The Village of Roslyn Harbor is considering an amendment to its building code, one designed to prevent what village officials term as oversized residential homes from being constructed.

The village held a public hearing on the subject at its Feb. 12 meeting. Mayor Gerson Strassberg said he prefers a new ordinance to the building code, rather than declaring a complete moratorium on residential construction because an amendment will take less time to draft and then be adopted by the board of trustees.

"We are going to consider an alternative [to a moratorium] very quickly," the mayor said. Adopting a new ordinance will require another public hearing, but the entire process, he added, can be completed within 60 days.

As with villages throughout Long Island, Roslyn Harbor officials face a situation where someone will buy residential property in the village, only to proceed to tear it down and build, as the mayor termed it, "a large house out of character with the village." Sometimes, the newly constructed house can be twice as large as the one that was demolished.

Mayor Strassberg said the village hopes to adopt an ordinance that is "parallel" to what other villages in the North Shore area have done. In the meantime, village officials will have to study the ordinances other villages have adopted in order to come up with an agreeable maximum size for any residential structure on a specific lot.

"We don't want people buying homes and then turning them into twice the size of the old house," the mayor reiterated. "We want to keep the beautiful character of our village as it is."

At the Feb. 12 meeting, representatives of the Engineers Country Club were in attendance. The country club has four one-acre lots they are trying to sell. Also in attendance was a resident with a six-acre lot that he hopes to turn into subdivisions. Any new ordinance would be completed in time to affect their own building plans.

The amendment Roslyn Harbor officials hope to approve would represent only one of the several attempts by local villages to deal with residential development.

Last spring, the Village of East Hills passed an amendment to its own building code, one that imposed a temporary moratorium on all residential subdivision reviews and approvals. The purpose of that moratorium was to enable the village sufficient time to review, study, and adopt a comprehensive plan concerning the creation of new residential subdivisions.

As with Roslyn Harbor, East Hills officials were concerned about maintaining the current residential character of the village. They noted that when East Hills was incorporated a half century ago it wasn't intended to be a place where such subdivisions would be built. In addition, local residents had expressed their unhappiness with the proliferation of subdivisions in the village.

In 2003, residents in the Village of Roslyn Estates had a major debate over amendments to its zoning code, ones that would diminish the actual number of subdivisions in the village and, in general, prevent overdevelopment.

Even when that village enacted new tree codes, the subdivision issue emerged. A draft of the law noted that all throughout Long Island and especially on the North Shore, a habit of developers purchasing property for the sole purpose of subdividing the structure had resulted in the destruction of "vast numbers of trees," a process that Roslyn Estates officials hope to prevent from happening in their village.