Huntington school board opposes new housing

Huntington School District trustees have voted to send a letter to the town zoning board to express their opposition to more high-density housing in Huntington Station.

The letter was triggered by a Huntington Housing Authority plan to rehab four buildings and build new senior housing on the grounds of the authority's Gateway Gardens complex. The complex, on Lowndes Avenue, now has 30 single-family and 10 senior units in six buildings. It also has a community center and an administrative building.

School board president Bill Dwyer said the board - which voted in July to close Jack Abrams school, one block from the housing site, because of community concerns about violence in the area - is taking the step because it's the de facto voice of the community.

"Like it or not, by pulling students out of Jack Abrams we have injected ourselves into the issues surrounding the Huntington Station community at large," Dwyer said. "So an attempt to add more high-density housing to the area serves to exacerbate a problem which many in the community feel has not been properly addressed."

The board voted early last week to send the letter ahead of a Jan. 27 zoning board of appeals meeting.

William Spencer, chairman of the Huntington Housing Authority, said the school board might be "overstepping."

"I think the school is acting as a political organization," Spencer said. "If it was family housing where there was going to be an impact on the number of children in the district I could understand it. But I'm concerned with what the school board is trying to express with their objections to this project."

The authority plans to request a zoning variance to build a 30-unit, four-story building on the property for seniors, rehab four existing buildings inside and out, and tear down a one-story building with 10 units and replace it with a two-story building with 16 units, also for seniors.

"Technically it's at a higher density if you look at units,"Spencer said. "But the units that we are building are . . . [fewer] bedrooms so we are not increasing in terms of the actual density of housing in the area.".

However, Spencer said the project is being reconfigured based on community feedback, both pro and con. One option might be to reduce the four-story building to three stories with 20 units and make the proposed two-story building a three-story building with 26 units. The new units would all be one-bedroom senior housing.

Spencer said the project has been on the drawing board for a couple of years. The developer, Lake Success-based D&F Development Group, was selected through an RFP process and only recently signed a contract with the housing authority.Spencer said there is a Feb. 8 deadline in order to secure $20 million in available state funding, which comes with a 9 percent tax credit.