Zoning Board of Appeals (zba) - Regular Meeting

Board of Appeals. Please listen to the rules and procedures that we will follow for tonight's hearing.

Good evening and welcome to tonight's meeting of the Town of Babylon Zoning Board of Appeals. The following is the procedure that will be followed tonight. The matters will be called in the order they appear on the calendar with adjourned matters being called at the end of the regularly scheduled matters. Matters cannot be heard prior to their published scheduled time. When your matter is called, please submit the affidavit of posting to the secretary and proceed to the podium and give your name and address. The chairperson will then swear you in and read into the record information we have from your application, comments from various town departments and any correspondence received on your application. The chairperson will then ask you to make whatever presentation you wish to make to the board. After you have made your presentation, the board will ask whatever questions the board deems appropriate and then we will ask for comments from the public. If you wish to speak for or against an application, we ask that you wait until you're acknowledged. Come forward, give us your name and address, tell us where your property is in relation to the property that's in question tonight, and then please direct your comments to the board, not the applicant or the applicant's representative. We have to keep a record and we cannot do that if there are people talking over each other or cross conversations. If someone has spoken for or against an application and they have said exactly the same thing that you wish to say, it will have the same force and effect in the record if you give your name and address are sworn in and say that you join in those comments. If you have anything additional to say, please don't hesitate to do so. But keep in mind that you will be given only one opportunity to speak. After the public has spoken, the board may ask the applicant to come back to answer any questions that may have come up as a result of the public comment or for the applicant to summarize. When the applicant comes back to answer any

additional questions, if that happens, that does not start a second round of public comments. Once the matter has been heard, various things may occur. The board may decide the application immediately. It may reserve decision. If the board reserves decision, that does not mean the matter is approved or denied. It just means that the board needs more time to decide, may want to go out and look at the site again, or might want to review the documents and testimony further before making a decision. In either event, the applicant will receive the board's decision in writing shortly after the board makes its decision. If the application is approved, that does not mean that you can then go ahead and start construction or whatever it is that you requested from the board. You will have to wait for the building permit to be obtained from the building department before your go- ahead. On some occasions, the matter may be continued for another night. If it is continued, in most cases, it will be for the submission of documents, a new survey, new plans, or something of that nature. If that's the case, no one needs to come back on the new date. The documents will be submitted and no further testimony will be taken. On rare occasions, a matter may be continued for future testimony. If that's the case, then people would have to come back to testify. If matters are adjourned at an open meeting on the scheduled date of hearing, no further notice need be given unless specifically required by the board on the date the adjournment is granted. Three rules that may affect your ability to proceed tonight. One, if the sign was not posted for 10 days, we cannot hold the hearing tonight. Two, if you commence this proceeding while you own the property, but no longer own the property, and you are here now to continue with the

application, you will need either the written consent of the new owner or the new owner to be present for the hearing. This situation could come about if you sold your house or building, money was held in escrow at closing for a certificate of occupancy or permit, and you're here tonight to clear that up. Lastly, if your application is a commercial application and it's other than a renewal and there is more than one tenant in the building, then you need your landlord to be here. Is there any applicant that has any difficulty with those situations and would need an adjournment tonight?

Is there anyone that needs an adjournment? Please rise and join us for the pledge of allegiance. Liberty and justice for all.

Okay, we have two applications that are being withdrawn. Um, case number 25161 69 Abram Mall A in West Babylon and case number 25128 of 140 East Sunrise Highway in Linenhurst. Is anyone here for any of these applications? Okay. And then we have one adjournment for case number 25156 of 23 Chapel Place in North Babylon that is being adjourned to October 23rd. Is anyone here for that application? Okay. So we have application number 25 and 163 Bobby Joe and Anthony Defabio that is in North Babylon. Hi. your name and address for the record?

Janiro Kosolino, 2125 Deer Park Avenue, Deer Park, New York 11729. And do you affirm to tell the truth? Yes. All right. We have a planning division memo dated September 17th, 2025. Uh, Department of Environmental Control memo dated September 23rd, 2025. This application may not result in significant impact of a county memo dated September 17th, 2025. This is a matter of local determination. Survey by Islandwide Land Surveyors dated June 17, 2025. A tax map acting as an area map. And

Madam Chair, there's five photographs and a site plan by Michelangelo dated July 16, 2025.

All right. What would you like to tell us? Good evening, madam chairperson, members of the board. Janiro Kosolino for the homeowner Anthony Defabio residing at 79 Kim Avenue North Babylon, also known as section 150, block one, left 53, located in the residence B zone. Subject property measures approximately 120 ft deep, 125 ft deep by 63 feet wide for a total of 7,953 square feet. We are requesting relief from the board to build a new second floor addition consisting of two bedrooms with walk-in closets and a full bathroom with laundry included. The proposed additions require variance for sideyard setback requesting 10.5 ft instead of permitted 12 feet, a difference of 1.5 ft. Variance for aggregate sideyard setback requesting 20.4t 4 ft instead of permitted 30 feet, a difference of 9.6 ft. The second floor addition is to be built over the existing footprint of the dwelling, not encroaching any further into the sideyard setbacks. Proposed addition complies with all other zoning requirements to answer the planning division's inquiry. Uh the reason for the expansion of the dwelling is the need for more room for the defabios family and the residence will remain a single family owner occupied use. The addition will have no significant impact to the environment will not affect any of the adjacent properties and will fit in with the character and nature of the neighborhood. Thank you.

All right. So as you said the variances are existing. We're going straight up. Remain single family. Correct. Okay. I have no further questions. Any questions from the board? Would anyone like to be heard on this application? For the record, there are none. All right. I'm going to make a motion to approve application 25-163. Second. All in favor? I. Thank you. Good evening. Thank you.

All right. Next application. Application 25162. Ketley Sylvane. This is uh West Babylon. Name and address for the record. My name is Hopton Hendricks. My address is 34 Maplewood Drive in West, New York, 11590. You affirm to tell the truth? Yes. Okay. Just let me read this.

Okay. Uh, we have a planning division memo dated September 17th, 2025. Department of Environmental Control memo dated September 23rd, 2025. This application may not result in significant impact. We have a survey by William Hogan dated September 9th, 2024. Tax map acting as an area map. And Madam Chair, there's uh four photographs and a site plan by Gary M. has been outdidated August 18, 2025. All right. Would you like to tell us?

Yes. Uh we're requesting approval for a diminished front yard setback from 30 ft to uh 26.6 and a rear yard set back to be diminished from 30 ft to uh I mean from 40t to 30.7. And the reason for that is the family decided to uh to stay together ever since the the fire that initially occurred almost approximately a year ago. And currently the family is actually separated because not everyone could fit in the trailer. So therefore there are two members of the family that had to was forced to rent elsewhere. Now the members of the family to my right this is Ketless Sylvane you have grandma you have Tamara Joshua and missing you have Sabrina Marsha and Sarah that's seven people and that's the reason for the seven rooms. Okay it's not a rental property in any way. Uh it's owner occupied and will always be owner occupied. Uh the building had to be um reconstructed in a way because since then she was diagnosed with a medical condition.

Okay. So she has what she call hereditary atexia and two years ago she was never like this and there's no cure for it. So her condition is expected to uh to get worse because two years prior to this she was never using this. In addition to that, grandma recently di diagnosed with Alzheimer's and from what the board and the board knows is that the house used to be a high ranch and you know from the high ranch the stairs to actually get up to the main level, the first floor, she had to tra traverse those steps and there's no way she can traverse the steps nor grandma and therefore that's the reason why there we're requesting the rear edition in the back for her to have a main room and for the daughter to return Sabrina to return home so she could help out financially with the situation and that's the reason for the second four edition for that extra room um in regards to the porch the memorandum and concern concern with the porch being so expansive. I have I have uh two pictures I'd like the board to actually look at because this request for the porch being that expansive is not something out of architectural vanity or something other than for safety and what this picture t can I give this okay

I normally don't take on projects like this to be honest with you. But when I when I heard what happened, I had to step in and intervene because I don't want a situation that occurred before to happen again. And it's the first time I'm ever doing work in uh in Babylon. And I can tell you this, the first day I walked in, just like I'm tearing up right there, I teared up when I saw Mr. during Snider on the very first day because it's very hard for a first responder like I was fire department New York to rescue so many people and not being a home to rescue your own sister. And when I walk in and I saw your name, there was a sister name Dorene. And the situation that occurred with them, they're very lucky that everyone made it out because they were all inside the home sitting down not knowing there's a fire on the second floor. It was a visiting aunt that came over and walked into the house and let them know that something doesn't smell right. And to be honest with you, the way the house is configured, it being a high ranch and their medical condition right now, I'll guarantee you they would have never made it out that house. Never. And that's the reason why we're requesting approval for the porch to be that the way that it is because as you can see from the picture that that's my personal home, right? these porches what it does because I'm all for rules and regulations trust me but there's some

that needs to improve because here you have the board request not the board but building code requests that you have eress windows on the second floor now can you stand up for a second that's tomorrow she'll be an occupant on the second floor to ask her to jump from a egress window just in case first responders don't arrive on time. You're dooming her. The code will be dooming her. There's no way she can make a jump from a 20 20 20 ft and expect to be okay. Joshua is not that much taller. Sarah is not that much taller. And Sabrina is almost the same height as Tamara. The picture that I I just submitted was from my own personal experience. And what you see there is me actually showing you that when the porch is expansive and go across the house like that, it actually reduced the height for them to actually get themselves to safety should something like that happen again. And the reason why I bring that up is because should the stairway become engulfed in fire in the future, we're not planning on it because we we decide to go to what they call a zero carbon footprint. I want to be sure that they all make it out. I want to be sure they all make it out. So, what you're looking at, I'm six, a little over six feet. That's my niece. And as you can see, I can easily pick her up, put her right there on the front of the roof of the of the front porch and remove her. And it should be the same situation with Tamara because if she should hang where the gutter is, it diminish her fall, okay, from over 20 feet to approximately three feet. And that's a huge difference. And that's the reason why we're requesting the front porch. Uh is there any other concern about

because another thing the house doesn't even it should the single separate use I'm kind of confused about because this property I believe was uh was in separate ownership since 1920. So I think it should uh fall within the single and separate use but under the application we didn't apply like that we just came to the board for approval and and that's all I have to say. If there is any questions I'd like to answer it. Okay. Thank you. Um I'll turn a hearing over to Mr. Sheepard. How are you? Thank you. How you doing?

Good. Uh the reason why we asked is seven bedrooms is kind of extravagant and and you also the number of bathrooms being on different floors is only one going to be one kitchen. One kitchen. Okay. So that's why they're asking if it was going to be a two family or if you're going to have a second kitchen. That's what the inquiry was about that regarding that. Okay. Now the porch, can we reduce it at all? Can you bring it in a little bit? Make it a little shorter. I mean you can still jump from a shorter porch as much as you could from a, you know. Okay. Hey, if it's a little out of character with the neighborhood is what what the concern is. Okay. I believe um 53 Troy Avenue, which is two blocks down, has the same thing. Um do you know if that was approved by this board?

