At the last North Hempstead Town Board meeting, held last week, the board approved the construction of a storage center by Lock-Up Development Corp. on Denton Avenue, north of Evergreen Avenue, next to the North Hempstead Town Department of Highway Garage, located in Garden City Park.

Peter Mineo, a well-known, Mineola Boulevard-based attorney, explained, "The case in point is situated on the west side of Denton Avenue. and is 68,757 square feet, situated entirely in an Industrial B district. The premises is currently owned by Park/Denton Realty Corp. which purchased it from the town in 1992 or 1993. This company was in the process of obtaining a permit to construct a building, but at one point determined that the cost to drive piles, to support the building in this soil, was excessive and decided, instead, to sell the property to the Lock-Up. The contract with the Lock-Up is contingent on the approval of the town."

Mineo continued, "The proposal for the three-story, self-storage building is to provide 9,740 square feet building with 900 square feet devoted to office and 740 square feet for self-storage units that vary in size. But, before we can come to this board for site-plan approval the project has to comply with zoning. You can comply with each and every part of the code or you apply for variances for approval and that is what happened in this application."

He went on, "The applicant's proposals were rejected by the building department, because they didn't comply with certain of the criteria set forth in the code such as insufficient off-street parking and insufficient loading area and two access roads onto Denton Avenue. The applicant appeared before the board and was questioned closely and as a result the applicant amended the application and submitted a revised plan. Based on the revised plan the board of appeals, in December, granted the application."

President of the company, known as Lock-Up, Robert Soudan, of Illinois said, "We are here to explain to you the general operation of the building. We are a self-storage facility. But it is a little different self-storage facility. It is high-quality that features climate control, the units are carpeted throughout the entire project. We have fully interior loading docks for access during inclement weather and rather than having a single story, long narrow building, that you may have seen in the past, ours is a single building with access primarily inside. There is a limited access to a few units on the ground level. "

Soudan continued, "Our goal is to emphasize convenient, comfort, lighting, safety and we have limited access hours. What we are trying to do is to appeal to women who make up 55 or 60 percent of our customer base, so we have designed our facility to their wants and desires. Our facility is low-traffic and low-impact as far as basic necessities from the community are concerned such as water, sewer, there is no pollution and there is no noise and therefore is a very "quiet" use and as described by the American Planning Association, it is probably the 'lowest traffic impact of any commercial building.' The hours will be from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday and 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays."

Soudan explained, "There will be one manager on site and a part-time person who will be a driver for the truck that does the pick-ups. It is staffed the same, year round, however, in the very beginning there might be more since we are anticipating an unusually high demand from this site. The customer base is made up of 75 percent private citizens and 25 percent business. For instance, if ACE Hardware receives a load of lawn mowers and instead of, at this time of year, dedicating too much floor space, they store them with us. Further, we store business records for law firms, etc. That is the type of business that we do. We have a closed-circuit television system so that we can monitor the perimeter of the building and the interior of the building including the office, loading dock and interior hallways, all done with tape backup."

Soudan went on: "The nature of our business is that people, who want to use our storage facility, sign a lease with us and they are prohibited from storing unlawful or dangerous goods. One of the ways that we are protected from that is that we have access to all the units for maintenance or inspection as determined by us or by whatever agency wants to have an inspection. Not many other self-storage companies do that in this country. We are owners of the business. You are looking at the person who signs the checks and whose name is on the mortgage. We are not a big public company. We are privately owned. I have a partner and our two sons are in the business. We have developed facilities in Chicago, Pittsburgh, Boston, New Jersey and New York. We very much like this area and your town and we hope to be good citizens servicing the need we have determined is here. I am here to answer any questions."

Councilwoman Doreen Banks said, "There was an interesting article in The New York Times this past weekend of people in the city who are moving into their storage spaces. I presume this will not happen here."

Soudan answered, "No. One of the nice things about our facility is, again, the monitoring system, and the fact that we do have a manager on site during hours of operation. You cannot access the facility without a manager on site. Further, the access to the facility is in the front of the building that is all glassed from floor to ceiling, which is a safety feature and also allows the manager to watch what is being brought in."

It was also explained that there will be two very large hospital size elevators, as well as two-wheel and four-wheel dollies to move around within the facility. Further, the operation provides a truck to go to either a home or place of business to transport items, to be stored, back to the facility.

Soudan repeated, "Convenience, good lighting and security is what we are trying to promote."

Supervisor May Newburger then asked Mineo if he had seen the response of the Nassau County Planning Commission. He said he had and that their response was due to the over-intensification of the use of the site. He said they came to that conclusion on the basis of off-street parking.

