Board nixes developer's parking plan

By N. Clark Judd

Community Board 8’s land use committee voted Monday night to recommend that the Board of Standards and Appeals deny a controversial application for an apartment building and commercial parking garage on Irwin Avenue.

North Manhattan Construction Co., the developer, has repeatedly sent representatives to Riverdale to make the case that the company’s proposed 11-story building on Irwin Avenue should be allowed to have 67 more parking spaces than the site’s zoning regulations permit. Those spaces would be used as an attended commercial parking lot.

Josh Rinesmith of Sheldon Lobel P.C., the developer’s attorney, made the case that since the bedrock there is unstable — it’s the same site where the Riverdale Avenue retaining wall collapsed in 2002 — the site is expensive to build on, and it needs the parking spaces so the project’s value will eventually offset the cost.

The law allows for so-called “hardship variances,” but land use committee chairman Charles Moerdler contended at the meeting that the developer had not provided enough evidence to support his case. Mr. Moerdler said the developer has also not sufficiently studied the impact a commercial parking garage would have on traffic along Irwin Avenue, a small, residential street.

Several Irwin Avenue residents came to the meeting, signs in hand, to encourage the board to denounce the project. Mr. Moerdler’s apparent agreement with their cause was met with cheers. At a July 31 public meeting, the development’s neighbors worried that increased traffic would present a hazard for children and older adults living nearby.

In remarks before the board, Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz told Mr. Rinesmith he didn’t think it was the community’s job to subsidize North Manhattan Construction’s project by suffering through increased traffic.

“I was actually astounded when you started to build here,” he said.

After Mr. Rinesmith finished his presentation, Mr. Moerdler offered him a chance to ask the BSA to sit on the developer’s application until he could provide the community board with more information, including a traffic study, an engineering report and financial statements to support the assertion that the bedrock on the site led to increased costs, any documents proving that the developer did not know the site would be so expensive before purchasing it, and any correspondence from the BSA.

Mr. Rinesmith said Mr. Moerdler could find answers to his questions in material he had already supplied.

The measure will come before the full board on Wednesday, Nov. 12.

This is part of the November 6, 2008 online edition of The Riverdale Press.

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