Town of Huntington Planning Department Director Anthony Aloisio recently responded to concerns laid out in a letter from the Elwood Board of Education in January regarding the proposed Seasons at Elwood development.
Among the points in Aloisio's letter, dated March 1, are:
- The town will hire an independent traffic consultant for a study on the potential impact to traffic along Elwood Road and push the County to install a traffic light at the entrance to the development.
- The project would generate an estimated $1.6 million in tax revenue for the school district, conservatively.
- The district's request for access to Elwood Park for athletic teams is reasonable.
See Aloisio's full letter and the letter sent from the district attached as PDFs.
That sounds pretty quiet, and pretty residential, to me. But you did raise an important point in your post, where you wrote "I remember driving along Jericho Turnpike and seeing many vacant stores. It was a sad sight to see." The re-use of shuttered stores is part of a planning concept known as Smart Growth, and the Town's Comprehensive Plan done a few years ago takes re-use into consideration. But the Oak Tree Dairy buildings constitutes a very small part of the entire property, so you seem to be making the mistake of extrapolating from a small percentage as if the entire property would become like a string of vacant stores on Jericho. Frankly, this proposed development might be more suitable on Jericho Turnpike, if only from a traffic perspective. As to the revenue, I want to see financial guarantees, and not simply "promises and projections"; considering how sleazy this developer has been in marketing their proposal (e.g., the dinner tie-in to coming to town hall to support the proposal, and the letter to PTA members which would be a private list of individuals), I want to be more than merely careful.
Elwood would reverse all of the progress the district has made and send us reeling backwards. We owe it to our children to keep this development out of Elwood!
To think that the proposed huge complex will not cause traffic congestion on Elwood and adjoining roads is to defy logic. More than 30 years ago, the Democrat Party town board majority at the time hired a politically connected law firm to defend the zoning on Tiny's Farm on the corner of Elwood and Pulaski Roads. The firm blew the case and now it is only a matter of time before a 155 unit complex is built there. It the Oak Tree proposal (which is three times the size of Housing Help's) is approved, my quality of life will be ruined. No amount of tax revenue is worth destroying our suburban way of life. Built houses on the Oak Tree property, not nearly 500 units. It is abomidable that Mr. Petrone and Mr. Cuthbertson are not speaking out against this proposal.
Those lists are not public information, so how did she get one? Was it a cooperative former PTA officer? Was it a PTA member who is in the real estate business? How? Shady tactics should make all all suspicious about this developer, and their "promises" about the impacts of their project.
However, I will grant you the landscapers point, although I would point out that they do not add much to traffic patterns along Elwood Road. I forgot about Mother Earth, which I did occasionally use to purchase mulch for our garden beds. The DeLea Sod Farm has been on Elwood Road longer than you or I have been alive, I'd guess, and that is pure open space except for the service areas for their sod trucks, all of which is behind very large hedges. And I disagree with you about dinner tie-ins when the proviso or requirement or quid pro quo is that the person attending the "informational dinner" (that's always the marketing tie in, tawdry but not sleazy, for the kinds of approaches you were talking about) had to go to the Town Board meeting to support the proposed project. That aspect is what converted it from tawdry to sleazy, and I would encourage you to listen to the comments from Town Board members, which you can do by going to the TOH website and watching the video of that meeting. I do appreciate your expression of concern about the absence, at this point, of financial guarantees.
Seniors do not vote down school budgets. Property value is directly tied into school value. Why would you vote no? To protect your investment clearly you vote yes. Check the statistics. Everyone keeps saying that the tax generated from the development won't really make a difference to Elwood. If the community generates 2.5 million in tax revenue while giving a huge boost to local small businesses, how is this not a good thing? The dairy pays about $100,000 in taxes. 100,000 vs 2.5 million. This community will benefit the town greatly. Years from no you wont believe you were ever opposed
And while not every senior citizen votes NO on school budgets, you must admit that the seniors are more likely to vote NO than any other demographic group in the community. just cat with a few on the day of the vote.
You posted photos of snow and sand after one of the largest blizzards in our lifetime. You also decided to post pictures of " attractive landscaping"....in the dead of winter, when trees do not have their leaves and nothing has any color!! Would you post pictures of a ski resort in July? Why not post what the average person would see....pictures of the community from driving past it on the street. Post those and then let us make our own educated decision! As an Elwood resident, taxpayer, and Elwood rd traveler for last 18 years, I would rather have condos with people 55+ then a ramped up dairy and that horrid smell. Like i said before, I know it is tough for you, but please PRETEND to be unbiased.