Councilman Anthony D'Urso questioned the size of the building and Soudan answered, "We meet all the regulations of the town and we were told that by all the various building commissioners. We went before the court of appeals for the only variances we needed and we meet all the bulk requirements, with room to spare."

D'Urso said, "In noting this unique use, where you say you don't have a "turnaround" business, but normally, with a building of this size, you would need 117 parking spaces, but you are providing 18 offstreet parking spaces."

Soudan said, "Again, let me say that we are doubling our need for parking. We only need approximately nine spaces for parking and we have 18 spaces and two inside building spaces. For the zoning board of appeals we took away some of the size of the building and added a significant amount of landscaping to soften the building."

He continued, "For example, all the other buildings on the block have been built to the 10 foot setback. But we are building the same setback as the Department of Public Works and, by the way, we have the same bulk in size. You can drive by the DPW on Denton Avenue and they very effectively softened their building with landscaping. That was the lesson we learned, but we added 30 feet more landscaping. They have 10 feet of landscaping, but we have 50 feet. If anything dominates Denton Avenue it is the 250 foot water tower across the way and the big hole right next to us. We believe that this building, with the type of building materials we are using, will not only be the best looking thing on Denton Avenue, but will add significant value to the other properties on Denton Avenue. Our low use is probably the most desirable use from a traffic standpoint of any use. This was an important fact for the BZA and we went through all this with them."

Councilman James O'Connor wanted to know at the other facilities built by Lock-Up what is the ratio of parking in those facilities. Soudan said that this facility has 30 percent more parking than he ever allocated for his other facilities. O'Connor further wanted to know if there had been any adverse impact to the community because of the offstreet parking.

Soudan then said, "We are making a multi-million dollar investment and the last thing we want to do is to make it inconvenient for a customer to come into our facility."

Newburger asked, "Why has the Nassau County Planning said that you failed to provide the required loading and unloading areas?"

Soudan replied, "In all due respect to the Nassau County Planning Commission, we are not allowed to appear before them. We hire experts and do a background study on what is inconvenient to our customers. What we are trying to do is to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that we are providing more than adequate parking space. The issue of the bulk and how it was resolved with the zoning board was to change the location of the building to bring it off the street and to soften it. We could have bought the property to the side and put parking over there and it would have had nothing to do with the size and impact of the building. If you go down the street and look at the other buildings, with the exception of the DPW, they are all at the sidewalk and with the parking in back and to the side."

D'Urso said: "What happens if somewhere down the line business does not go well and you decide to sell the building and it has a more intensive use. What happens about the parking then?

Mineo answered: "The applicant has already obtained a parking variance and a variance for the loading area for only this use. When a variance is granted it is only granted for a specific use, not a generic use. This is now a use, subject to a variance, and that does not change unless you go back to the board of appeals and convince them that a use for another purpose would have adequate off-street parking. Quite frankly, I don't think that would be possible. I can't think of any other use of this building where 18 parking spaces would be sufficient."

Mineo continued, "The reason that the planning commission considered this an over intensification of use had little or nothing to do with the size of the building. It has everything to do with perception that more off-street parking is required for this particular use. That perception is built upon the fact that the planning commission has little experience with applications of this nature. This is a relatively recent phenomena and I don't think the planning commission has seen very many applications like this. On the other hand, we were faced with the same objections by a very tough board of appeals and if you read the transcript you will see that the board grilled the applicant on these very issues. At the end of the presentation the board of appeals came to the conclusion that there was sufficient parking for this particular use."

Soudan said, "In reference to future use of our building, our building is designed so that it could not be used, for example, as an office building. We have a 10 x 10 interior structural grid, which is the way we support the building and the way the entire design is built from the pilings it would be almost impossible to convert it into anything else. I have never seen any other building like this, ever, converted into anything else. If somebody came along and wanted to build the greatest building, they would first have to take our building down."

O'Connor then addressed the fact that the planning commission objected to the loading and unloading in the building. Sudan replied: "Believe me, it is designed to handle our toughest and busiest time, which would be mid-day on Saturday. We have designed this facility with a very large interior dock with several parking spaces outside. In any study of facilities on Long Island, of the same size, the maximum cars ever seen at anyone of these locations is 11. With 18 parking spaces and a huge loading dock inside, we have never had a problem."

O'Connor wanted to know if there were any practical problems at other locations, regarding loading and unloading. Sudan said, "If we had any such problems in other locations, we would then design around them. We would never design a facility of this magnitude of investment that would not completely facilitate the needs of our customers."

At the completion of the very long discussion, the board voted, anonymously, to approve the application and it is anticipated that construction on the site will begin in the very near future.