Politics & Government

P.C. Richard Expansion Plan OKed

Site plan to expand its Northern Boulevard store was unanimously approved by the North Hempstead Town Board at its December meeting.

After two years of negotiations, P.C. Richard & Son's 's site plan to expand its Northern Boulevard store was unanimously approved by the North Hempstead Town Board at its Dec. 8 meeting.

Councilman Thomas Dwyer called the process working toward a plan that both P.C. Richard and local residents could agree on "long and arduous" and said he commended the electronics retailer for their work.

"There have been maybe a dozen or even 15 to 20 meetings over two years," Councilman Dwyer said. "Originally this was a request on my part. I didn't know there was going to be 20 meetings, but I wanted to make sure the community was on board with the changes and modifications that were going to be made to the neighborhood."

P.C. Richard seeks to construct a one-story, 14,920-square-foot addition to an existing 25,574-square-foot store at 51 Northern Boulevard in Greenvale.

Attorney for the applicant, Bruce W. Migatz of the Garden City firm Albanese and Albanese, agreed that approval of the plan had been a "long road" and noted that the original application had been for a much larger expansion.

"P.C. Richard celebrated 100 years this year. When this started, they were celebrating their 98th," Migatz said. "But the road was not traveled in vain and we think we have a project that will be supported by the community and hopefully looked on favorably by this board."

Migatz noted that the applicant originally submitted plans for a "much larger store" but after meeting with community members, the expansion was downscaled. "We went back to the drawing board and made the building smaller and smaller and it got to a point where it no longer needed a change of zone," he said. "The new addition at this point could be achieved by a conditional use change and that was granted by the [Town of North Hempstead's Zoning Board of Appeals] in June."

In addition the company agreed to set aside one acre of the three-acre site as a green space buffer to the residential community to the north of the building's 90-space parking lot, adjust lighting to maintain safety without intruding on residents' quality of life, and to maintain a single egress/ingress to Northern Boulevard. The driveway will also moved slightly to the east.

Migatz said that the original zone change application has been continued to next month by the BZA. "If this application approval is granted today, that will be withdrawn," he said.

Greenvale Civic Association President John Fabio said that his group appreciated P.C. Richard & Son's "willingness to go back to the drawing board and address some of our concerns" that led to the reduction of the size of the addition as well as the changes to the exterior. But, he said, the group had remaining concerns about how the presumably heavier traffic heading in to the larger store would affect safety on Northern Boulevard.

"But only time will tell how it impacts the community," Fabio said. "Hopefully it will not be a substantial negative impact and we will continue to work with P.C. Richard during the construction and even after. We hope to continue our relationship and the door is open and we can come to them and resolve any oustanding issues. So I would say, on balance, we endorse the plan."

Town Planning Commissioner Mike Levine said his department had extensively reviewed the plan and, after changes were made to lessen the amount of paved surface and to keep the undeveloped acre as a buffer making the application consisten with the town's master plan, are "ready to recommend approval of the plan."

Town Supervisor Jon Kaiman held the project up as a "testament of what can happen when local government and the community come together and work together" to a better end.

"This is not the same plan that was presented in the beginning," Kaiman said. "It's smaller in scale, the design has been changed and this is going to be a pretty attractive building as far as commercial buildings go, certainly more so than a traditional P.C. Richard design and is much more consistent with the character of the local community The reality is, because of the civic association's input and P.C. Richard's cooperation, all combined it led to a much better project."


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