I I am I'm not sure to be honest with you. And um I believe there are three other homes that have uh porches similar to that on the same block. Um

I'll ask the same question. on the on the same block, but not across the entire width of the the the front. But like I said, the porch is to provide an exit point for everyone on the second floor. So when you have five people on the second floor, I don't want to have any worry, god forbid, anything like what occurred happen again. And the mechanical room for the house is right beneath the staircase. So that's my worry. Even though it's electrical, the water heater, the way that the house is configured up, because there is no way to put anything else anywhere else, but right underneath the staircase in terms of the the water heater, and that's the only concern I have with a fire in the stairwell should there be like an electrical fire, something like that. And everyone should be able to basically open the door, open the window, get out to the porch, get to safety just in case the staircase is engulfed. Now to reduce it, I don't know how many feet you would like us to reduce it by. To bring it in how much? How many feet?

Bring it in three or four feet on each side. Three feet on each side. Three or four, you know, just so it's not. Okay. Look like like the front of a hotel or a lobby, you know. Okay. All right. I I'll agree to that. Submit plans for that. Yes, sir. All right. And um said there'll only be one kitchen and we need to do just a little bit of housekeeping here, Madam Chairman. Uh application needs to read all in connection. I'll make a motion that the application read all in connection with the erection of a proposed front porch and twotory rear edition. Second.

All in favor? I um don't believe I have any further questions, madam chair. Yes. And would you agree that we you not further enclose the front porch that it would just remain a porch? Not it will remain a front porch. It will not be enclosed at all. Thank you. Any questions from the board? Would anyone like to be heard on this application? For the record, there are none. Okay. We're going to close the hearing. They're going to resubmit plans. Leave the record open for your plans and then you'll get the decision in the mail. Okay. Thank you. Thanks.

All right. I didn't hear you. Motion toraw. Make a motion to withdraw application 2561. All in favor?

I All right. Next application is application 25152 of Spark Car Wash LLC of West Babylon. and 560 Mont Highway. name and address for the record.

Certainly. Keith Brown, the law firm Brown Alman LLP, 538 Hollow Road, Sweet 301 West, Melville, New York 11747. Good evening, Madam Chair, members of the board. Just while uh we're getting set up, I'll get started. Well, let me read these into the record. Do you affirm that truth? I I do. Oh, and here. Okay. So, we have a planning division memo dated September 17, 2025. Environmental control memo dated September 24th, 2025. We need a negl negative declaration. We have a fire marshall report dated September 25th, 2025 with several pages of comments. Did you guys receive that?

Yes, we have. You have? Perfect. Um, we have a survey from Control Point Associates, Inc. dated August 10th, 2023. Tax map acting as an area map. Uh, we also received correspondences 3 through 10 from residents in opposition. And madam chair, there's 18 photographs and a site plant by a deli caution dated May 8th, 2025. And for the record, we did receive a notice of county planner that this is a matter of local termination. I'm just going to have all our experts move up if that's okay. Perfect. Yeah. While they're doing that, I could get started.

Please do.

Certainly. On behalf of Spark Car Wash LLC, um I'm here with respect to the special exception of variance applications to develop a state-of-the-art car wash at the property located at 560 Montalk Highway in West Babylon, New York. As a matter of housekeeping, the public notice postings were performed in accordance with the town code and proof of was submitted in advance of this evening's hearing. with me tonight. To my left and one person to my right, I have Mr. Orur Ritzus from uh the director of real estate for Spark Car Wash. To my right, I have Mr. Alex Hollowman, PE of Bowler, the project engineer. To my immediate left, I have Gabriella Alamidia of JKnA Architecture, the project architect. Seated uh next to or in the front row here is Jack Zybora of Lewis S. Godfrieded and Associates, our sound expert. On the far left in the front row, we have Mr. Nicholas Tordella, PE of Stonefield Engineering, the traffic safety expert. And in the second row in the middle, we have Miss Dear Ryan, a senior environmental planner from PW Grosser, who will discuss the car wash and the criteria for the issuance of a special exception. And finally on the second row on the far left, we miss M Mr. Paul Dykes who is our real estate appraiser. Prior to this evening's hearing, our office submitted exhibits, renderings, and expert reports in support of the application. Uh with the noted exception that Miss Ryan has an additional uh planning report which we're going to submit uh when she comes up to testify. Memoranda prepared by Brown Alman were included with the initial submission of the application in support of the special used permit, the one area variance and the remaining sign

variances. In addition, uh we would now like to submit to the board a precedent chart where this board has granted similar relief for the number of ground signs, the size of the ground sign, setback as it relates to the ground signs, wall signs, the number of wall signs per elevation, and the wall sign height as measured from grade. If I may, The applicant has also had an opportunity to review the planning department's prehering memorandum and response. The applicant will be removing the ground sign identified as sign 6A that's located near the approach of the car wash tunnel. For the record, the other sign labeled as 6A, which is located in the car wash drive lane, will remain as proposed. Just by way of background, the property is zoned in the E business Business District and is located on the south side of Montalk Highway, also known as New York State Route 27A, approximately 102 ft west of the signalized intersection of Montalk Highway and Fleet Point Road. The site is improved with a vacant two-story building that was previously operated by a Bank of America branch with a drive-thru ATM service. As can be seen from the existing site photographs, the property is completely paved with little or no landscaping. The properties in the immediate vicinity of the subject site are all zoned in the e business district and includes the following uses. Abudding the property to the east is an autozone followed by Fleece Point Drive and an assisted living facility. Directly north of the property on the opposite side of Montalk Highway is a retail outlet. which includes a PetSmart and a fourleaf

federal credit union branch. There is also a shopping center which includes an Ace Hardware store, a Planet Fitness, and a Starbucks. Abuing the subject property to the west is the Sunrise Senior Assisted Living Facility and directly south of the property is an off- streetet parking area that's used for the neighboring medical office facility. The applicant seeks to develop the property with a car wash which will include a 4588 foot building with two drive up lanes along with new signage and associated site improvements. Landscaping improvements will also be provided along the front, rear, and Wesley property lines. We note that the site plan that's before the board this evening has already been reviewed by the planning board and site plan approval was granted on July 28th of this year. As part of the site plan application process, an extensive review of the project was conducted by the town's planning division, engineering division, and the town department of environmental control, the town fire marshall, as well as by the town's outside traffic consultant, IMEG. We note that by memorandum dated March 31st of this year, the town department of environmental control found that the project and the car wash use one would not result in adverse change to existing air quality. Two, would not result in a substantial adverse change to the existing ground or surface water quality. three would not result in a substantial change in traffic or noise and four would not result in a substantial increase in drainage problems. So with that I want to thank you for your time. That's our overview. I would

like down to turn it over to Mr. or Ritzus from Spark Car Wash who will further discuss the Spark Car Wash application. Thank you. Name and address for the record, of course. Or RAIS, 30 Maple Street, Unit 2, Summit, New Jersey, 07901. Do you affirm to tell the truth? Do you affirm to tell the truth? I do.

Thank you, Madam Chairman. Thank you, members of the ZBA and the town planning staff. Uh, my name is Orur Ritzus. Um, as Keith mentioned, I work for Spark Car Wash. Um, just quick note about myself. I am a Long Islander. I've lived here my entire life and raised my family here um on Long Island as well. Talking a little bit about Spark Car Wash. Um, Spark is a very unique car wash model in the industry. Um, some of you who may have traveled off of Long Island, particularly in the south or west, will have seen this type of model. It's called an express car wash. Now, what is an express car wash and how is that different from a typical car wash that you'll find on Long Island? So, express car washes typically have two components that make them appear. One is self-service uh vacuums that are free and open to the users of the car wash. The other is that there are no employees who actually wash your vehicle or dry it. So we have uh approximately three to four employees that are on property at any given time in two shifts, but they are there primarily for the safe and efficient operation of the site. So, we'll go through what each one of those employees goes does as you will uh as we'll talk through the site, but just want to kind of quickly differentiate what makes an express car wash different. The other thing that makes an express car wash different is the speed that you get in and out of the site. The idea of express car washes is that this is something that you can do on a multiple times per week, but definitely multiple times per month basis. That's enabled by two things. One is the speed. So typically a wash in the tunnel takes about 2 minutes and 30 seconds. Uh and

there is a quick uh queuing as well as a quick entry. The other thing is affordability. So our washes start at $27 per month. You can do a single wash, but the greatest value is on a monthly unlimited subscription basis. So with that membership model, you're encouraged to use the wash as frequently as you would like. So these two things really differentiate what from a traditional full service car wash to the express wash. So we'll talk a little bit about how do you actually use the site. So you could see the building is located on the far eastern side of the property and that's to allow vehicles to enter the site and and choose. There's immediately as they would enter the site, there's a sign that says vacuum before wash. That would be because on the left side you can see vacuum stalls. Those vacuum stalls are there for the customer's use. That's called what we call the spark park. Now, in those vacuum stalls, you also have air compre air hoses that you can use to blow dust off of your uh dashboard or off of the exterior of the vehicle. You have uh spray bottles that are provided free of charge for uh cleaning windows as well as microfiber towels to clean the windows. So, if you choose to, you could vacuum the interior of the car. There is also a one of the very cool things is a mat cleaner. So, you take the mats out of your car, you place them into the cleaner, and they pop out on the bottom all clean. So, you don't even have to vacuum the mat. So, you only really vacuum on the inside, the crumbs, the Cheerios that the kids inevitably leave underneath the uh car seats. Once they're done, once you're done with the vacuuming and any associated cleaning that you would have liked to do, you enter the queue to enter the tunnel. And this is probably the most familiar aspect of the car wash experience. Um, specifically since co,

many car washes have now stopped entering your car and taking it through the tunnel. And here, you drive up and you'll be greeted by a menu board. Now, there's two lanes. One is a member lane, one is a non-member lane. What's the primary difference? The primary difference is that in the member lane, there is a license plate reader that once you become a member for the unlimited watches, the gate will immediately open. It knows the type of watch you've selected. It knows your license plate, attaches the two things, and you enter through completely frictionous frictionlessly. In the non-member lane there, you are presented with a ATM style kiosk that accepts cash or credit cards. And there is also a um an employee that will help you decide which watch will be best for you. They'll also be telling you about the benefits of the uh um unlimited watch model. Um but they're there. They're standing there physically. There's no loud speakerphones or anything like that. They're actually there out there with an iPad helping you make that decision. Once you've made that purchase, then you will proceed through to the tunnel just as if you were a member. So either way, once you've gone through the pay station area, your vehicle is now in the queue to enter the tunnel. That's when you'll be greeted by the second employee. That second employee is called the loader. They're there primarily for your safety. The reason why is we want to make sure that the vehicle is loaded on the uh tracks that will bring the vehicle through. Again, if you've been to an automated car wash, you're familiar with this. You roll up and you put the car into neutral once you've hit a certain point on those tracks. Once the car is in neutral, you let go of the steering wheel. Uh turn off your your automatic windshield wipers if you've got them. And the car goes through the tunnel. And this is where the magic happens because our washes are entirely brand new, built from the ground up and state-of-the-art using a combination of state-of-the-art equipment and chemicals uh and soaps.