And, by the way, we will not always be spring in Elwood either, so we need to look at it when it is not beautifully landscaped.
You would find the phone number, and E-mail address of officers and committee chairs, but that's it. Moreover, I just checked the websites for the five PTA's in Elwood and they DO NOT PUBLISH a list of their members, much less the home mailing addresses of ANYONE. PTA's are distinct and separate legal bodies from the school district, and the school district would not have a list of the memberships of any PTA. The question of how Engel Burman obtained such a list, whether a current list or one from a year or two ago, is a valid concern.
I wonder why he does not do that......... This way he can not pick and choose pictures from a complex with 400+ homes over 19 acres.
Next you're going to Triple Dog Dare me. How about dealing with the issues of financial assurance to the school district and its taxpayers, as well as with the need to determine traffic and safety impacts, and what - if anything - will need to be done to make the project viable? Or do you just want me to stick my tongue to the frozen flagpole, and end the "dialogue" there? Grandma and Grandpa will always find places convenient for them, if it turns out (and nobody really knows, yet) that the risks are too high for the proposed project; it's not as if a twenty minute drive to alternative sites would kill anybody. Elwood is rather centrally located, and it is the physically-smallest school district of all eight districts in the Town of Huntington. Now if these folks - the Grandma and Grandpa we're talking about - lived out on the very distant, with one road in and out, Eatons Neck, that would be another matter regarding a convenient drive. But Elwood is, as some have said, in the heart of Huntington.
Of course they should, if, make that IF, the good outweighs the bad. First, as others have said better than me, the district and taxpayers must be legally and financially assured - and that means not just a promise and a rosy projection, friend - that the revenue streams are actually there, and that they cannot be reduced by petitions for reduction in assessed value. The district and taxpayers also need to be legally assured - again, no wishy washy "I think so" crap - that the project could never be converted from a 55+ community to a broad ownership no-restrictions community which - unlike a seniors only community - could add substantial numbers of children to be educated by one of the smallest school districts around. That kind of event could blow out of the water the revenues which are being promised, because the costs to current taxpayers of the district would then be greater than the revenue. The district and taxpayers also need to be assured (and the Town's promise of a traffic study independent of the developer is a good start for objectivity) that school children would not be less safe by increased traffic, and that Elwood Road would not become a stop-and-go nightmare for ten hours a day. So, try to maintain some balance, Veteran, and wait for answers.
There's too many simplistic statements about this proposal, when so much is at stake, yet so little is truly known and assured. Promises mean nothing. Projections are bupkis. Pay attention to the man behind the curtain, and get absolute guarantees about mitigating all risks of the proposal, and that is assuming an independent traffic study would even clear the proposal; but nobody knows that at this time.
I am not pressing any "panic button;" there is a grand chasm of difference between wanting protection from harm, whether related to economics or safety, and absolutely opposing this proposal. I have not absolutely opposed this proposal; what I have, and will oppose, is anyone favoring this proposal until such time as all protections are established, and confirmed. As to the relative safety of Elwood Road, no, neither that nor Cuba Hill Rd from Manor, nor Little Plains between Manor and the Cuba Hill intersection, would be considered "safe" roads. But, you can make a problem worse, and to keep it simple, bad development decisions could make Elwood Road even less safe for kids than it is today. Fortunately, the Town is promising an independent traffic study, and nobody, not you and not me and not those who may be contingently opposed for a variety of (understandable) reasons, should express any support for this proposal until, and unless, the independent TOH traffic study establishes the extent of the risk, and the probable risk in the event that specified mitigation steps are taken (as a pre-condition). That, friend, is not pressing any "panic button"; it is called due diligence and good governance. It is the prudent and responsible thing to do.
But some free advice, even free for my non-friends; next time don't go tossing around remarks like "panic button" when there was no panic at all in my posts. That was the final trigger you pulled, after previously distorting what I had posted (hence my comment on your shortcomings regarding comprehension and logic; casus belli). Moreover, for other people you had used descriptive words like "ridiculous", which would strike many as condescending or insulting. As you have seen, some are opposed to the proposal, no matter what the facts may turn out to be. But we are far from having the facts, or the protections the community needs. I just want to protect the kids and the taxpayers of the district. That is prudence, and not panic. Adios.