Hempstead Town Board OKs zoning change, variances for Baldwin gas station

The Hempstead Town Board approved a zoning change and variances for a controversial gas station project in Baldwin without discussion last week.

The town board granted an application by Baldwin 792 LLC, a company registered in Great Neck, to include it in the town’s Gasoline Service Station District, a zoning overlay that adds requirements to commercial-zoned properties that operate as gas stations. The town board also granted the planned 24-hour gas station to be built on the southeastern corner of Atlantic and Grand avenues more than half a dozen variances, including a waiver to allow it to be sited within 1,000 feet of other gas stations and certain auto maintenance businesses. 

A closed bank currently occupies the site of the proposed gas station.

Residents at the Barclay Condominiums at Baldwin Harbor, a condominium development that abuts the site of the planned new gas station, vehemently opposed the project at a Dec. 5 hearing when it first came before the board, raising concerns over potential health risks from benzene exposure, traffic and noise and light pollution.

“We're going to keep fighting,” Jeanette Vesey, a resident and vice president of the condo association, said in an interview last week after the board’s decision.

Vesey said the board’s action took residents by surprise. She said she had called Councilwoman Laura Ryder’s office on an almost weekly basis since December to find out when the item would come up again but that she learned it was on the agenda the day before last week’s meeting when she was called by a reporter.

The Dec. 5 hearing had been adjourned without a date set to continue. In a video of the meeting May 7 voices from the floor are audible as the board votes to close the hearing and approve the project.

“No screaming at the town board meeting,” Town Supervisor Donald X. Clavin Jr. said in the video. In response to additional comments from the floor, Clavin said, “There is no hearing on the decision calendar,” referring to the decision on Baldwin 792.

Vesey said residents who showed up last week expected that they would be heard.

“They would not allow us to speak,” she said of last week’s hearing.

Following residents’ comments at the Dec. 5 hearing, Clavin took a different approach to residents’ concerns, telling the developer, “I think there's work to be done.”

The developer’s attorney, William Bonesso, of Uniondale-based Forchelli Deegan Terrana LLP, replied at that meeting, "We are prepared to meet and continue to meet with them."

No additional meetings were held, however, according to Bonesso and Vesey.

On Friday, Bonesso said in an interview that a meeting hadn't been necessary after the Dec. 5 hearing but that the developer plans to meet with the condo association in the future to hear their concerns. 

“Even though we’ve been approved, we’re prepared to meet with them and see if there’s anything else they want us to do,” Bonesso said. “The original ask was basically don’t build a gas station and convenience store and that wasn’t acceptable to us. But if there are other things that are reasonable, additional accommodations that we can make, we’re prepared to do that.”

Bonesso said his client has taken steps to mitigate resident concerns, agreeing to put up an 8-foot wall to block sound and 14-foot trees, and to design lighting to reduce light spillage.

“They are right next to a commercial property so anything that goes on that site is going to generate some light, activity, noise,” Bonesso said. “That’s just the nature of living next to a commercially zoned property next to a busy intersection.”

Bonesso said the project still needs additional approvals from Nassau County and the town but he expects construction to begin by the end of the year.