Residents of a ritzy community on Long Island’s North Shore are protesting plans to build a “mega NYC-style apartment complex” in their village — saying the development would threaten the “legacy, character and exclusivity” of the area.
A Monday morning rally organized by a group called Save Oyster Bay Cove and targeting the 11-acre plot on Sandy Hill Road will have speakers talk on the potential impacts of building a proposed 28-unit housing complex for post-doctoral students working at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory about 10 minutes away.
The group is worried about such things as traffic, safety and a future strain on local infrastructure in the tiny tony enclave of about 2,200 — which includes celebrities and billionaires, according to Evelyn Ain, the group’s president.
“They’re turning it into a residential community, meaning the individuals are going to live there now, they’re going to be adults and residents of the Oyster Bay Cove,” she told The Post on Sunday. “Oyster Bay Cove is a single-residence area. There is no multi-family housing.
“We have a lot of celebrities living here, a lot of people with a lot of money, billionaires,” she continued. “That’s why they live here. There’s no traffic, there’s no pollution. And by having them turn this into [an] apartment building, we’re going to have traffic, we’ll have big shuttles go back and forth.”
Ain, who lives on Sandy Hill Road, said she is worried that the local narrow, windy roads can’t accommodate more people, nor could the local schools if the potential new residents were to bring their families.
“These are people that are going to come here not for two or three months — they’re going to come here for a couple of years to do research,” she said. “There could definitely be multiple children per unit.”
The demonstrators will also protest the local mayor, Charles Goulding, and the village board for paving the way for zoning laws to be amended to let the “multi-million private research institution … move forward with its apartment proposal in a traditionally single-family residential area,” the group said in a press release.
In a Sunday interview with The Post, Goulding defended the lab’s plans for the site, which is already home to several big buildings that harken back to its days as a residential school for girls with special social and emotional needs.
Cold Spring bought the property and will renovate the complex to house nearly 30 students from around the globe, he said.
But it will use the existing buildings and won’t increase their size or height, he said.
“We discussed it thoroughly, and we thought it was a good use of the property,” he said. “For 45 years, it had 28 girls. Now it’s going to have 28 PhDs.
“It’s a beautiful, architecturally significant set of buildings,” Goulding continued. “We were looking at it like, ‘Wow, it gets utilized the same way it was used for 45 years, it preserves the historic setting — what a great result.’ “
The local zoning board still must approve the plan, which it will likely take up next month, the mayor said.
Cold Spring is in Laurel Hollow, about 10 minutes southeast of Oyster Bay Cove, and has research programs in cancer, neuroscience, genomics and plant biology, among other things, the press release said.
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