Port Washington North weighs extension for Bombay Kitchen over odor issue

The Village of Port Washington North is weighing whether to grant a commercial food processor a one-year extension to operate following complaints of an odor emanating from the property.

Bombay Kitchen’s conditional use permit was set to expire on Sept. 15, but the village has extended the date until Oct. 15 to give the processor more time to address the issues. Mayor Robert Weitzner said in an interview he would prefer not to punish a local business, but added the owner would need to remediate the odor for the yearlong extension of the conditional use permit.

“It is a very difficult situation," Weitzner said in an interview. "Residents are upset, I get it. But you also have a business that's doing well, and in this economy right now, the last thing you want to do is just throw out a business and end up losing tax revenue, and possibly litigation. Who wants that?"

Michael Sahn, the Uniondale attorney representing Bombay Kitchen, said in an interview that the processor's owner, Sanjiv Mody, is "sympathetic" to residents' concerns.

"He is doing everything he can to fully abate the issue," Sahn said. "If it's bothersome to people, he'd like to correct that."

The commercial food processor, at 85 Channel Dr., is in the village’s light industrial zone and abuts a residential area. It was first granted a permit in 2019 and opened that same year, with subsequent one-year permits approved each year since. Bombay Kitchen needs a conditional use permit because commercial food processing is not a stated use for the zone.

There are no other commercial food processors operating in the zone, Weitzner said. Permitted uses include offices, research laboratories, storage facilities, libraries and more.

Bombay Kitchen produces a variety of frozen Indian food products, including mattar paneer, chole, lamb rogan josh and more. The aroma is "syrupy sweet" with a "pungent burnt" quality, Matthew Kepke, a village trustee, said in an interview. It comes from the food production process, Sahn said.

Bombay Kitchen has ordered a scrubber system from CaptiveAire, Sahn said, and it is set to be shipped on Sept. 23. Sahn said it might not be fully installed and functioning until after the Oct. 15 public hearing — and for that reason, he plans to seek another extension.

"It's the type of system that once it's installed and operational, it needs to be calibrated and adjusted to function at optimal quality to remove odors," Sahn said. "Our hope is, and the client's goal is, to continue to work with the village, be collaborative, get it installed and move forward without any issues."

Sahn said the scrubber is designed to "take these odors and filter them out, so what's exhausted out of the building does not have any odors."

The village board voted 4-1 to grant the business the one-month extension at a trustees' meeting in August.

Kepke was the lone trustee to vote against it. He said the aroma streams out about a quarter mile outside of the processor into the residential area. Nearly a dozen residents have complained to him about the smell, he said.

"It's not a pleasant smell for someone to have going on constantly in a residential area," Kepke said. "There's a lot of concern generally about things in the atmosphere we don't know about."

Weitzner is hopeful the scrubber will remediate the issue.

"This better work, or there's going to be fireworks," Weitzner said. "He's going to be denied a permit, and he's going to have to shut his business down."

By Joshua Needelman

joshua.needelman@newsday.com

Joshua Needelman covers the Town of North Hempstead for Newsday. A Long Island native and University of Maryland graduate, his work has appeared in publications including The New York Times and The Washington Post.