Village Board Approves St. Paul's FEIS

Trustees voted 5-3 in favor of approving the Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) on the proposed demolition of St. Paul’s. As expected, trustees Andrew Cavanaugh and John Watras and deputy mayor Don Brudie were the three nay votes.

Cavanaugh encouraged residents to view the report, which is available at the Garden City Public Library, to inform themselves. “All this is is a compendium of resources," he said.

The board must wait 10 days to issue “findings,” which are now being drafted.

With release of the FEIS, Maureen Traxler, a member of the Committee to Save St. Paul’s, asked trustees what the next step is: “Do we move forward with demolition?”

“I don’t think that’s the desire of the majority of this board,” Mayor Robert Rothschild said, adding that the intention “all along” has been to let residents make the final decision – likely through a one-question ballot – yes or no. “And I think we took the first, second or third major step this evening to begin that process.”

Rothschild said many residents in town have already come to him with suggestions on what to do with the "vacant lot that will be on the corner of Rockaway and Stewart Avenue" if the building is demolished.

Traxler shot back: "There’s probably as many suggestions for that as suggestions for what to do with the building preserved."

“Unfortunately, the uses preserved are very, very, very limited. The uses as a clean slate of vacant land obviously lead us to have a lot of options," Rothschild said.

A recreation center has been the most popular suggestion, Rothschild said. "I’ve been taking over the last several years an unofficial poll where I say to someone ‘what do you think a rec center is?’ and it's always different. We have to figure out what a baseline recreation center is. A hockey rink? Basketball? Is it a swimming pool? Sculpture studios? Yoga studios? A gym? … You've got to have senior space too. If you had a list of 100 things get it down to 15 you could put in 100,000 square feet of space and let’s figure it out and let’s decide if we want to build it.

"Now the residents have the ability to say 'I want to spend my money on that because then I can use it. If I spend $30 million on St. Paul’s today in the condition that it’s in or attempt to get it into a condition of preservation what do I have? A place to have meetings?' And that’s the response I have gotten from the majority of residents I have spoken to or have come to me or e-mailed me or called me."

Traxler argued there are "just as many people" who could suggest ways to use the existing 130,000 square feet for recreation use and thinks there's been a "lack of bringing the public in over the past number of years." 

She urged trustees to reach out to the public with any uses. "There are a lot of people out there," Traxler said. "Some are telling you ideas, some are telling another trustee ideas but we don’t have a way to pool those ideas and come together and discuss them ... some way that people can get together and discuss in an open forum how we would like to proceed whether to preserve the building or if the majority of the residents want to build something else." 

Mayor Rothschild disagreed. "I think we have made every effort and to look at that report – it has a list of everything the village has done in an attempt to preserve that building – it’s mind boggling to read all the reports that were done and all the money that was spent on those reports and you know what, the residents declined all of them.

"We’ve exhausted those attempts to do something with that building at a reasonable cost to put on the backs of the residents of this village … for us to consider that we’re going to tell residents that we’re going to spend $30 million of your money to preserve a building that has no real use for every resident of this village I have a real problem with," Rothschild said.

Trustee Watras, a vocal proponent of preservation, interjected: “That's one opinion."  

Trustee Dennis Donnelly added, “I think the mayor got a little ahead of himself. We started on a process which is over a year old. We started on a process where we have an environmental impact statement. This is the final version of that. This is all leading up to where I believe all the trustees want to get to, which is to allow the public to determine what happens to the building. The public will be the ultimate decision-maker on what happens to the building ... I think the process is moving in a direction to allow the public to vote and I know all the trustees want the public to be the determining factor.”

The St. Paul's FEIS is available for residents to review at the Garden City Public Library.