Executives with Forest City Daly and members of the Village of Roslyn board of trustees recently traveled to downtown Roslyn to take part in a ceremonial groundbreaking event for "Bryant Landing," the proposed senior housing facility for the village.

The groundbreaking took place in the snow on Saturday, Jan. 13. BOT members who attended included Mayor Janet Galante and Trustees Nolan Myerson and John Durkin.

According to Michael Daly, president of Forest City Daly, the purely ceremonial event took place to celebrate some recent progress that has been made on the site. Mr. Daly said his company had successfully removed all contaminated soil from the building site. In addition, the company had completed its second round of extensive water testing with satisfactory results on the cleanliness of the water itself. Such results, Mr. Daly said, have been "very exciting" news for his firm. Hence, the groundbreaking event.

Forest City, he added, has recently received a development permit from the Village of Roslyn. All that is needed is a building permit from the Historic District Board. Mr. Daly said he hopes to receive that approval sometime this spring. Once the building permit comes through, Forest City can begin receiving bids from banks and contracting firms throughout the Island. Mr. Daly admitted that even though it remains "very hard" for the company to predict when construction can actually begin, he now hopes for a fall, 2001 starting date.

For over a year, Forest City has had approval for its housing project from not only the Board of Trustees, but also the Zoning Board of Appeals and the Planning Board. Last fall, the Historic District Board also approved construction work, providing Forest City continued to provide them with additional details and information about the project in the coming months. In the past, most HDB concerns about the site have come over height variance issues.

In all, Forest City hopes to build 250 housing units in the site off Skillman Street. The planned housing facility faced some opposition from nearby residents, who worried about any increased traffic the site might bring. During the course of negotiations, Forest City agreed to reduce the size of some of the buildings on the site. They also assured residents that the facility would not be very visible from the highways or the smaller roads in the Roslyn area.

Also as part of its negotiations with the village, Forest City agreed to contribute to waterfront revitalization projects in Roslyn, in addition to paying sums of money for the village's Sewer Reserve Trust Fund, and for the general maintenance, repair and construction of public improvements in the village, and the purchase of a roadbed near the Roslyn Viaduct.

From the beginning, the village's new Master Plan and Zoning Code was written with such a facility in mind. And so, other than some concessions, there was little opposition to the idea of senior housing on the Skillman Street site from most elected officials on the village's various boards.

ROS Daly JS