Plans for a proposed butcher shop operated by Shop Delight’s owners three stores down from the supermarket on Welwyn Road have officially been sliced.
Village of Great Neck Plaza Mayor Jean Celender said Paul Bloom, who was representing Shop Delight owners Mike Karam and Edward Yakupov during conditional-use permit talks, submitted a letter to the village Wednesday prior to the Board of Trustees meeting stating that the applicants have withdrawn their application.
“We are writing to advise that our client has decided to withdraw the application,” the letter read, according to Celender.
She said there was no additional information or explanation in the letter as to why they withdrew the application.
Yakupov and Bloom first appeared at a Plaza board meeting on Jan. 6 seeking approval for a conditional-use permit to “relocate” the supermarket’s existing meat department into an empty storefront on Welwyn Road.
The proposal was almost immediately met with criticism by trustees, who cited consistent permit violations at the supermarket related to food truck deliveries and safety concerns.
At the Feb. 3 meeting, Village Attorney Richard Gabriele asked Bloom to return to the board with documentation addressing the trustees’ concerns regarding the ownership of the proposed butcher shop and Shop Delight, food delivery information including frequency of deliveries, identity of deliverers, what they deliver, delivery times and size of trucks and if Yakupov would fund a code enforcement officer either through the store or through the village.
Though Bloom provided some documentation to the board, trustees said, what was submitted did not satisfy their concerns and ownership details remained unaddressed.
At the April 6 board meeting, Karam told the board they were not majority owners of the butcher shop operation and that he and Yakupov sought and found professional butchers to partner with them and operate the store full-time.
Deputy Mayor Ted Rosen said if Yakupov and Karam were not majority partners of the butcher shop then the board would prefer the majority partners to appear in front of it before deciding on whether to grant the conditional-use permit.
“If you’re telling us that the people who are going to control the new operation are not [Karam] and [Yakupov], I think we cannot continue to hear this until these gentlemen come before us,” Rosen said. “And we have to make a determination as to what they’re going to tell us.”
Now four months since the application was first presented to the board, Karam and Yakupov said on Monday that the lengthy permit application process has taken its toll on them and their wallets.
Yakupov said they have been paying $10,000 a month in rent for the empty storefront in anticipation of receiving conditional-use permit approval.
Karam said that instead of the butcher shop, they were considering filing a new application to open a commissary in the same location.
Village Clerk-Treasurer Patricia O’Byrne said no new applications have been submitted to the village.
This wasn’t the first time Shop Delight’s owners have failed to receive approval to operate a new store.
Village of Great Neck Estates trustees rejected an application to put a second Shop Delight in Great Neck at their July 13, 2015 meeting after Yakupov failed to file an amended application after several months of contentious public hearings.
Trustees had expressed a wide range of concerns with the supermarket proposal at the former location of a Rite Aid on Middle Neck Road — about a half mile from the Welwyn Road location —including increased traffic, trucks making deliveries, odors from cooking problems related to the Great Neck Plaza supermarket.
Also at Wednesday’s meeting, the board unanimously voted to approve an agreement with a credit card payment service for the village’s parking meters.
Celender said the village and parking services company, ParkMobile, have an agreement for it to collect payments from residents who would prefer to pay parking meters by credit card rather than feeding the meter with quarters.
She also said prior to speaking with ParkMobile, she spoke with other municipalities on Long Island who utilize its service.
“Hopefully it is going to be a seamless integration,” Celender said. “Many of the villages that I called to do due diligence on this were very happy with how they operated.”
While ParkMobile would make parking meter payments more “convenient” for residents, she said, the company would charge a 45-cent fee per transaction.
Village Attorney Richard Gabriele said ParkMobile agreed to keep the transaction fee at that rate for at least a year and give the village a 60-day notice if it intends to increase the fee.
Gabriele also said the village could cancel the agreement if it did not believe a transaction fee increase was necessary.
The next board meeting is on May 18.
