned Ben's General Contracting Corp. for 45 years, said he is evaluating whether it will be feasible to move forward with a potentially smaller apartment building on his Suffolk Street property just off the Nautical Mile.

The Freeport Village Zoning Board of Appeals adjourned its hearing of Jackson's application for a zoning change and multiple variances without a vote on Sept. 18 and told Jackson he could modify his plan and resubmit the application, said Howard Colton, the village's attorney. 

Jackson said converting the building to apartments is his best option after he failed to attract a buyer for the property, which is home to his residential and commercial construction business. 

The 3,600-square-foot building was listed for $1.4 million earlier this year, according to a property listing. It includes office space and an upstairs apartment.

Jackson, who sits on the village’s zoning board, recused himself from consideration of the application, which proposed a nearly 20,000-square-foot addition to the existing building. He said the conversion is needed to recoup the $1.1 million he’s invested in the property, including his initial $350,000 purchase of the building in 2013.

“My business has changed where I don’t need as much room as I have. It’s kind of downsizing in a way," Jackson said. "I’ve had it up for sale for over a year and a half and nobody can get me close to what I even put into it. Financially, it’s become quite a burden.”

Long Islanders recently identified the cost of housing as a major factor that hurts the quality of life here. Eighty-five percent of respondents to a recent Newsday/Siena Research Institute survey rated the availability of affordable housing either fair or poor. Of respondents who were renters, 94% rated that measure fair or poor.

In Freeport, which had about 44,000 residents in 2023, about 29% of households rent their homes. That’s higher than the rate in Nassau County of about 18% in 2023, according to the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey five-year estimates.

Earlier this week, there were 13 rental listings in Freeport on Apartments.com, ranging from a studio apartment for $1,895 a month to a three-bedroom, 2½ -bathroom house renting for $6,000 a month.

The median single-family home price in Freeport was $640,000 among 101 sales that closed during the first half of 2025. That was 6.8% higher than during the same six-month stretch a year earlier, according to data from brokerage Douglas Elliman and appraisal firm Miller Samuel.

“People can’t afford to buy homes,” Jackson said. “People need a place to live. I’m not looking to get high-end numbers for it, but for it to work, I think market rate is the way to go.”

Freeport Mayor Robert T. Kennedy declined to comment on the project last week while it is under consideration by the zoning board of appeals, which operates independently.

Other recent housing development in Freeport include the 200-unit Gardens at Buffalo, which is due to open next summer on the site of the former Moxey Rigby apartments. That complex had provided low-income housing for more than 50 years before Superstorm Sandy damaged the building. In 2023, the nonprofit developer Selfhelp opened the Allan and Geraldine Rosenberg Residence, a 45-unit affordable housing development for adults 55 and over on South Bergen Place.

Jackson has several hurdles to clear to win approval to build on the Freeport site.

In July, the village’s Department of Buildings denied a permit for the project because it failed to comply with village zoning rules. The reasons given included that multifamily housing isn’t a permitted use in the building’s zoning district; the building height would exceed the allowable height of 40 feet by 10 inches; the lot size, at 0.26 acres, is too small for 20 apartments; and the building would cover more of the lot than is allowed under zoning rules.

The building is currently in a district zoned for marine commerce, which allows boating and fishing businesses as well as restaurants among other uses.

Zoning rules also would require the apartment building to have 30 parking spaces, and only 21 are available at the site.

Jackson said he will consider whether a smaller development would be viable before resubmitting his application. 

By Jonathan LaMantia

jonathan.lamantia@newsday.com@jonlamantia

Jonathan LaMantia covers residential real estate and other business news on Long Island. He previously covered the business of health care for Crain's New York Business.