The vehicle comes out extremely clean at the end of the of the wash. But not only does the vehicle come out clean there, everything that is removed from the vehicle, including water during the wash, goes into our central uh call it the the uh the trough in the middle of the of the wash. That water is then sent out to our reclaim tanks, which our uh engineer will talk more about, but predominantly what that does is that allows us to recycle up to 85% of the water that's used in the wash. The soaps are taken out of the water, the water is cleaned, the water is ozenated, and it is then fit for use on the wash again. So, while most washes have to dump the water immediately after it's used on the car, we're able to continually recycle that use. Additionally, if you wash your car at home, like some people have, I I used to, um, all that water that you use goes immediately into the storm drains or uh onto the asphalt outside your home. So, this really helps us protect the environment by using less water per car. It works out to about 12 to 13 gallons of water per vehicle as opposed to 80, which is what would be used in a full service wash that does not have a reclamation system. So now you've exited the tunnel to the north uh and you have now a choice of turning, sorry, not a choice, you have a uh a sign there that will tell you when to stop or go, when to when to exit the tunnel, meaning that the vehicle has passed the last roller. And then you will turn and out right onto Montog Highway. Your car will be clean. It will be dry and you will be able to come back within a couple days, a couple a week or two to um to rewash if you'd like. Um so again, like I said, we're environment environmentally friendly, but not just that, it's a fun

experience for the whole family. Uh everyone likes going in, everyone likes to wash the wash the car. here. You don't wash the outside, but you're really helping to clean the inside. Um, like I said, we have about three to four employees on the site. One is there primarily just for the cleanliness of the site. So, they're there to make sure that any uh garbage is picked up. They're there to make sure that the towels that I mentioned are stocked, the bottles of spray cleaner are stocked and available, and they're there to really make sure that there are no issues at all at any of the vacuum stations. The other two employees are there to help you either enter the tunnel or select the wash that you're going to choose. As far as the actual site operations, um we are open uh every day as being an express and a membership model. We don't close when it rains. Uh we we just during major snow events, we'll close because we want to be available and meet you at time that you want to wash your car. Even if it doesn't make the most sense, we're not there to judge. It's there for you to use. So, um we are open every day from 8:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. We do have staff members there 1 hour prior, 1 hour post, and their primary functions are to clean and prepare the site. So they never leave the site a mess and they always make sure that they start the day on the best foot forward. Trash pickup occurs at that um uh enclosed uh trash uh enclosure. Um and that happens once per week and we do get deliveries of our soaps. They are delivered by our own team in sprinter vans. So there's never any uh trucks on the site except for that once a week trash pickup. Uh our peak hours are between 1 and 3 pm. Uh and really uh we found that our customers have always consistently given us very high marks for cleanliness and friendliness and

that's what we really want to bring to the West Babylon community. Um I will now turn it back over to uh to Keith and we'll continue our presentation. But thank you for your attention this evening. Thank you. Thank you. Next we have Mr. Hollowman from Bowler who is going to walk you through the site design, layout, landscaping, and how the car wash will work. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Brown. Uh, good evening, members of the board. My name is Alex Hollowman, uh, civil engineer from Bowler, here to speak on behalf of the applicant, Spark Car Wash. Do you affirm to tell the truth? I do.

Okay. With the summary of our application presented, I would like to discuss the major importance of the project from a site engineering's perspective. Uh the subject parcel lies along Montalk Highway, uh New York State Route 27A, approximately 112 ft from the intersection of Fleet Point Drive and Montalk Highway. The in existing conditions, the subject parcel was improved by an existing two-story bank building with associated site improvements inclusive of parking, lighting, and utilities. A geotechnical investigation has been performed at the site with eight subsurface borings concluding suitable conditions for uh development. This application proposes a new two-story single tunnel drive-thru car wash express car wash which will be fed by two stacking lanes, a members lane and a non-members lane. Combined, the stacking lanes can accommodate up to 13 total cars in Q from the tunnel entrance to the parking area. Once through the pay station area, an emergency bailout exit is provided via east via an existing cross access that takes you onto Fleet Point Drive behind the existing Autozone. This is seldom used, but necessary in the event of a customer's vehicle cannot proceed through the tunnel for any reason. All customers exiting the site uh can elect excuse me all customers entering the site can elect to utilize the vacuum and car wash mash area which or from spark car wash presented earlier before entering the building tunnel at no additional cost. These are selfservice systems which are equipped with tools for the customers to clean the interior of their vehicles. All after exiting the car wash tunnel, all cars shall exit via right restriction only onto Montalk Highway. 13 total parking spaces are proposed on

site, including 10 vacuum spaces, one accessible vacuum space, and three dedicated employee spaces. An on-site fully enclosed trash town compliant trash enclosure is proposed, which has adequate access for garbage pickup. Adequate on-site lighting is also proposed, which will provide visibility at low light times, but also meet town regulations. The site will connect to public water, public sanitary sewer, and will have electric telecom and gas service connections serving the car wash building. On-site storm water management is provided, which will provide for the storage of a 2-in rainfall event and approximately 105 leeching galleys or subsurface storm water structures distributed throughout the site. Additionally, an on-site reclaim system is proposed which will capture car wash process water for on-site reuse within the car wash building tunnel. This is a state-of-the-art system. It is designed to further reinforce Spark's commitment to an environmentally friendly operation utilizing the latest in water filtration and recirculation equipment and technology. This system utilizes a series of subgrade tanks outside the car wash tunnel, but also apparatus within the car wash tunnel as well. These apparatus work in in uh concert with each other to collect the uh car wash processed water within a central trench before sending it out to the exterior tanks to uh be further processed. Once collected within the central tank, they use car wash water flows to sediment separation tanks, filtration steps, and treatment membranes before ultimately reaching a water quality condition suitable for reuse within the car wash and per sparks, high water quality and conditioning standards. Town compliant landscaping is also proposed, including a variety of

plantings such as shade trees, evergreen trees, shrubs, and general ground cover. Specifically, Spark intends to plant 13 hardy grasses of one type, 23 perennials of one type, 62 shrubs of five types, and 11 trees of three types, and 24 ground cover plantings of three types. These plantings are both town compliant, but also distributed throughout the site to either screen or enhance uh built infrastructure of our where our application where would be appropriate on site. Regarding signs, our application requests relief for proposed on-site signage as detailed defend the file documents. More specifically, signage is proposed, including ground and building signs along with on-site directional signage to assist customers with on-site circulation. From a site engineer's perspective, of the 17 ground directional signs, 11 are ground and six are directional. 16 of these signs are specifically meant for the safe and effective operation of the car wash. At this time, I would like to generally walk uh the board through a typical customer's experience, a customer's flow coming from Montalk Highway running through the site before ultimately exiting on the Montalk Highway as well. Entering the site, the a customer will see a enter sign uh right at the curbcut entrance before proceeding into the uh to the site where there we will then see to their right hand side a sign that says vacuum shall be uh provided before you enter in the tunnel. So that's a operational and safe effective use of the site sign. Continuing on, uh the customer whether electing to utilize the vacuums or not will ultimately proceed to the two Q- lanes where they'll be met with additional signage. This signage is to direct the customer as to which side is a uh member side, non-member side,

additional to cash and credit signage before ultimately turning the corner entering into the order point kiosk area. Uh there are there is one digital order board which is uh directly in the median the striped median between the two lanes at the order point area. Uh this digital order board is almost as if a a pre-sale board if you will where a customer is to review options available to them if they're a non-member. That's why it's in that lane facing the non-member lane uh for washes available that can be selected as you proceed further to the XPS XPT system which again provides uh that final interface with the uh customer as they select what wash they'd like to proceed with. Um directly above the customer is also additional signage that directs them as to member lane, non-member lane, cash or credit options. uh these are all concentrated in that area to again provide that safe and effective use um as the customer decides which lane to choose which is appropriate for them and also what wash is appropriate for them. Continuing further there is stop bars which um will regulate customers so that they're not both proceeding at the same time. Uh there is signage there is excuse me wording on the stop bar uh stop bars in order to uh provide additional signage as to the correct lane uh for the customer. Continuing further uh the customer will then enter the tunnel proceeding through the tunnel before ultimately getting to near the exit of the tunnel where they will look straight ahead and find a stop go uh uh sign. This is as the name intends is to tell them whether they need to stop or go uh as they exit the tunnel and proceed safely ultimately ending up uh where they are making their choice to take a right onto Montalk Highway where they have additional exit signage um so that

they understand that that right turn is is provided to them. Having covered signage, I would like to lastly uh state our application requests relief from the town's minimum rear yard requirement along the southern property line. However, I'd like to emphasize that the building portion that is encroaching into this rear yard is an architectural extension feature and not a full building section. Uh this will be further covered by um Gabriella from uh GKA. Uh but I would just like to sort of hit on that and also mention that furthermore it should be noted that the southern property line fronts a large parking area um and and plantings are provided along with a 6-foot vinyl fence in this area. Uh I would like to conclude and say that our application has submitted to New York State DOT and has received approval in addition to Suffach County Water Authority uh has received approval. The proposed building architecture has been coordinated with the proposed site design uh meeting the programming needs of car uh spark car wash while also meeting uh the town's requirements. I would like now like to welcome Gabriella from GKA to discuss further the architecture program.

Just before you do, Alex, could you just walk the board through sign number five? That's the ground identification sign. Sure. Right. I think we made some modifications to the design.

Yes. Um sign five in the file documents is the freestanding sign that is uh directly on Montalk Highway. Um so uh as Mr. Brown had mentioned before uh there are some modifications being made to that to that sign where the symbol that is plan left will be removed and the overall uh area of that specification that's filed will be shrunk. That sign is located along the road and positioned in a way that that it's uh a foot off the property line. It that is an intentional placement. U again hitting on the safe and effective operation of the of the car wash is that uh it's to let potential customers and known customers on Malk Highway know that they're approaching the car wash at an appropriate distance so that they can uh make an effective uh maneuver into the site. So, just to clarify, based on uh the planning staff memo that we received, um there was a concession that was made to reduce the size of the sign from what was 56.74 with the logo down to 43.2 uh where 32 uh square feet is permitted. And then the relocation instead of it being 1 foot from Mont Highway will now be 4'2 in where 10 is required. So, we slid it back by removing that portion of the load. How high in the air is it? How high off the ground?

Top the top of the sign is down to the Yeah. is 15 ft and the bottom of the of the actual placard is 11 ft. So it's a 4 foot um Thank you. sign marquee. Yep. Great. Thank you, Alex. Next, we'd like to bring up our project architect who will present the architectural drawings for the project. Gabrielle. Name and address for the record, please. Sure. Gabriella Domeda, 36 Ames A, Rutherford, New Jersey. And do you affirm to tell the truth? I do. Okay.

