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After submitting a July 6th letter to the Town of Oyster Bay advising of their “…formal withdrawal of all aspects of the pending application…” (for a 300 unit rental complex), on August 8th Avalon purchased the former Hallock site (across from the existing BMW dealership) for $8.68 million. We have recently learned that Avalon intends to submit a brand new application to the Town for the construction of a rental complex. We respectfully urge you to maintain focus on this very important issue.
Use of the site for residential purposes is currently prohibited, as it is zoned “light industrial/general business”, permitting uses such as light manufacturing (like Mill-Max- employing a lot of people, paying a lot of taxes, and a generous, unobtrusive neighbor to this community for over 25 years), office space, and warehouses, with potential special permission granted for uses such as supermarkets and other retail sales. For any site zoned residential, the highest density permitted within the Town for anything other than senior or public housing is 16 units per acre. Applying this standard to the 5-acre site, the maximum number of units allowed would be 80. In instances such as this where the developer must seek a “change of zone”, the Town often requires that certain reasonable restrictions be in place as a condition of such zoning change. Many times, the restriction is in reducing the number of units per acre to an amount less than the maximum. As a result, there are very few, if any, sites within the Town that are actually developed at the maximum density of 16 units per acre in such circumstances.
Avalon has expressed publicly on many occasions that they are in the sole business of building high density rental complexes. Although we fully understand that the details of any such development must be weighed at disclosure, whatever the number of units or vehicles or toilets flushed, rental prices, or size of the buildings, we ask that, if you reflect on nothing else, you consider the fact that any such high density rental development proposed by Avalon will establish the basis for radical change to the character of this community and, in all likelihood, to every community throughout the entire Town of Oyster Bay.
We believe that Supervisor Venditto’s strong message to Avalon less than 3 months ago was in recognition of the fact that the original Avalon proposal could not be considered in a vacuum, but instead viewed for the terrible precedent it would set for the future of Oyster Bay-East Norwich and the Town as a whole. As with the first application, the importance of the Town’s decision in connection with the new Avalon proposal cannot be emphasized enough. If approved (be it for 100, 125, or 150 units or more), it is essentially a springboard from which every other similarly-situated property in this community might apply for uses of like kind, size, and burden. Should Avalon once again seek to create a brand new Town-wide zoning category, it will have enormous consequences throughout the entire Town of Oyster Bay, resulting in a cumulative burden to our and every community’s local environment, infrastructure, and daily life that will be irreversible.
We appreciate the importance of housing for Long Island’s workforce population, young professionals, and seniors. In fact, except for the City of Long Beach (with almost the same percentage as the Hamlet of Oyster Bay- 43%), there is not a single community cited in Avalon’s reports with a higher percentage of rental units than the Hamlet. However, we firmly believe that such housing should not come at the expense of a community’s character, local environmental resources, and infrastructure; should not result in a burden to the community as a whole; and must be appropriate to the zoning of the particular property targeted for development.
We urge the Town and the community to remain cognizant of the zoning laws that currently exist and seek a use that remains within those responsible parameters.
