Does the mayor of Village of Great Neck, Dr. Pedram Bral, deserve to be blamed for the apartment building developments on the Great Neck peninsula?
No new zoning laws were legislated during the time since Dr. Bral has been a mayor. Needless to say that, without any exceptions, all the pro-development zoning laws were legislated during Bral’s predecessors, e.g., Ralph Kreitzman.
No new zoning laws were legislated since Dr. Pedram Bral has been the mayor, yet among the “easily-convincible” individuals, Bral is blamed for the overdevelopments all over Great Neck, often for the surrounding villages and beyond.
The law is clear. The Board of Trustees and the mayor cannot disallow construction of any new projects which are permitted under the current zoning laws legislated by the previous administration.
Does it make sense to deny the landowners of what they are entitled to build? Clearly, if the owners of the properties eligible under the current zooming laws for apartment building are denied of their rights to build what is allowable, “as of rights,” the village would be facing indefensible pricey lawsuits which are going to be financed by the taxpayers.
How about if the Village of Great Neck Mayor and/or the Board of Trustees come up with new zoning legislations, which would impose restrictions on what is currently allowed for construction of apartment buildings (the zoning laws inherited from the previous mayor, Ralph Kreitzman for multi-family buildings on the major streets)?
That also would lead to indefensible lawsuits for the Village of Great Neck at the cost of taxpayers. The landmark case pertaining to the situation described above was decided in 2005 by the United States Supreme Court Lingle v. Chevron U.S.A. Inc., 554 U.S. 528. Lingle v. Chevron U.S.A. Inc. bars any new regulation which deprives a property owner of all economically beneficial uses of their property and the precedent previously created in Agins v. City of Tiburon 447 U.S. 255 (1980) was expressly overruled.
Lingle v. Chevron constrains Mayor Bral or the Board Trustees of the Village of Great Neck to cancel or vote against the previous legislations as imposing restrictions on what’s allowed would give the property owners a lower economic valuation of their property.
A few years ago, Mayor Bral, decided to modify the zoning legislation which predictably would create unsightly street escape – the jam-packed buildings and the narrow sidewalks – inherited from the previous mayor.
Mayor Bral proposed a “revitalization plan” for revitalizing what he had inherited from the previous mayor by increasing the multi-family building setbacks from the street by several yards and make the sidewalks wider.
In his proposed plan, he even had contemplated no “deprivation of economically beneficial uses of their property” by allowing similar building volume as the existing allowance in order to prevent the lawsuits by property owners under Lingle v. Chevron.
Furthermore, under the proposed revitalization the first floors had to be commercial spaces for providing commercial services and goods locally to the residents for the purposes of reduction of car traffic and a more inviting downtown. Nevertheless, a contingency of individuals, among whom there were some misinformed people and Village of Neck outsiders, expressed their anger about Mayor Bral’s revitalization plans. In response, the mayor withdrew the entire idea.
Recently, long after Mayor Bral’s withdrawal of the revitalization plans, in an April 2, 2022 letter to editor at the Great Neck News, Sam Yellis, a challenger for a trustee position at the village, said: “What Mayor Bral & Co. are good at is reinventing the village.”
They seem hell-bent on changing our suburban village into a new thing. Not urban, not suburban. They are creating Urbanurbia. Denser, more crowded, a bedroom community with bedrooms stacked on top of each other and squeezed into every square inch of lots; allowing no room for drainage, no room for parking, no room for the cars on the road, with less space and sky, less green and less trees.
It appears that Mr. Yellis is probably misinformed and unaware that Mayor Bral has never passed any legislation allowing bigger construction. “More concrete and less life; replacing trees and open space with asphalt and steel” are due to legislation passed under his predecessors or maybe he is not aware of the crucial fact that disallowing the property owner to build what is considered to be as of rights or imposing new legislation are clearly irresponsible actions that would potentially bring defenseless expensive lawsuits at the cost of the taxpayers.
The Village of Great Neck’s zoning book includes the dates for when any legislation was adopted. Mr. Yellis, kindly please provide any legislation passed during Mayor Bral under which allows “more concrete and less life; replacing trees and open space with asphalt and steel.” In another letter to the editor at the Great Neck Record (Oct. 20, 2018) Mr. Yellis stated: “I understand that we are waiting on a ‘master plan’ for the Village of Great Neck …. When I walk around the station at Station Plaza North, Park Place and Bond Street, where am I supposed to throw out a plastic water bottle”
Again, it seems that Mr. Yellis is/was probably misinformed about the perimeter of Village of Great Neck as “Station Plaza North, Park Place and Bond Street” are all located at the Village of Great Neck Plaza two villages away from the Village of Great Neck.
Leon Manoucheri
Great Neck