Good evening, Madam Chair and members of the board. My name is Gabriella Dome from GKNA Architects. We're the architects for the proposed Park Car Wash building. I'd like to start by speaking about the building floor plan. Please refer to sheet A1 of the architectural submitt set. It doesn't look like that file is there.

Is it in their packet they received? Yes. Sure. Page A1. It's the first page. It's where we show the first and second floor plans. Okay. It'll be under one of the renderings either three or four. It's part of those packets.

Yeah,

we can keep this this followup. I will speak about it. um later in my testimony. So, this is a two-story 4588 square foot structure. The first floor being a 115 ft long wash tunnel, plus a bump pile area containing a restroom, storage area, and lift and stairs up to the second floor. For reference, I'd like to note that beyond the wash tunnel entry and exit doors on the first floor, we're proposing a semi-encclosed area containing an eastern and western wall and a flat roof. These walls and roof are aligned with sound panels for sound absorption. This feature will be further explained by the acoustical expert Jack Zbora during his testimony. The second floor spends a little over half of the first floor's footprint and contains an electrical room, equipment room, office, and break room for employees. I now like to move on to the rendering package, which is the file up on the on the screen. Please refer to the proposed view from Montalk Highway on sheet R3.1. That's the one. The building elevations and finishes were curated following the design recommendations made by the board in previous meetings. Our main elevation facing Monotok Highway is the portion of the building containing one story only. The second story is set much farther back on the southern portion of the site. We then have a focal element which is the tallest portion of our building and it's where most of our signs are placed. This is also used as a connection element between the first and second floors of our building. In terms of finishes, our primary materials are a red brick veneer and a gray lap siding with 6 in exposure. Our secondary material is the blue stuckle on the tall accent element.

These three finishes are accented by white trims and built-up cornises. Glazing is provided on the first floor at the wash tunnel wall, allowing customers to view cars going through the wash system. The office and break room on the second floor also contain glazing facing the cars at the pay station area. Before I move on to signage, I'd like to briefly explain the design and finishes of the Spark Park area. Please refer to the card elevations on sheet R1 of this document. The Spark Park is a unique feature that Spark provides to their customers for car mat washing. The main finishes at the Spark Park are white and gray porcelain tiles with the blue brake metal border. Moving on to signage. I will describe the signage in the order provided by Bowler signage package, but for visuals, I like to keep the colored elevations up on the screen, please. Spark signage package is designed to work not only as individual signs but as a tasteful complement to the building architecture and the adjacent Spark site and building signs. Starting with sign number one on the proposed east elevation. This is the elevation at the bottom of the page. Yep. Number four. The sign was originally proposed as a 73.5 square foot in area containing the Spark logo as well as the word Spark Car Wash. Spark believes this is an important sign as it will have visibility for traffic traveling west on Montalk Highway. However, Spark has agreed to the town recommendation made in the memo letter issued on 917 and will reduce the sign from 73.5 square ft to 30 ft by removing the logo and keeping just the words Spark Car Wash. Sign number two is the sign on the proposed west elevation. This is the elevation at the top of the page number one. The sign is 15.8 square ft and is

also placed on our highest parapit wall facing the vacuum spot. The sign only contains the Spark car wash logo in no words. Sign number three is also on the proposed west elevation at the Spark Park area. The sign has the word Spark Park and no logos. The sign is designed for pedestrian use to direct on-site customers using the vacuum spots to walk towards the mat washer area. Lastly, sign number four is our most important sign as it is placed on the front elevation facing MA talk highway. This is the elevation on the right side of the page. Uh number three, this sign is 73.5 square feet in area and it is also placed on our focal element for visibility. It contains the Spark Park logo as well as the Spark car wash words. In our opinion, this park building design is contemporary while also utilizing relevant finishes. It also uh utilizes architectural elements and sparks brand essence. Um this concludes my presentation unless Mr. Brown would like me to further detail any design element or the board has any questions for me. Thank you. Okay. Next we have our sound expert Mr. Jack Zora.

Jack [Music] evening board. Hello. Name and address. Jack Savor 415 Route 24 Chester, New Jersey. You affirm to tell the truth? I do. Okay.

Thank you, board. So, we are retained to review the acoustical impacts of this proposed site. Um, as you are well aware, your town has a local noise ordinance and it has many components, but the ones that apply here are the limit of 60 dB during the daytime hours. And your code defines daytime is 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. As you heard earlier, operational hours are uh 8:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. So, we're within the daytime uh compounds of the noise code. To evaluate that, we take the site plans and the manufacturers's data for the proposed systems and we create a 3D acoustical model of the site to calculate uh the the resulting sound levels at various properties. The manufacturer has uh different options for their dryers and their vacuum producers. And we made it a point here to use their low-noise units for both of those items. So, the vacuum producers are equipped with the variable drive so that when they start up, they they don't have a loud start of noise. is a gradual starting up and and down which reduces noise and the drier system of the of the tunnel is also their lowest noise option uh that they currently offer. In addition to those noise control options, we're enclosing the vacuum producers on three sides and the top with a sound blocking and absorbing material. And as you heard earlier, we're extending the tunnels on the entrance and the exit with uh sides and a roof that are also sound blocking absorbing materials to help further reduce the sound from the tunnel dryers. Once those uh noise control items are in place, we're calculating the levels uh at the nearest residential and commercial properties to be within the noise control uh limits of 60 dB during the daytime hours. As a point of comparison, we did do some measurements on the site over a 24-h hour period. Um, the metric that your code uses is the L10, which is kind of the highest 10% of sound levels uh for the noise code. And the L10 sound levels already existing on site range between 53 to 65 dB at grade

and 56 to 68 dB on the roof. So you can see that the existing sound levels, just some traffic and whatnot, already routinely exceed your limit, but we're going to be below the limit uh due to all the noise control parameters that we have proposed for this site. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Next, we have uh Nick Torella, our traffic safety expert.

Hey, hello. Name and address for the record. Uh, Nicholas Tordella, T O R T O R E L L A 584 Broadway, Sweet 310 in Manhattan. Do you affirm to tell the truth? I do. Okay.

Uh, good evening, Madam Chairman, members of the board. Again, my name is Nicholas Toddella. I'm a licensed professional engineer in the state of New York and a traffic engineering project manager with Stonefield Engineering and Design. So, as we've discussed, our project would construct an approximately 4,800 square foot spark car wash with one wash tunnel along the south side of Montalk Highway designated as New York State Route 27A, approximately 110 ft west of the signalized intersection with Fleet Point Drive. The site's currently developed with a two-story building that previously operated as a bank with a drive-thru ATM. and access to that existing site is currently provided via two driveways that are generally opposite and unsalized rightinout access that serves the Planet Fitness Shopping Center on the north side of the roadway. So, our team has worked extensively with both the town planning board and town staff to develop the optimized layout and circulation plan that we're presenting this evening. The planning board approved this plan that shows the car wash building on the east side of the site uh next to the Autozone building on the adjacent lot with vehicles exiting the wash tunnel at the northeast corner of the property. We are proposing to consolidate access by providing one rightin out driveway at the west end of our site's frontage to Montalk Highway where no left turns of any kind will be permitted into or out of the property. We've created one-way counterclockwise vehicle circulation on the site and striped a channelizing island where the wash tunnel exit intersects the on-site drive aisle so that all vehicles exiting the wash tunnel will be directed to immediately exit the site as well by making a right turn back to Montalk Highway. This circulation pattern eliminates potential conflicts between vehicles entering the site and those exiting the wash tunnel.

It promotes a continuous flow of traffic throughout the site and it minimizes our project's impact to eastbound traffic flow on Montalk Highway. Uh I'm not going to belver the overall circulation plan that we've already discussed, but I do want to touch on two quick points related to the layout and circulation. So, at the southeast corner of the site, the existing connection to the adjacent AutoZone property will be maintained, but as a one-way eastbound egressonly connection that will only serve as the car wash's bailout lane. For example, in the rare instance that a customer gets into the paystation queue, arrives to the kiosk, and then for some reason decides that they no longer want to wash their vehicle, the dedicated employee at the kiosk will open the chain between the properties, direct that vehicle to exit through the bailout lane through the Autozone property to Fleet Point Drive. That stripe drive aisle, uh, if you can bring up the rendering, might see it a little bit clearer. There it is. Yeah. The striped drive aisle between the trash enclosure and the pay station gates will be reserved for garbage vehicles and emergency vehicles only. The garbage trucks will drive southbound in the one-way drive aisle adjacent to those vacuum spaces. They'll access the trash enclosure. They'll pull through that stripe lane between the enclosure and the pay station. And similarly to the bailout lane, they will exit the site via that cross access through Autozone to Fleets Point Drive. Emergency vehicles would follow that same circulation pattern. But I think again it's important to note that that bailout lane connection to through Autozone to Fleet Point Drive is not a standard driveway and we expect it to be used a maximum of one maybe two times per day. My office also prepared the traffic report that was submitted to the board in advance of this evening's hearing. Uh and as part of that we prepared a trip

generation analysis based on data published by the Institute of Transportation Engineers or IT in their recent release of the 12th edition trip generation manual which indicates that the proposed spark would generate approximately 110 total trips during the weekday evening peak hour and approximately 145 during the critical Saturday peak hour. These are the sum of both entering and exiting trips. Ime, who's the town's traffic engineering consultant, reviewed our report and agrees with our conclusion that the project will not significantly or adversely impact traffic operations on the adjacent section of Montalk Highway or at the nearby intersection with Fleets Point Drive. To supplement that conclusion, we also prepared a traffic capacity model for Montalk Highway and Fleets Point Drive, which inter uh indicates, excuse me, that the intersection will operate consistently in the future with Spark, as it will in the future without it. The model shows a nominal increase in overall intersection delay, less than approximately 4 seconds on average during the key peak hours, thereby providing that technical confirmation that development of our site will not significantly impact traffic operations at that critical intersection. The traffic model also indicates that under typical peak hour conditions, the projected eastbound queue on Montalk Highway approaching Fleets Point Drive will not extend back far enough to the west to impede operations of our proposed site driveway, which is about 160 ft west of that stopwar. As Mr. Hollowman said earlier, the New York State DOT has also reviewed our project as part of the highway work permit application which is required because the site fronts the state highway and approved the development of our proposed car wash with one rightinite out driveway with the understanding that it would not significantly impact operations or traffic flow on their roadway. I just want to close with two quick operations

