Port North Adopts Moratorium on Waterfront

The high point of Wednesday night's Village of Port Washington North Board of Trustees meeting centered on the adoption of a temporary moratorium on its waterfront and surrounding properties.

The effective moratorium will affect the area "2,000 feet from the high water mark," as one trustee put it.

"We feel, as a village, that we need to expand our waterfront and start looking at the use of the waterfront property," said Mayor Robert Weitzner, in response to the unanimous vote on the moratorium. "We're hearing a lot of different things. Trustee Michael Malatino said someone wants to put a car dealership on the front lawn or a drug store ... or something across the street from our waterfront community. We want to make sure we understand the best use for those spaces as well."

The mayor added, "It's really protecting Shore Road," an area that many see as the gem of the Village of Port Washington North.

John Magnani, a commercial real estate broker and concerned resident in Port Washington North, said he has had disheartening past experiences with moratoriums in Port Washington North. "Under the last board, they did a moratorium which affected me," said the owner of a double lot in Port Washington North. "Mill Pond Acres was on the agenda and they stopped all potential people like me from improving our property to help out Mill Pond Acres. They didn't want too many things coming online at the same time."

Magnani said moratoriums like this often affect property owners like himself. "We disagreed with the board at the time because we felt it was an imposition on us," he said. "Effectively, I was going to market my property and I couldn't because we weren't allowed to develop my land. So I'm always a little bit skittish about moratoriums affecting where I live."

Magnani's property does not fall within the 2,000-f00t area of this particular moratorium, however members of the board said they understood his concerns with it and its direct impact on the well-being of local businesses.

"We apologize and we know that if anyone has plans, whether it's for the betterment of the village or the betterment of themselves, that someone is going to be inconvenienced when the moratorium goes in," Mayor Weitzner said empathetically. "We understand that and we don't like it, but we also understand that without some sort of break system, things can just run crazy and people start just putting in things that don't conform or aren't consistent with we're looking for."

Magnani's concerns for the economic and social status of the village came as honorable to the board. Trustee Michael Schenkler explained the village has invested millions of dollars into the waterfront and that they want that money to go to good use. "We have to protect that," Schenkler said. "We can't let the waterfront area rot."