After scrapping their most recent application to open a butcher shop, the owners of the Shop Delight supermarket are taking a third crack at expanding in Great Neck.
According to a conditional-use permit application filed in the Village of Great Neck Plaza, Shop Delight is seeking to operate a storage facility, administrative office and location for preparing goods in a vacant storefront three stores down from the supermarket.
Mike Karam, one of Shop Delight’s owners, said in early May that he was considering withdrawing the butcher shop application because of the lengthy conditional-use permit application process.
At the May 4 Great Neck Plaza Board of Trustees meeting, the application was officially withdrawn.
Discussions for the proposed butcher shop began on Jan. 6, drawing immediate criticism from the village board and residents.
While some members of the Great Neck Plaza’s Board of Trustees had said they liked the butcher shop proposal, they expressed concerns over violations of Shop Delight’s existing conditional-use permit and traffic safety.
Trustees charged on Jan. 6 that the supermarket had repeatedly violated a conditional-use permit that restricts deliveries to 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday through Wednesday and complained that trucks parked and offloaded on the street rather than in offloading zones.
Residents also appeared at board meetings saying that they had seen delivery trucks arriving between 4 and 5 in the morning, causing a disturbance to the neighborhood.
In response to a Great Neck News article saying that Shop Delight received only seven violations in eight years, Mayor Jean Celender of Great Neck Plaza said court records did not paint the whole picture.
“That isn’t the whole picture because if people pay the ticket and it is issued to the truck driver, there’s no way in our system to show it was given out at 4 Welwyn and related to this business,” Celender said.
According to the application, the new location is expecting deliveries between 9 a.m. and 1 p.m.
The application states that if Shop Delight is able to open the operation as a storage facility, it would reduce the number of deliveries on a weekly basis, create a drop-off area in the rear of the store for deliveries that would not interfere with traffic or parking and speed up the unloading process so trucks spend less time on site.
Shop Delight’s owners also received resistance during their first attempt at opening a second operation in the Village of Great Neck Estates.
Great Neck Estates trustees rejected an application for a second Shop Delight at their July 13, 2015, meeting after the applicants failed to file an amended application after several months of contentious public hearings.
Village of Great Neck Estates trustees had expressed a wide range of concerns with the supermarket proposal at the former location of a Rite Aid — about a half mile from the Welwyn Road location —including increased traffic, trucks making deliveries and odors from cooking problems related to the Great Neck Plaza supermarket.
The new storage facility application is expected to be discussed at the Aug. 3 Great Neck Plaza board meeting at 8 p.m.
Efforts to reach Karam for comment were unavailing.