items. Uh which is when customers arrive to Spark on-site signage and the employees will direct the customers to use any of the 10 vacuum spaces prior to entering the wash tunnel. I do want to note one of those vacuum spaces is designated as an ADA accessible space. So nine vacuums would be available to all customers. Based on the Spark's operational expertise, approximately half of their customers choose to vacuum their vehicle during a visit to a site. With these customers spending on average about 7 minutes using a vacuum space. So if you assume that average 7 minute turnover rate, those nine vacuum spaces can accommodate 77 customers in one hour, which is higher than the projected total visitation during that critical Saturday peak hour, even if every single customer chose to vacuum their car. There will also be the three parallel spaces on the west side of the drive aisle that will be dedicated to the on-site employees, meaning that the proposed on-site parking supply, 10 vacuum spaces, three employee spaces would meet code requirements and be sufficient to accommodate the peak demand for inbound queuing. The site design provides 10 total vehicle stacking spaces in the designated lanes that lead to the pay stations. These 10 stacking spaces are provided as we've talked about in the two separate lanes. The interior lane which is d design designated for members only and the exterior slightly longer lane which would be designated for non-members. Member vehicles are typically processed through those screening gates using the license plate recognition software or infrastructure I should say which functions like an easy pass gate and results in those transaction times between 10 and 15 seconds. non-member vehicles would purchase a standalone car wash at the paystation kiosk with the help of a dedicated employee. And even without the license plate recognition, those transactions on average typically

take between 35 and 50 seconds. So now if every transaction at both gates took 50 seconds, the two pay stations could process more than 140 vehicles in any given hour, which is almost double the projected visitation during the highest single peak hour, which is expected on a Saturday afternoon. These gates will process the customers at a rate where the cues will not extend back far enough to impact on-site circulation or maneuverability into or out of the vacuum spaces, thereby minimizing congestion that could occur in the on-site drive aisle and our project's impact to eastbound flow on Montalk Highway. The last thing I want to bring up is just one specific comment that was submitted this evening by Mr. Mark Maculitis, which identified concerns about spark vehicles queuing back onto Montalk Highway, which I believe I've just addressed. Uh in addition to how much he needs to slow down uh in an active traffic stream in order to make an eastbound right turn from Montalk Highway to Fleet Point Drive, which to be fair, it is a slightly acute angle turn. So I very much understand where he's coming from. I'd like to state for the record that presence of an active commercial driveway upstream of Fleet Fleets Point Drive will inherently result in lower eastbound travel speeds in that southern lane because cars will already be slowing down in order to turn into our site. Our driver will also provide excellent sight lines in both directions even though realistically you only need to look left out of a right egress driveway. And therefore, I don't expect that development of Spark will exacerbate the residents existing concerns about having to slow down and make that acute angle turn uh from Montalk Highway to Fleet Point Drive. I'm happy to field any questions from the board or I'll turn it back over to Mr. Brown.

Thank you. Thank you, Nick. Next, we have Miss DJ Ryan. She's senior environmental planner with PW Grosser. and I she has her report and I have a copy of the submission letter to go along with it. Thank you.

Name and address for the record. Dear J Ryan, uh, PW Grocery, 630 Johnson Avenue, Bohemia. And do you tell the truth? I do. Okay.

Good evening, chair, members of the board. I'm senior environmental planner with PW Grosser, previously a planner for a town of Icelip and senior planner for Port Jeff. Um I just want to summarize the proposed project with regards to the special exception and uh the variances proposed for tonight's development. The proposed project will not prevent the orderly or unreasonable use of adjacent properties. This project is going into a currently vacant bank property. It's going to revitalize a site that's currently sitting vacant. It's using actually being used as kind of a second property, a second parking lot for AutoZone based on my own site inspection when I went there the other day. I saw a lot of cars that were using it as parking for AutoZone as a cutthrough to avoid the intersection. So, right now, we just really want to revitalize a site that's kind of sitting as a blighted property along Montalk Highway. Um there's also currently when you look at the property, there's absolutely no landscaping. It's completely pvious pavement. There's overgrown um from other properties that are leaking onto the site. There's a lot of debris in the corners that's just sitting there. A lot of garbage collecting, broken pavement, broken concrete that's along it. There's two curb cuts that are just all broken up. So, by adding this development and adding in the one curb cut, it's actually going to enhance the streetscape because it's going to provide the one curb cut that allows a lot more foliage along the street. Um, and it's adding 18% landscaping to right now 0% landscaping. Um, the lot area is exceeding the current code right now. We're also exceeding the frontage for what's proposed according to town code and as well as the sideyard. we're meeting the height and other requirements as well.

Um we're adding another business to right now what currently has bringing in no tax revenue and we're also adding in um jobs during the construction process as well as during the um operations. There's going to be um not a huge amount of staff, so it's not going to be a lot of changeover and a lot of people as previously testified, but it will have um a few workers that are coming on and off the site. And they're going to be, as previously said, along the western um property line, so kept out of the way, but still working on the site and working to keep the property much cleaner than it is currently. Um, also as previously testified, the traffic is not going to cause any undue impacts to what's happening on Montalk Highway. Um, it's not going to be impacting it at all. It's not going to be leaking onto Montalk Highway. There's going to be no parking that's currently allowed on Montalk Highway. Um, it's not going to be impacting it in that way or causing any environmental issues that are going to be impacting anything with regard to dust, with regard to odors or anything like that. There's going to be plenty of dust controls, wetting of the dust during construction, as well as the workers are going to be arriving, as previously said, before and after the property to make sure the property is upkept and stays an upstanding property during and within the community. We don't want this to be something that gets to the wayside. It's not going to be like some of the other properties or any other property they might see that becomes something that's downtrodden. We don't want anything like that to happen. We want this to be an upstanding part of society and especially part of this community. Um there's also there's no churches or theaters or recreation that's going to be that's in the area that this would interfere with. So that won't be any part of the issues as well. Um with regards to the variances that are proposed on the property, there's

only three signs that are actually going to be seen from Montalk Highway. like any business that this needs a ground sign. Most of the other businesses on the property all have ground signs. They all have signs that are seen um along Montalk driveway. When Montalk Highway when you're driving along on the facades um some of the facads that are along Montalk Highway have two or three um facial signs. This one is only proposing one and it's just for the logo just to be seen. It's not something that's going to be flashing. It's not going to be something that's obnoxious that'll um distract the drivers or anything like that. It's just going to be something that's going to blend in. That's going to just be seen like any other business that you're going to see across the street or down the road. Um one of the other ground signs that's going to be seen is also just an entrance just for safe entry on and off the site. We just want to have enough signage for people to navigate and have fluid circulation throughout the property so that there won't be any confusion. This is a one-way circulation. So, we want to make sure that everyone that's driving on the property is safe and um circulating correctly. Um with regard to feasibility, if you were to move the building um any part forward, with how narrow this site is and with the length of the building itself, it really would cause like another curb cut. And as I said before, if you were to create two curb cuts, it would start getting rid of the landscaping. We don't want to get rid of the landscaping. We want to try and bring in as much um greenery as possible to the property right now. Um so we don't want to get rid of that with the extension to the back. Um it's just an essential feature that we want to add onto the back. It creates um an over partial to the cars that are going into the tunnel. It's adding to it. It has sound attenuation and we're going to be adding um barriers and canopies that'll help block anything that would impact the neighbors to the south. If you were to look at the property to the south that would be the most impacted by the encroachment, it's actually very far into its own property. So, I don't think that there would be,

in my expert opinion, I don't think that it would really be impacted by the tunnel. Um, and as previously testified, we are trying to stay within, we are staying within the noise limits of the town code. Um, in addition to also again supplying a lot of landscaping along all the western and southern property lines. So again, trying to beautify the property as well as being as respectful as possible to all of our neighbors. Um, with regard to substantial variances, the encroachment to the rear is only at 26% um, relaxation. I don't believe that that's a huge substantial. I don't think that's substantial at all. And again, it's very essential to this um, dynamic on the property. It adds a lot to the tunnel and adds a lot of um sound attenuation. It helps a lot with what's currently happening and helps block a lot of the impacts that might happen on the site otherwise. Again, the signs, a lot of them are wayfinding. A lot of them help the customers on site. There's the members lane, the non-members lane, and a lot of the signs will help people when they get on site to know where to go, to know um where they need to park, to know where the vacuums are, things like that. I don't believe that this would cause any adverse impacts to the community. A lot of the signs are internal. They won't be seen by any of the neighbors. There's only the three signs, the two in the front, and the one facial sign that would even be seen by anyone from the outside. And again, it's along Montalk Highway. And like any other business that's along Mount Hawk Highway, they all have signs that would be seen from that road. Um, with self-created, yes, the signs are self-created and the extension is self-created, but I think that the benefit of the variances kind of outweigh what they could bring to the neighborhood. Um and

they redevelop a vacant property that right now is a blight to what is on Mont Highway and it's bringing a lot of business and tax revenue right now to something that is crumbling in a vacant um state. The proposed action is consistent I believe with all the standards and evaluations in my expert opinion and the required variances by the board I would believe would be appropriate. Um, but I just want to reiterate that again I do think that this is a blighted property and I do think that the redevelopment of this property would be beneficial to the neighborhood. I think it puts in a lot of um safety issues with a lot of the um signs. We're trying to put in a lot of the signs to make sure that no one kind of crosses again crosses incorrectly. Right now there are two signs so you don't make the right on so you don't make the left out. We're trying to keep that in and try and make sure that people navigate throughout the site correctly and there's no issues with according to traffic, no issues kind of going in and out of the site as well as still keeping with the fire codes and building codes and making sure that everything is kept in accordance with all the town codes as well.

Thank you. Thank you. And finally, our final expert tonight is Mr. Paul Dykes, our licensed New York licensed real estate appraiser, will provide an overview of his appraisal report. Paul, good evening. Paul Dykes, Dykes, Realy Advisors, 223 Wall Street, Huntington, New York. And you're affirm to tell the truth.

Yes. Subject is situated on a commercial road within a e business zone abuing an auto zone to the east and across the street from a commercial shopping center. Situated to the south of the property is a medical office building. Spark is looking to redevelop the site with a new car wash to pick it in the site plan. In accordance with the town code, the applicant is requesting a special exception for car wash use. In my research with the town, I found three similar car washes in um a business e zone. Um all ab budding residential use. All were granted special use. Um they're in my report. The address is 12 1289 Deer Park Avenue, 144 East Sunrise Highway, and 1680 Deer Park Avenue. All business ezone. uh they were granted special use uh for car wash. So in in brief in in my review of the site and the overall character of the surrounding neighborhood with consideration given to prior decisions and supporting facts, it is my opinion the proposed car wash will not have an adverse impact impact on the neighborhood and is in keeping with similar exceptions granted to other car washes in the town. Thank you, Paul. That concludes our presentation. We're here to answer any questions that that the public or the board may have.

