Village of Great Neck officials received news last week and on May 7 that major stumbling blocks to the development of waterfront along East Shore Road may be lifted. As we were going to press, we received a call from Congressman Gary Ackerman who had just concluded a meeting with high level U.S. Postal Service representatives and a representative from Senator Hillary Clinton's office in which an agreement was reached to suspend going forward with the plans for the postal annex until July 5. During the interim, the Town of North Hempstead and the Village of Great Neck will need to come up with an alternative site that will be acceptable to the postal service and will meet its needs for carrier sorting.

Congressman Ackerman said, "Hopefully, Supervisor Jon Kaiman and Mayor Richard Deem will coordinate their schedules and will meet in my D.C. office on Thursday where we will fully discuss this and coordinate our efforts....the town and the village will need to work in complete cooperation with each other." The congressman went on to add that "the postal workers deserve a decent working space to carry out their important mission, but it doesn't have to be on prime waterfront."

The other welcome news to the village at its May meeting was that developer Benjamin Ringel, president of Armstrong Capital, has a binding agreement to purchase the site of Commander Oil on East Shore Road for an undisclosed amount. Mr. Ringel had phoned Deputy Mayor Ralph Kreitzman to inform him of the pending purchase and also to open communications between himself and the village to drop the lawsuit initiated by A&P prior to Mr. Ringel's purchase of the Waldbaum's site.

Mr. Ringel had presented a conceptual plan to the village on March 20 for development of the waterfront site in keeping with the new zoning requirements. The multi-family buildings, townhouses, and waterfront promenade designed by the Spector Group would include 0 percent of the housing units to be dedicated to workforce housing.

The postal authorities with whom Congressman Ackerman negotiated are Henry Burmeister, NY manager of facilities; Ed Rudolph, operations manager for the Tri-borough district; Ed Pino, manager of real estate and Kathy Sitterle, government relations. Joyce Lenard representated Senator Clinton's office.

(Editor's note: For detailed information about Mr. Ringel's proposal for East Shore Road, see the online edition archived on March 30, 2007 entitled "A Sweeping Proposal for East Shore Road." Visit our website at www.antonnews.com)