As Nassau County voters went to the polls on election night, the Village of Great Neck’s Board of Trustees was focused on beginning the long process for rezoning Steamboat Road and Middle Neck Road.
The board is considering five bills on the rezoning, which Village of Great Neck Mayor Ralph Kreitzman said is still in its early planning stages and will be subject to several community meetings prior to a formal public meeting and a vote.
“We’re planning on having a couple of informal meetings, I don’t expect the whole board so it doesn’t have to be a public meeting,” Kreitzman said.
The first of the meetings is planned for Nov. 25, one at 5 p.m. and the other at 8 p.m to accommodate residents’ and business owners’ varying schedules. Kreitzman said he will invite local architects, contractors, and residents to the meeting.
The board invited two associates from the planning firm VHB to introduce the vision of rezoning Steamboat and Middle Neck Roads.
Lauren Wang from VHB described Middle Neck Road as a business district book-ended by multi-family residencies.
Wang said the firm recommends the condensing of the business district to make it more walkable.
“Back in the summer a few colleagues and I took a walk down both [the] Middle Neck and Steamboat corridors. We took a look at the land uses that were there, the building conditions and then began to think about what we propose on this corridor based on the previous work that has been done,” Wang said during her explanation of the firms early zoning planning.
For Steamboat Road, Wang says the firm envisions an end product that will incentivize multi-family homes and townhouses.
The town would have to make changes the village code to permit some of the recommendations such as permitting apartments, she said.