Perfect. Thank you very much. I'll turn the hearing over to Mr. Shepard. Thank you. You stand up. I'm sorry. I uh Thank you. It was a very thorough, very um you covered all the crossed all your tees, dotted all your eyes. Behind you, you're going to see a bunch of your neighbors. I'm going to tell you that the one thing that we're concerned with is you need to be good neighbors. I want to talk to you about a few things. I have a few questions and I want to verify a couple of things that your gentleman some statements that you made. Certainly. Number of employees was three or four. Three to four. Uh depending on the shift

will be and that'll be you said there'll be one dedicated to cleaning up the property. No, actually uh I'll bring up Mr. racist to talk to you about that. Somebody said I'm not sure. Yes, you gave me a lot. So, tried to digest it all, but

No, it's better to clarify. So, um three to four depending on the how busy we believe the site will be that day. So typically, and you guys are familiar with this as we all are as Long Islanders, when they throw a lot of salt out on the road, typically 5 days later, there are a lot of people at car washes, and that's when we will typically call in that fourth person really to help make sure that we can have a safe and efficient operation on the site. Um, and so typically there would be three on almost any normal day. They do work in two shifts and there are 10 to 12 employees total that are employed at the site but they don't all come to the site at any one given time. There is one person who I mentioned is responsible for maintaining the spark park which is where there's the um the vacuums and and all the accessory equipment that you can use to clean your vehicle. That person is also tasked with cleaning up the site. That means anything any garbage that's on on the floor, but also emptying the trash containers that are available to the customers at the vacuums. So customers can, like I said, empty whether it's Cheerios or wrappers or receipts. They can put that into a trash can. They empty those trash cans and um put those trash bags into the uh trash enclosure uh that then gets picked up once per week. So, they're dedicated not just to um the the servicing of the spark park, but also then making sure that anything that's maybe blown onto the site gets picked up and puts gets put into the trash.

There'll be a lot of that blowing off dashboards and vacuuming and all of that stuff. Now, on the second floor, there's an employees room and an office. Is there a manager? Is there What's the office? What's the purpose? Correct. There there is a site manager that they have an office where they will work out of. It's also a place for us to hold uh meetings with our team. So, we do have district managers that travel from sight to sight. And it's there is an employee break area. So, we like for our employees to have a place where they can then take a break. There's a uh a microwave, a refrigerator that they can store food for lunch, things like that. And we have three designated parking spaces for the employees.

That's right. On the western side of the of the site, there's three parallel parking spaces. Might as well stay there for a minute. And it the the um water is going to be recycled 85% we said correct. So 85% of the water that's used in the wash process is recycled. It's recycled until it can't be used any further. So I mean you don't kind of store specific water but um as it's as it's cleaned there are certain amount of water that is put out into the into the sewer system. Um and that's just the natural process of cleaning that water. Okay. And you said that there was chemicals and soap or is that just

there? So the soaps are the chemicals, right? They're diluted and then they become uh kitchen grade uh biodegradable soaps. Um so there's there's nothing there's no harsh chemicals. Uh and again that has all been proven through our engineers submission to the Suffach County um uh water authority. Department of Health on the um you mentioned people throwing down ice. I can tell you that you better have plenty of it there when they're leaving. When they're exiting in bad weather, you're going to need some kind of you know because the water's going to freeze and when it's slow and fast and slow and fast. And another thing I want to point to is I bank right across the street at the uh it's Four Leaf now.

Oh, Four Leaf. Yes. Yes. And there's a right in and a right out there. And I can tell you anytime I go to the bank, there are people violating that. Nobody. They run right over the concrete and go make the left right in and a left right out. So I'm sure they're going to do it on your side of the street. I mean, I know you're taking every precaution you can. Maybe some kind of stances or something in the way. I don't know. But I I'll let telling you what happens on the other side of the street. And every time I go there, I witness at least one car violating it. So,

I'll let the traffic engineer talk about the or the the site engineer talk about the actual ability to install anything. I think that's something that was requested from New York State DOT not to be installed. But as far as the exit driveway, uh you are correct and it's not something that we haven't thought about. There is a radiant heat system that's used for that driveway. So, it's concrete. It's not asphalt. Um, you can kind of tell in the uh in the uh drawing there that it's a different color from the parking lot. That whole apron is heated. So, that is to prevent it from exactly what you're talking about, freezing in the winter months. And the tenant or the occupant or whoever it is just before is a nursing home. I happen to know I worked Oh, yes.

In a prior life, I worked in in constructing it. And there's right on the end of it is the Alzheimer's unit. The what? I'm sorry. Alzheimer's and there's a lot of people, a lot of old people coming in and coming out. You're also on a bend there going around Montalk Highway, so you're in and out in your traffic issues. you're going to have to be really careful about. I'm just not, you know.

Yeah. Our our site engineer did create um an exhibit to show the uh the view triangle they call it and happy to have him speak to that and then also speak to the um to the uh driveway and in terms of the traffic mitigation that you that you'd mentioned, is there any other things you'd like to ask me or for me to respond to before we ask him to talk about those two items? You said you're from New Jersey. You need to be good neighbors. Well, I'm not from New Jersey. I'm from Long Island. You're from Long Island. So many people, please. Come on. I'm telling you right now, the company is based in New Jersey, but

an awful lot of people are very apprehensive about this and we're going to hear from them. So, I'm I'm telling you right now, you know, I don't want to say that we're the the big bad guy, but you're going to be put on a short leash until that you can, you know,

and and I'll tell you this. Um, our plans are are not just to have one location on Long Island. We have a couple of applications, one in in uh town of Hamstead, one in in um town of Smithtown. And we really are one of the things that you'll see and you can go online. We do have open locations currently in New Jersey. Um, you'll never see such rave reviews of a site of a of a car wash. I mean, I was shocked when I joined the company at how much people love these locations and a lot of it it's it's a lot of the discussion. You'd think they'd be talking about the cleanliness of their car. They talk about the cleanliness of the site. And we really believe that it's super important that the customers feel clean when they're on the site. So, that's the interior of the tunnel is also cleaned. Uh on a rainy day like today, we would be open, but our team would be inside power washing the inside of the tunnel because we have bright lights on when you're in there to make sure that you can see that every bit of that tunnel is clean because you can't clean a dirty car with dirty equipment. So really, really important to us.

Okay. And then before you leave, I just want one more thing. Your hours of operation, you said you're seven days a week from 8:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. That's correct. I'm going to read to you. If approved with condition, the zoning board of appeals reserves the right to impose restrictions on the hours of operations. That's right. Yeah, that was acceptable. Yeah, that was in the in the memo. Yep. I'm just I don't think I have anything. Oh, we talked about that earlier. Yeah. You want to talk about the traffic?

Alex is gonna go through the sight line. So

so um an analysis was performed for uh the right turn out from the spark car wash. Uh what we're seeing here in this exhibit is a colored um exhibit that shows the sighteline required for safe procedure leaving the uh leaving the uh site. So in a right turn procedure, the driver has stopped as the stop sign uh requests and looks to their left. Um we have a clear line of sight where uh the analysis is showing. Um and uh things that would prohibit a clear line of sight are steep elevation changes or dramatic turns in the road as the exhibit is showing here. As again the driver's head is there looking to the left. Uh they have clear road to look and um this is indicative of the DOT approval which we have received. So a clear um and safe maneuver can occur from the spark car wash exit. I have one more question. Excluding the employees parking, what's the total capacity of cars on the site? Vacuum going in being washed in the tunnel.

Oh, the total it's

Yeah. Come on up here. Okay, so we're talking about three employee vehicles. That's three. 10 vacuums, 13. 10 vehicles queued in the pay stations, 23. Four between the pay station and the wash tunnel entrance, 27. 130 foot long wash tunnel. So conservatively six in the tunnel, 20 foot a car. So you're at 33. You get three between the wash tunnel exit and the street. 36 and yeah, I would say a minimum of 36. If you really needed to for some reason, you could cue additional vehicles in the drive vial and then wait for the wash tunnel queue to dissipate and then clear out vacuums if you had to. But I would say a minimum of 36, I believe. So if I didn't want a vacuum though, I would drive right in and stay on stay in line there.

Correct. Yeah, you'd go right to the pay station. 36 cars. 36 cars I would say minimum Saturday afternoon. Correct. Thank you.

Any other board members have questions? Okay, let me just do some housekeeping really fast because there were two applications um for you guys and you presented it together. So, I just want to read into the record the sign application.

So, that is case number 25-157 for Spark Car Wash. We have a planning division memo dated September 17th, 2025. Environmental control memo dated September 23rd, 2025. This application may not result in significant impact. Uh sub county memo dated September 17th, 2025. A decision of local determination. A survey by control point associates dated August 8th, 2023. A tax map acting as an area map. And Madam Chair, there's 18 photographs on a site plan by Delhi College dated July 3rd, 2025. Okay.

Yeah. Just to clarify the record too, it's application 25-152 was for the one area variance and an application 25-157 was for the sign variances. Thank you. Thank you.

Did you hear that right with the two concessions? Sure. They're they're a reduction, so it shouldn't affect the call of the case. Correct. That's fine. Yeah, absolutely. Um, okay. So, anyone like to Good. Okay. Thank you. You said they were getting removed. This sign was getting removed. 6A. It's the one closest to the tunnel, which is right there.

Sorry. Can you see that? It's the one closest to the tunnel on left hand side as you enter the tunnel. 6A. There's actually two 6A's. So, the other one is over here by the uh pay station. The second one was the reduction of the ID sign out front. And you said one of the wall signs was being Yeah. The removal of the tall one,

the logo off the tall one which is sign one is the ID. Yes. Okay. So, do you see where she's she has the pointer at? Yes. Uh we would like some clarification on that sign. Sure. Alex, you want to go through it? The purpose and where it's located?

Yes. So, uh, in the file documents, the 6A sign, which is on the screen, was located in two areas. One is being removed right in front of the U entrance to the tunnel. The one is to that is to remain is in the pay kiosk location area and the two Q lanes. It is facing the non-members lane um as a visual uh presentation of the uh it it's a menu. It lists off the washes that are available to the customer. So then they can select it at the XPT system next to it which is the pay kiosk. It's a menu.

It's a menu sign. It's a it's a video menu sign. are the kiosk. That is correct. So So these little symbols are the signs. Correct. And we the applicant um encapsulated that whole area, not just the sign at the bottom in order to conservatively present um the aspect of the sign. Are any of the other signs video signs? No. Thank you. electronic light lit up or just regular

there. The stop go has a red and green element to it. Others are just illuminated. Okay. Thank you. All right. Good word. All right. Would anyone like to be heard on this application? One by one. Okay. In the hat. name and address for the record. My name is Joshua Sector. I live at 57Q Cutter Place, West Babylon, New York. And do you affirm to tell the truth? Of course.

