The editor of the Roslyn News was given a tour of the proposed car wash at Rallye Motors last week to clear up some errors and misperceptions about the site that appeared in a recent story on the issue.

First of all, Nick Tomey, service and parts director for Rallye and Jeffrey Stadler, an attorney for the company, pointed out that only 100 cars a day, at most, would be serviced by the proposed, new car wash, not 1,000.

Furthermore, the truck traffic that has concerned local residents comes from the Slant Fin plant which is up the road from Rallye. There are not, as both Mr. Tomey and Mr. Stadler noted, 100 trucks going in and out of Rallye each day or anything near that total.

The back lot of the Rallye site is divided between commercial and residential zones. The proposed car wash would be built on the line officially separating the two zones. As Mr. Stadler said in a recent Site Review Board meeting, a dumpster would be placed between the car wash and a large 40 ft. concrete wall that separates the lot from the Long Island Rail Road. This would keep the car wash out of the view of local residents and make it "invisible" to the south of the lot.

The car wash would not be built in the residential zone of the Rallye lot. Mr. Tomey said that the LIRR tracks themselves stand between the lot and the residences on Appletree Lane in East Hills. In all, the car wash would be over a 1,000 ft. from any residences. Its dimensions are estimated at 16 ft. high by 46 ft. long.

Mr. Tomey added that service operations at Rallye would work better with an independent car wash. The company, he said, is losing water with its current car wash operation. Rallye would only wash cars that they service on their site.

As Mr. Stadler also said at the Site Review meeting, the Roslyn Board of Zoning Appeals adopted three conditions for constructing the car wash. They included hours of operation, no signage, and no commercial usage. Mr. Stadler said those conditions have been met. The hours of operation would be 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Monday through Friday and 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturday.

Resident concerns at the Site Review meeting included not only traffic, but noise levels and a possible effect on real estate values. Linda Nathanson, a trustee with the Village of East Hills and a resident of Appletree Lane said that local residents only wanted "a little peace" to enjoy the "quiet contentment" of their homes.

At that same meeting, Mr. Stadler said that since the car wash was not a commercial operation, the number of cars it services would be considerably less than a usual car wash. The noise level, he added, would also be reduced by the fact that there would be no vacuuming services at the Rallye car wash and as such, that doors would stay shut during the wash.

--by Joe Scotchie