Amityville village extends apartment ban 6 months, looks to public for feedback

The Village of Amityville is extending its halt on new apartments for another six months and will be seeking the opinions of residents, businesses and developers online about multiunit housing.

On Monday, the village extended a six-month moratorium it had enacted in December, putting the brakes on any new multiunit housing, including apartments, condominiums, townhomes and accessory units. At the time of the initial moratorium, Mayor Mike O’Neill said the village needed to take a pause and evaluate the impact that 500 new apartments built between 2020 and 2025 was having on the community of roughly 9,500 residents.

The village then spent the next six months compiling data, assessing the scope of its multiunit housing — including the 115-unit Village by the Bay and the 338-unit AvalonBay complexes — and information on services related to its police, fire and building departments.

A nine-member committee formed to oversee the effort received that data in April, O’Neill told Newsday. But comments in a Newsday story on the moratorium and questions from committee members led to a desire to extend the moratorium another six months, O’Neill said. The committee decided to put out surveys to seek more information.

"We felt we were looking at it from a primarily statistical data perspective," he said. "We just felt we needed to get input."

The village, which in 2022 received $10 million in state Downtown Revitalization Initiative funding, will put surveys online to get the thoughts of four segments of the population: businesses, developers, residents in single-family homes and residents in multiunit homes.

O’Neill said he was struck by comments in a Newsday article on the moratorium from business owner Dina Rosenberg on how some types of businesses, such as restaurants, might be benefiting from apartment residents.

"I understood her concerns" about limiting apartment development, he said. He said he then spoke to some business owners who said they had new customers from the apartment complexes. "I said, ‘Let’s find out.’ They’re the ones who are going to be able to tell us if they’ve seen an uptick."

The mayor said the survey questions will have a mix of multiple-choice answers as well as places to write in more explanatory answers. He expects the surveys to be on the village’s website in the coming weeks. The results, along with all the data separately collected, will be presented at a public meeting in the fall, O’Neill said.

It’s unclear what the end result will be, he said, but he doesn’t foresee a permanent ban on multidwelling units.

"That would be very draconian and very shortsighted," he said.

Rosenberg, who is also a village resident and served as village clerk-treasurer from 2015 to 2017, supports the moratorium extension.

"I love the idea of getting stakeholder opinions," she said.

But she suggested the village expand on its data by incorporating analysis of businesses and properties downtown to figure out how to increase foot traffic.

"If we’re doing a six-month moratorium, what might be interesting is to also do an analysis on what the vacancy rate is in the downtown area, who owns the properties and what the rents are and would it be attainable for new businesses to go in there," she said.

By Denise M. Bonilla

denise.bonilla@newsday.comdenisebonilla

Denise Bonilla has worked at Newsday since 2003 and covers the Town of Babylon, including the villages of Lindenhurst and Amityville.