By Dan Offner
The Village of Great Neck Board of Trustees voted unanimously on Tuesday to approve the purchase of 756 Middle Neck Road for a new village hall.
Following a more than two-hour-long Zoom teleconference, the board authorized the mayor to execute an agreement to purchase the site from Nexgen Properties for the negotiated price of $800,000.
Village Attorney Peter Bee said that as part of the agreement the board would need to approve two resolutions – a negative declaration decision required to pursue building and the contract of purchase.
“This is a parcel that we have looked at acquiring in different ways,” said Mayor Pedram Bral. “I think it would give the board the latitude to move forward with what the board has been planning for a while now, to move the Village Hall to Middle Neck Road.”
According to Bral, the purchase of the property would be for building a municipal office space. He said that this would allow the board to sell the space housing the current Village Hall to the school district for it to be able to expand.
Plans to sell Village Hall were floated to the board more than a year ago, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, as a way to help relieve stress to E.M. Baker Elementary School, which is located right behind the building.
The proposed sale would aim to alleviate any concerns that the district could have trouble accommodating more children, by providing more space. Given social distancing requirements, this may be necessary for educators hoping to return to school in the fall.
Resident Rebecca Gilliar said the developer of the property has been trying to unload that property for years and no one would buy it. Two years ago, Gilliar said, the developer offered the property to the mayor, for permission “to invade the residential area of Arrandale Avenue, which residents learned about and opposed.”
“It was on Memorial Day I saw the American flags on Middle Neck Road in our village flying on the poles below the banners celebrating the Iranian New Year that had been up for months,” Gilliar said. “Should I then be surprised that the mayor would discard village hall, a building of local historical significance, without as much as a public conversation? These things are un-American in form and substance.”
During the meeting, the village board also discussed setting a date to resume daytime time restrictions for parking.
“Given the fact that the phases are moving forward … I think that July 1st would be a good time to have things back to normal,” Bral said.
Deputy Mayor Barton Sobel proposed moving the date back to July 15 because he was concerned that there were still many people who have not gone back to work due to the COVID-19 pandemic and that the village shouldn’t enforce timed parking during the day if people are still home.
Bral replied that while the village does not want to do something that is going to make people’s lives more difficult, traffic has resumed to near normal levels and eventually the parking rules will need to go back into effect.
After some discussion, the board voted to table its decision, along with a decision on whether to install a stop sign at the corner of Steamboat Road and Old Tree Lane, until the next Board of Trustees meeting, scheduled for July 7.
