Board Approves Adelphi Construction

Village trustees unanimously approved Adelphi University's application to erect a nearly 100,000 square foot two- and three-story building on a portion of its Garden City campus after the continuation of a public hearing on the matter June 6.

The Nexus Building and Welcome Center is expected to take 21 months to complete. The application must again go before the village's Architectural Design Review Board and Planning Commission before coming back to the village board, which has the authority to grant final site plan approval.

One resident spoke in opposition of the project June 6. Rosemary Brown, who lives on Wydler Court in the vicinity of the university's growing campus, said Adelphi's expansion program is a "horror" to residents.

"Adelphi is totally overgrown at this point and to give them permission to put another building up there for more traffic at the expense of all of your residents is really a disgrace," she said. "I'm all for higher education but not at the expense of our neighborhood."

Brown said traffic in the area is "horrendous."

"I now have a double yellow line on Cambridge Avenue because of all the traffic going to Adelphi. I know when you had your last building process going on the trucks would come in at three o'clock in the morning and they made us call the village to ask what they could do about these building trucks coming in at three in the morning and the police couldn't do anything about it. I don't think that's very fair to the residents."

South Avenue will serve as an entrance for all construction vehicles. "They will come in off of Nassau Boulevard. The contractors we'll probably be using most of them are the same ones we've used before and they are well aware of the village ordinances," Robert Eschbacher, a civil engineer, said last month during a presentation to the village board. "We'll stay on top of them to work with you as best we can. There will be truck traffic though."

Adelphi president Dr. Robert Scott said over the past eight or so years the university has increased the number of students, staff and faculty who don't have to drive by increasing its van service. "This current year we have some 400,000 riders who otherwise might be driving from the train station, the bus station, the shopping malls and other locations," he said. "We do not anticipate that this project will result in additional traffic."

Building superintendent Mike Filippon added that a pre-construction meeting was held, as with any project of this magnitude, to discuss traffic mitigation, among other potential issues.

"We go over the routes the trucks will take and what approach they'll be making from the east, from the west, north and south. We coordinate that with the police department should there be any problem that we ourselves don't perceive," he said. "So any concern about any perceived negative effect we do address that. We can't say you're not going to notice it at all but we make every effort to make sure that's tended to."

Dr. Scott was in attendance at the June 6 meeting but did not speak. Brown was the only resident who addressed the board.

Trustees first opened the public hearing May 16 when Dr. Scott said, "Garden City is our home and we try to be good neighbors in the community."

What do you think about Adelphi's latest project? Let us know in the comments section below.