Good evening, members of the board. Thank you for allowing me to speak. I stand here on behalf of my neighbors to urge you to deny the proposed car wash near our residential community. I understand that some people may see convenience or economic benefit in having a car wash nearby, but those short-term consequence, excuse me, those short-term conveniences do not outweigh the long-term risks to our safety, our health, and our community character. Our neighborhood is a dead-end neighborhood set of streets off of Fleet Point Road connecting to Monttok Highway. Already this corridor is dangerously congested. On Fleet Point Road, we have an auto zone, a physical therapy clinic, an immense Bristol nursing home. Driving into Fleets Point is already like running through a gauntlet of deadly accidents waiting to happen. With teenagers and others speeding, making loud noises out of the auto zone, elderly drivers coming from the nursing home, and patients leaving from medical appointments, adding a car wash with a steady stream of vehicles pulling in and out all day is not just inconvenient, it's reckless. The applicant has pointed out that the project has received approval from the Suffach County Water Authority, but let's be clear, that approval only addresses water usage and hookups. It does absolutely nothing to evaluate the increased traffic hazards, the constant noise, or the quality of life impacts on the residential dead end street neighborhood near me. The SCWA approval does not mean the project is safe or compatible with the neighborhood or appropriate for this location. It only means the developer can connect water lines. The real question real questions for this board remain, will this facility make our streets more dangerous? Are homes less livable? Are houses less valuable? And our environment more fragile? And the answer is yes.

If most cars exit onto Monttok Highway and few onto Fleet Point, as he had said, one of the gentlemen had said, the increased volume will cause backups at the exit at the intersection of Fleet Point and Montto Highway, causing risky turns and more traffic conflicts in an area already overburdened. Studies consistently show that each new driveway or access point raises the risk of crashes, especially where seniors, patients, and car enthusiasts are present. The bottom line is there may be a serious deadly accident if this plan goes forward. Noise is another major issue. A car wash is not a quiet neighbor. High pressure hoses, vacuums, pumps, dryers will operate from 7 uh excuse me, from 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. I think you guys corrected the 7 p.m. 11 hours of daily disturbance. Research shows traffic and industrial noise harms health, disrupts sleep, increases stress, increases environmental pollutants, and lowers property values. It is incompatible with our residential community. We must also consider the environmental impact. The proposed site is near a wildlife habitat near Fleet Point Road. Even if the area that I'm speaking about is not formally designated as a natural preserve, natural or semi-natural land buffers, undeveloped land, canal edges, and vacant land function as habitat areas for animals. You see, wildlife doesn't care about formal zoning. Birds, amphibians, small mammals, insects all use patches of vegetation, edges, and quiet areas. So if there's any undeveloped land or natural buffer near Fleets Point Road, it hosts a habitat and it does near Fleets Point Road. Additional constant traffic, runoff, and noise will disturb local animals and dis and degrade the natural environment near us. More cars mean more exhaust. It's common sense. And poor air quality for

residents, particularly for children and the elderly. It's not simply a matter of convenience. It's a matter of health, safety, and protecting the character of our neighborhood. Our car wash belongs on a commercial strip designed for heavy traffic, not at the fragile entrance to a quiet, deadend residential community or near it. In closing, I urge you not to be swayed by the fact that one agency approved a water connection or these experts here tonight. That does not answer the real questions this board must decide. Picture our community. Families walking, seniors driving to appointments, children playing, and the wildlife just beyond the road. Now add a steady stream of cars queuing, engines idling, hoses roaring day in and day out. That is not progress. It is preventable harm. Convenience should never come at the cost of increased accidents, injuries, or the safety of our children and seniors. Once someone gets hurt, you can't take that back. for the safety of our neighbors, for the peace of our home, for the protection of our environment. I respectfully urge you to reject this proposal now and forever. Thank you.

Thank you. [Applause]

Name and address for the record. Hi, Vincent Marino, 53, Carter, please. And do you affirm to tell the truth?

I do. Okay. You know, we sit here listening to everybody here and we heard the words, you know, this is a state-of-the-art facility. So, if the average car wash does 30,000 cars a year and this is a state-of-the-art facility, they're going to do more. And I would expect them to because it's a state-of-the-art facility. But my concern is what my my neighbors concerns are is that how can you give us approximate peak time when your business is based on weather and climate? Your peak time could be at 6:00 at night. Your peak time could be at 8:00 in the morning when the sun is out. The other concern is when we know that, oh, it's 80 cars a day. Well, that's really not that accurate because we know, including myself, I've never gotten my car washed on a Tuesday afternoon at 1:00. I just haven't. It's always Friday, Saturday, Sunday. So now when you have 30, 35,000 cars, okay, now it's not spread out over 52 weeks evenly. It's spread out over 52 weekends. And that's that's where my concern is. There's a bus stop right there. Mr. Sheepard, you are absolutely right. I see those people jump all the time. It's going to happen coming this way. That is a big concern of ours. And quite honestly, our residents don't want any traffic coming into Fleet Point. We have a fear of that. I don't know what their plan is. If it's a gate, if it's a solid wall, if it's a curb, but we don't want anything like that. We're trying to minimize any kind of flow coming into there. We we deal with traffic congestion with Autozone. We deal with uh the with the Bristol. Even if you add You can't tell me you're going to add one or two cars a day on somebody come on to Fleet Point. That's not accurate when the majority of your business is going Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. And we and we all know that. So, the concern is the traffic. There are a lot a lot of people walking on uh going eastbound on Montalk Highway and my fear is someone's going to come ripping out and within the first week there's going to be a serious

accident. And we're also concerned with people not not getting their car exactly the way they want. Maybe it's a little wet and they're going to come down our block zipping down just to just to dry it off and come back out. So we we do have a lot of traffic concerns. Our concern is keeping them off our block. But you cannot tell me that there is a peak time in the car wash business from 1 to three when you're based on, you know, based on the weather. And that's our biggest concern. Our concern is the weekends, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. All right. Thank you. Okay.

Good evening. Um, Anthony Luro, 17 cutter, please.

Do you affirm to tell the truth? I do. Uh good evening uh members of the board. Um as we said being good neighbors, correct? None of us who live in this development were notified of this. So pardon my comments and notes tonight because this is the first time I've seen any of it. Um we had to hear from other neighbors who just started calling calling calling. Um knowing that it's one way in, one way out. Um, we believe that should have probably been something that even if you know an invitation to come take a look and see what we're doing, just so we know. Um, regardless of that, I do appreciate that it's an empty lot and I do like the fact of making it to something better because it has been an eyesore forever. Um, I just feel that sitting here and I do want to respect everyone's time. Um, but seeing this for the first time, I see so many issues that are not addressed. Um, and pardon my notes because I was taking as we were going and I don't want to take much time and go through everything, but simple things. Number one, the traffic study. We're going to go and we're going to make that right-hand turn. What about the people who are going westbound? Where are they going to turn around to come back out to go westbound into our deadend community where we currently have very little traffic and all our children play outside in the streets and everything's a dead end. We also have our private marinas down there where people are going to find out, oh, there's water. Let's go sit and hang out down there. Increased traffic is increased danger. It's also increased potential of crime of introducing people into a neighborhood that's very little traveled, which is why we purchased there. Now, if you look at the listings, we purchase the homes because we live in the

Landings. We work very hard to do this and by all real estate agents, it's perfectly located south of Montalk Highway, a beautiful culde-sac neighborhood where residents enjoy a strong sense of community aided by reduced traffic and increased safety for children. A truly quiet place to live with beautiful architecture atmosphere. bay boating dog friendly close to village amenities. There's no way you can tell me that our traffic is not increasing because everyone westbound is going to turn around on our blocks. They're not just going to pull in and make a three-point turn, which is another issue. They're going to go down and start driving around racing through our neighborhood. Um, that was the first thing that I picked out. If we do look at the lot line here, the like we said, everyone making a right, we know no one obeys that. Well, that's something we could address with landscaping. Boulders, curbs, small ballards, something because they will jump the curbs. I am in a similar industry and I see all the dead plants run over all the time. That's why nothing grows in those areas. Um, site capacity, we're looking at 12 cars on there. I counted them. That's what it's going to be. And I'm assuming we're going to go to the vacuums first, then we're going to go to the line to get cleaned. We made a comment earlier that half of the people are just going to be coming in to get the car cleaned, not using the vacuum. That line is going to extend out. If that line extends out, we have three parking spots for three employees, but where's the fourth one parking, which is another issue. How are the people backing out of that vacuum stall to get in line? So that becomes an issue where I think backup is going to happen and there's going to be outflow. Um we talked about sound. We're using PVC fencing which is one of the worst acoustical materials out there. It echoes all sound.

So we would appreciate some sort of sound deadening of a wood or concrete potential wall. The landscaping is not is short. Why do we not have tall screening around everything? The easement use is putting cars out to our road. I understand there's going to be a chain, but a chain's not going to stop that garbage from blowing into our neighborhood, nor will it stop sound. Wooden gates, you know, would absorb sound. It would stop the debris from blowing out. Um, again, I don't want to take everyone's time, but I feel like we need more time to review this, to know that we feel comfortable with the situation here. A 15t high sign, is that sign illuminated? Because then at that height, it is visible. You know, the gate should be locked at all times. If they're saying it's just for emergency, but you know, the sight size, what if there is a vehicle fire? How is everyone getting out? Especially if you're locking that gate, which should be because we don't want everyone coming out that way. Where is the emergency vehicles going to come in and out? Um they're saying, you know, 110 140 cars, it will back up on the Montalk Highway. You know, there is no way that it can't, especially after snowstorms. And after snowstorms, inherently the roads are in worse condition. this the side of the road, you know, the shoulders are shrunk down. Stopping when there are cars stopped in an active roadway is much harder. Um, and again, you know, like I said, time wise, I can go through a lot of them, but I was only able to like take notes as we go through. We are directly the the entrance and exit is directly across from another one which means there are intersecting vehicles. Normally I know

safe routes they try to offset entrances. Um last year a car drove right through the front of AutoZone. Last year another child someone got killed on an accident right over there. Every time we leave there it is a nightmare because people always racing to get that line if there is a backup. I know we say the distance people are going to slow down to make that right. I can't tell you the amount of times that because I drive a pickup truck had to I have to slow down a little more in my turning radius that I almost got rear ended but people are racing up behind me. You going to tell me that if there's a line there when people are all aggravated because they're waiting trying to get around it when they speed around to come faster that's not going to increase speed. So we're open to ideas but we we feel like things need to be addressed a little more. three to four employees who is controlling where the vehicles are going and who is respecting, you know, our use of that, you know, easement to our road. Now, I had a bunch of other stuff, but I just feel like it would be appreciated if we can review this a little bit deeper and actually get a copy of the plans and just see what we can do to see how we could be good neighbors and fair with everybody. I don't think that's a, you know, a tough or a heavy ask, especially since it is definitely going to affect our neighborhood. And I have my list of, you know, the quality of life, the safety, the value of our homes, the environmental conditions, the nose, the noise. We can get into all of that, but it's definitely the safety, it's definitely the sound, and it's definitely the cars coming in. And my main concern is that nobody here tonight addressed what happens to those cars pulling out right that do have to go westbound.

Thank you. Thank you. [Applause] name for the record.

