Developer plans senior housing, retail at former Syosset mobile home park

Senior housing and mixed-use development could rise from the former site of a mobile home park in Syosset.

Woodbury developer Paul Laruccia has asked the Oyster Bay Town Board for a special-use permit and a zoning change to build 61 units of senior housing and 44 market-rate rental apartments on 5.7 acres at 80 Jericho Tpke. Laruccia’s company, 80 Jericho Turnpike LLC, purchased the properties after the residents of the mobile park had been evicted in 2016. 

“We always asked the town planning and development [department] what are the needs that we can satisfy so we can push this thing along,” Laruccia said in an interview. “The big thing was the senior housing development in the back.”

Maureen Fitzgerald, Oyster Bay commissioner of youth and community services, told the town board at a Jan. 28 hearing on the project that the town’s waiting list for co-ops in its “Golden Age” housing program for seniors is 146 in Syosset and 976 in Oyster Bay.

Under the proposal, the developer seeks to subdivide the property, which is currently made up of several lots, into a northern lot and a southern lot. The senior housing would be in the southern lot and named Gramercy Park. It would consist of five two-story buildings and a recreation center.

Rezoning it from light-industrial use to senior citizen residence district would allow the developer to build 25 units per acre. The Golden Age program requires the purchaser to be at least 62 and sets income and resale requirements to keep the housing affordable, according to town officials.

The federal government sued Oyster Bay in 2014 over alleged discriminatory practices in its Golden Age housing program. The suit is ongoing and alleges the town’s preference for town residents in the programs, effectively excluding African Americans, who make up a small percentage of Oyster Bay’s population. The town denied the allegations and is in settlement discussions with the government, according to court filings.

Laruccia seeks to build a three-story building, called Tribeca Square, on the northern lot, which abuts Jericho Turnpike. The building includes 44 rental apartments on the top two floors along with a gym, lounge and rooftop garden for residents. The ground floor would be commercial space. The mixed-use requires a special-use permit from the town. The developer would also seek to have a traffic signal installed on Jericho Turnpike for vehicles entering and exiting the complex.

The project would displace an existing sandwich shop on Jericho Turnpike.

“We have served the community for a long, long time; 48 years,” Scott Merandi, owner of Village Heros, told the town board. “I would just like not to see Village Heros leave.”

The developer’s attorney, Louis Soloway, partner at East Meadow law firm Certilman Balin Adler & Hyman LLP, told the board there have been preliminary talks with the sandwich shop.

“We've been talking about him being our first tenant,” Soloway said. “We want to keep him, he wants to stay. If the dollars and cents work out, he's going to be there.”

The Town Board reserved its decision on the application for a later date.