The Village of Great Neck Planning Board on Monday withheld the Academy Gardens application until the developer paid a fee for two consultants to conduct a racial impact study on the project, but the developer on Tuesday said they have agreed to pay the fee to have the application restored.
Planning board clerk Jeff Bush sent a letter on Aug. 4 to attorney Paul Bloom, a former planning board chairman who is representing developer Kings Point Gate Associates on the application, saying that the board “will withhold processing of your client’s application until your client” pays “$15,640, with respect to fees for consultants required by the Planning Board, and $17,545.45, to address accrued Village costs for which your client is responsible.”
“At such time as the obligations are satisfied, your client’s application will be restored,” Bush said.
A spokesman for Kings Point Gate Associates said on Tuesday that the company will pay the fee.
“The developer has agreed to pay for the study ordered by the Village Planning Board despite several objections,” said George Shea, a spokesman for Kings Point Gate Associates.
Charles Segal, chairman of the planning board, said in an e-mail statement “to my knowledge, as of around 9:45 am [Wednesday] morning, the deposits required had not been paid by the applicant.”
“At this point the application is suspended and will not appear on the August Agenda of the Board,” he said.
The fee was assessed after the planning board voted to hire, at Kings Point Gate’s expense, Columbia University professor Lance Freeman and engineering firm Nelson, Pope and Voorhis to study the proposed demolition of the rent-stabilized apartment complex to see if it would create an undue racial disparity in the Village of Great Neck.
Academy Gardens tenants and their supporters called for the board to hire an independent expert to research the socio-economic impact of the proposed demolition at a March 27 planning board meeting, saying that a review paid for by Bloom that showed the demolition would not create an undue racial disparity was biased.
Kings Point Gate said it does not believe the study falls in the jurisdiction of the planning board.
“The disparate impact study approved by the Board is not an appropriate action under [State Environmental Quality Review Act],” Shea said. “What’s more, the board claimed it was seeking and independent study and then chose a consultant handpicked by the tenants, raising serious questions about independence.”
Planning board members have said the study is necessary to ensure that the board is not violating the Fair Housing Act, which makes it illegal to deny residency to a person based off their background.
“This board has an obligation to follow the law,”board member Raymond Iryami said at a March 27 meeting.
The tenants of Academy Gardens have been in a months-long battle with Kings Point Gate Associates, the managing agent of the property, and David Adelipour, a former resident of Kings Point who owns the building, over a site-plan application for the market-rate units.
Kings Point Gate proposed the project to the planning board late last year, which would replace the apartment complex with a “three-story, multifamily apartment building” with 68 units, according to the group’s site plan application.
The company last week accused the tenants of using the issue of race to oppose the proposed demolition, rather than the merits of the application.
“It is unfortunate that people are working to inflame the issue and not to resolve it,” the company said.
Many of the tenants of Academy Gardens are low-income minority families who have said they could not afford to live in Great Neck if they were evicted from the apartments, which are located at the intersection of Middle Neck and Steamboat roads.
Julie Shields, president of the Academy Gardens tenant association, said in response to Kings Point Gate’s comments that “[David] Adelipour and his employees can accuse us of ‘politicizing’ this situation all they want, but it does not make it true.”
“Mr. Adelipour is motivated by the incessant search for more profit,” Shields said. “We are fighting for our homes.”
Kings Point Gate also said it would work with tenants to find new affordable housing units in the village, but Shields said the rent for those buildings would be more than they were paying now.
