The Village of Garden City is once again gearing up to fight against Simon Properties' application to the Town of Hempstead Board of Zoning Appeals to expand the Roosevelt Field Mall even further beyond the allowable Floor Area Ratio (FAR). The village board recently approved the hiring of a traffic and environment consultant to help the village fight the expansion at the upcoming Feb. 22 hearing at Town of Hempstead Hall.

This new application by Simon Properties comes two years after the board of appeals denied Simon's last attempt to expand the mall. Now, after acquiring two new parcels of land and making some other adjustments, thus increasing the amount of land to be considered in the FAR, Simon is claiming that they can build this extension without increasing the FAR. With the application, the Simon Group noted that there is currently a special permit allowing for an FAR of .69608 and that due to an increase in the size of the overall property, the FAR after the completion will be .69587, which is still within the parameters of the current special permit.

The Floor Area Ratio is a figure used in commercial zones, as a guideline for how large a building can be on a particular lot. The area where the mall is located is currently zoned to allow a .4 FAR, meaning that the land can be occupied by a building with the square footage which is 40 percent of the square footage of the total property. This FAR was established in 1989, after the mall had already been built and then they were granted a special permit to exceed this amount even further in 1995 in order to increase the FAR from .529 to .696 in connection with the Nordstrom's addition to the mall. On March 24, 1999 the board of appeals denied their request to extend the FAR even further to .75 to allow for the addition of Sak's Fifth Avenue. The Village of Garden City played a major role in the objections to this proposed increase.

Simon has now revised this plan in an effort to keep the FAR within the current limits. One way they did this was by acquiring the Andover Parcels, which are lots 34 and 35, located between Macy's and Stewart Avenue. This increases the total square footage of the property, thus increasing the allowable square footage of a new building. The revised plan calls for a two-story, rather than a three story department store and retail area. According to the site plans, the department store would be 100,000 square feet and the retail area connecting it to the mall would be 34,000 square feet. It is through these adjustments that Simon has determined that their FAR would remain within the limits it currently has. It is because this is still outside the established FAR for the zone, that the Simon Property Group must still get a special permit in order to expand further. In addition, Simon is closing the Woolworth basement and basement storage and is asking, as part of the special permit, that because this basement area will no longer be in use that it not be considered in the FAR. According to Village Counsel, Gary Fishberg, the town building department has disallowed this argument. If the full property is considered the resulting FAR with the expansion would be .70009.

Once again the village is objecting to this expansion, based primarily on the impact that this expansion will have on the traffic and environment of surrounding communities. Fishberg said that from what he has seen of the new application, Simon Properties have not addressed the objections that the town had with the original proposal. Village officials, with the help of the Eastern Property Owners' Association are currently in the process of organizing a group made up of village officials, school board members, the chamber of commerce, property owners' associations, and other concerned village residents to voice their objections at the Feb. 22 hearing. Fishberg noted that this hearing date is the same day that the appellate division will be hearing Simon's appeal to the 1999 decision.

Nick Episcopia, of the Eastern Property Owners Association noted that it was the concerted effort, showing the impact this would have on all aspects of the surrounding communities, that helped make an impact on the town board of appeals two years ago. "One of the things that was brought up at the last Town of Hempstead Board of Zoning Appeals was the fact that we had spent close to $4 million revitalizing downtown Franklin Avenue and that it was very clear in the Master Plan for the county that downtowns of surrounding villages were something that we thought was very important," said Episcopia. "They still have not presented a HUB study and somebody wants to build more square footage. Thirty thousand square feet of space is an absolute detriment to all the communities around it, not just us but everyone else. Somebody will rent that space as opposed to Franklin Avenue or some other downtown in a surrounding village."