Holbrook apartment complex looks to lift age restrictions

A Holbrook apartment complex originally designed for a mix of senior and non-senior residences is seeking to lift age restrictions on all units.

Broadway Knolls, located on Veterans Memorial Highway and Broadway Avenue, is a 284-unit complex originally zoned for mixed use with a 66 percent senior requirement, attorney Paul Aniboli said at the Islip Town planning board meeting Thursday.

Over the years, “because there was no distinction drawn between where the senior units and non-senior units would be, it became a non-senior place and the town cannot enforce the code,” Aniboli told the board.

Aniboli is seeking a zoning change to allow the complex to become all-ages housing, in which case 56 units would become affordable housing to meet the town’s requirement for that kind of zoning. No additional construction would be performed, he said.

“Practically, you will have the same complex,” he said.

The complex also would pay the town a $673,000 mitigation fee for a fund to convert blighted properties in Islip into affordable housing.

Planning board commissioner David Genaway said the proposal’s impacts are “pretty negligible.”

“I would characterize this as a technical anomaly,” he said, noting that “the prospects of the $673,000 fee for affordable housing is extraordinary.”

The board reserved making a decision on the proposal until a future meeting.

The board next meets on Sept. 12.