Proposed garbage truck parking lot get thumbs-down from Inwood residents at town board meeting

Inwood residents on the western end of Bayview Avenue want to stop a proposed parking lot for garbage trucks in an area where single-family homes abut commercial properties.

A company registered in Westchester called Inwood Bayville LLC is seeking to rezone residential property  at the southeast corner of Bayview Avenue and Cherry Street so the vacant lot could be paved to hold 29 dump trucks.

Residents raised concerns about the smell, traffic and safety in a neighborhood where children ride bikes, and the potential to hurt home values

"How would you like a dump storage site within 20 feet of your home?” Ameera Gomes, who lives across the street from the lot, asked during the hearing. “The smell is going to be there in the summer months.”

Gomes said her children’s school bus picks them up in front of the vacant lot and they had already experienced traffic backups because other trucks regularly blocked the street.

“We bought the house thinking to give our kids a better future as far as a better school district,” Gomes said. “Now we're in a mess. We have trucks blocking us and now we're going to be having dump trucks literally feet away from our home.

“That's not something you want for your growing family,” she said.

The lawyer for the project, Steven Schlesinger, partner at Garden City-based Jaspan Schlesinger Narendran LLP, said the area was industrial and the parking lot would not be out of place, noting other companies on the street already created truck traffic.

“This is an industrial area,” Schlesinger told the board. “There's no other rational use for a property like this other than industrial.”

The law firm also works for the Town of Hempstead. Last month, the Hempstead Town Board approved retaining Jaspan Schlesinger Narendran to provide the town with up to $100,000 in legal services related to urban renewal projects in 2024. 

Town spokesman Brian Devine said in an email Thursday "the Town does not believe there is a conflict of interest" with the law firm representing both the town and a private company bringing business before the town board.

Property records show Eckstein Bayview LLC, a company registered in Manhattan, according to state records, purchased the property in 2022 for $930,000. The applicant wants to change the property’s zoning from resident B, which allows for single-family homes, to light industrial in the hamlet in the Five Towns area of Hempstead.

Residents pushed back on that change.

“It's a residential area, it's not commercial,” resident Megan Milligan told the board. “It's been taken over by commercial areas … I would just like for it to stay residential.”

Schlesinger said the dump trucks would cause minimal traffic impact.

“You're talking about trucks that come once a day in and once a day out,” the lawyer said. 

Deputy Town Supervisor Dorothy Goosby said the company needed to talk with and listen to the residents.

“I'm listening to them and they're talking about the things that are there now that weren't there when they purchased their homes,” Goosby said at the hearing.

Town Supervisor Donald X. Clavin Jr. said the town would provide information about the resident speakers so they could communicate with those residents. 

The town board closed the hearing but reserved a vote on the zoning change to an unspecified future date.