Yes. Donna S, 33 Cutter Place, West Babylon. Good evening, Madame Chair and members of the board. Um, I'm here tonight to express my concerns and strong objection to allowing this car wash facility on Montalk Highway near Fleets Point Drive in West Babylon. I have resided at 33 Cutter Place, which is a dead-end roadway off Fleets Point Drive for over 20 years, and this is the first time that I am voicing a personal objection to a pro to a proposed project coming into the community. My main concern with allowing a car wash at this location is motor vehicle and pedestrian safety. Over the past few years, traffic flow and congestion on Montalk Highway has increased exponentially and noticeably in that stretch of roadway between Great East Neck Road and Fleets Point Drive. There have been numerous traffic accidents, many of them resulting in injuries. They're right at the intersection of Montalk Highway and Fleets Point Drive. We see the police cars and ambulances come and go at that intersection. In addition, the addition of a car wash, which obviously would invite further vehicular traffic to an already very congested area and intersection, is the absolute wrong choice for this location and our community. First, the lot itself is too narrow and too small to accommodate the constant flow and overflow of cars that would be coming into and out of the car wash facility. Second, the patrons of the car wash will inevitably turn onto Fleet Point Drive in order to access Montalk Highway. A chain rope or of or one or two cars a day is not feasible. If you live down in

that area, you'll see that that's constantly in use now, even without the car wash uh being present. Um this is really problematic because customers of the very busy AutoZone store and the orthopedic and physical therapy center on Fleets Point Drive, they already do this. They use Fleets Point as a means to access Monttok Monttoque Highway. So, our once quiet residential road of Fleets Point Drive has unfortunately already become too hectic and congested in the area of Montalk Highway. This project would exacerbate an already existing traffic problem. In some, the negative impact to my community far outweighs any positive any positives of a car wash at this location. A car wash is not an appropriate use for this location. The project is not necessary, not wanted, or even needed. There is another car wash on Montalk Highway about a mile and a half west. For these reasons, I respectfully request that the board deny the special exception permit application. I thank the board for its time and kind consideration.

Thank you. [Applause] Good evening. Hello. Sorry for the uh workout you had. It's all right. Uh name and address for the record. Craig Roberts, 79 Cutter Place. I have been Wait, do you affirm to tell the truth?

Yeah, I'm going to tell the truth. I've been a resident of the town of Babylon for 45 years. I have lived in this house 43 years. I was here at the last meeting. I told you is I've seen this place develop a lot. Um, sorry I'm getting emotional, but I hate the change. Um, [Music] we already have way too much traffic on that road. Several fatalities and accidents happen a year in between Great East Neck Road and Little East Neck Road on that section of Monttok Highway. Adding a car wash is only going to increase the traffic. nonetheless increase the stop traffic in the slow lane with people trying to get into that car wash regardless of what they say about how many cars are going to be on that property. Let's face facts. We all been to a washville. We all been to Splash Car Wash on Delaware in M talk. The line's out onto the street and we all know that as far as that goes, um it's just not it's not something that we should be having in our neighborhood. Along with the fact that we have currently several cars that come into the neighborhood to make U-turns, we have the medical building. We have Autozone. We have the Bristol and Sunrise Assisted. My house personally backs up on to Sunrise Assisted Living and the medical building property. So, there is no trees in the way and I can hear everything clearly. So, adding a car wash is going to hinder my time in my backyard along with my three neighbors that border it. also between the noise from the car wash, the vacuums, whatever would go on, the noise from the

cars. Um, also the garbage trucks. Right now, the garbage truck for Sunrise Assisted Living is 300 a.m. and it does wake me up sometimes. So, I don't know what time their garbage is going to get picked up, but if it's going to be in that time frame, that's going to be a little bit of an annoyance. Um, I'm not sure what time AutoZone is because I don't really see that one and I don't hear it. I literally can hear the one at sunrise because it's literally on my back of my property. Um, as far as the employee and the manager that's going to be at this facility, they have not enough employee parking at all for this property with the employees that are going to be there. So, if you have one manager and three employees, that's four people. You have three spots, you don't have enough. And if they say there's going to be a fourth person at time, you need five now. And there's not enough. Um, and then you also got to do deal with shift change. So, if you have shift change, they're going to overlap most likely. And now you're going to have an additional three or four cars that are going to have to park somewhere. And they're either going to park behind AutoZone where they're probably not allowed to park because it's not their property or they're going to park in the vacuum spot taking up the vacuum spots. Um, so that needs to be addressed. I don't the easement uh on Autozone. I personally went and spoke to the store manager yesterday. I gave him I let him know about this meeting. They told the district manager. I don't know what's going to happen with that situation, but

their 18-wheeler that comes there to drop parts is roughly three days a week. So, that's going to be an issue if they're letting cars through there because that 18-wheeler comes in during normal business hours. Um, as far as emergency vehicles, let's talk about that. Police, fire, EMS. If there's an accident or if there is a situation at Bristol or Sunrise Assisted Living and there is a line of cars in the slow lane trying to get into that car wash. How the hell are the emergency vehicles going to get in? They ain't just going to move. They don't move when you're sitting in traffic on the sunstate or sunrise or wherever. It's going to be a rarity. Um, that's something that needs to be looked into. Um, that intersection, I've seen numerous accidents my whole life living there. I've been in one personally. It's horrible that intersection. I even worked for New York State DOT at one time. I even tried to get them to put in a turning signal and they said, "Oh, no. There's not enough traffic. You don't need it." What good was that? Did me no good. um pretty much that this really needs to be not permitted. It's not for this town. There is way too much commercial business right there. Way too much traffic between cars, people walking, people riding bikes. There's going to be another accident. We literally had

someone get killed on a motorcycle in July right down the road. This is an ongoing problem. Uh as far as people coming into the neighborhood, I don't want people driving down into our block to make a U-turn that don't belong there. I've personally had my house broken into when I was younger. So have fellow neighbors. We don't need random people making U-turns and in realizing there's a nice neighborhood here where they're going to come back at another time and do something, whether it's steal a car, break into a house, or whatever the case may be. So, as far as that goes, I really don't know what else to say, but I said what I had to say about this stuff. But thank you.

Thank you. [Applause] Thank you. Hi, good evening. Janine Borst. I live at uh 30 Fleets Point Drive. I'm right on the block. Um tell the truth.

Yes. I actually grew up in the house. I was 13 when I moved in the house. So, I've seen a lot of change and I did hear about the blightedness of that spot and it is. However, when we take a look at and I'm not going to reiterate everything that's already been said, but the traffic in that area is um awful. Just taking my grandchildren across the street, it's like taking our lives in our hands just to get across. And we all know, we've seen, nothing against Spark, it's a car wash. They're going to fill up and spill out onto Montalk Highway. I heard that there was 85% of the water that's recycled. What happens to the rest of it when there's a natural preserve right behind us? Was that studied?

We'll have them answer. Okay. I I wasn't I didn't know if that was part of the study of um the chemicals and that leeching off into the natural preserve. Okay. Thank you. [Applause]

Hi. Okay. Board. Uh my name is Lee Barasov. I live on 16 cutter place in the landings there. Do you affirm to tell the truth? Yes. Okay. Uh I agree with everything these people said, so I don't have to go over that. There's a few other things and when everybody's presenting something, I heard a lot of I think it shouldn't happen. It it will be all right. How do you know? Were you there to us?

Yeah. Were they there at Sandy when there was a foot of water in the road right there? Is there all this systems going to work perfect? I don't know. Do they know? Everybody said it's going to work, but it might not. Plus, they're dumping the stuff in the sewer system, which we don't need more water in the sewer system. 15% or 25, you know, 15%. The other thing is, uh, everybody talked about coming out and making a right turn. Uh, I'll show you a school bus when it's coming down the street can't make that turn because Fleet Point is only 32 foot wide. So, half of it goes out this way. So you only got 15 feet to go out this. So you can't make two lanes. The making the turn, the center line is at 17 ft. Any truck over 20 foot. Delivery trucks, fire trucks, ambulances, all the prime trucks, garbage trucks cannot make that turn and stay in the lane. It doesn't work. I've had a DY truck. I've lived there for 25 years. I know exactly what that corner is. They put two poles there because they can't make it. If everybody would watch a school bus go around there, they drive over the sidewalk. It's the only way unless they take half the lane going out, swing way wide, and if cars are lined up there, they can't get out. that. And then what about the 70 cars coming out every on that side? They're

not going to just go. I didn't see any other cars. They forget the traffic is there before them. So when those cars are trying to get out, you almost should have a light there if they want to go out because they're not going to make it. They're going to be sitting backed up. Now, when a school bus or something that has to turn slow, what about all those cars are packing up? People aren't going to let them out. That road there, they run 60, 70 m an hour sometimes. You think they're going to stop for some car coming out from car wash? No. You know what it is to drive nowadays? It's not the same. And uh I just that I agree with everything. I don't think it the property's proper for it. You know, they you had to move it over. What's the difference? What's the width difference from AutoZone and that building? Was it 10 ft, 12 feet? Is it legal? No. You had to give them a variance. The building's not that pretty. I don't think it's pretty. and the neighborhood, you let 50 60 cars an hour idle. You don't think that's going to affect the uh carbon monoxide in the area? It's a lot of cars for 12 hours. Add them all up and all those cars and the old age homes next door, those people, is that going to make them healthier? Is it going to be a healthier neighborhood? It's going to destroy that neighborhood. And like everybody else said, people will be in our neighborhood and when they're in our neighborhood, there's trouble. So, I think it should be squashed. But, thank you.

Thank you. Would anyone else like to be heard on this application? For the record, there are none. Oh, wait. Someone's coming. Someone's coming. Someone's coming. Good evening. My name is Roman BS. I live 83 cutter place. You firm to tell the truth?

Yes. So, we talk a lot. I'm agree with all my neighbors about the congestion. So, we're talking about 36 cars capacity at 1 hour there, whatever. So, 2 minutes and 30 seconds per car to wash. So, when it's coming out to the west of the Mont Highway, I was there last night. I measure it. So we have a 59 ft from the lights to the entrance to auto zone. You can fit only three car there. So you will leave empty space there. So wherevers the customers of the auto zone can pull out, you have a space for another car. Where all that car supposed to go? Here, here, here. You have to talk to us.

Yeah. So where is that car supposed to go when they exiting that car wash? Every 2 and 1/2 minutes car is coming out. You have a lights there. You have all the traffic on the Mont Highway. So, it's just no space in there to pull out of that car wash. So, the soundproof plastic fans like my neighbor Anthony says, it's not the soundproof. If you want the nice soundproof, you need to have a wood uh fence or concrete fence at least 20 foot high. Otherwise, it's not going to work. all the bushes. If it's 2 ft bush, it's not going to absorb any of the uh carbon monoxide of the cars and it's not going to absorb any noise. You need to put tall trees over there to absorb all the noise there. So, our concern is the traffic and the accidents. So the people they all entrance to the uh carvash they wants to go west they going to make a U-turn on the fleits point or they will try to get from the uh carvash right into the left lane to make to the uh shopping center to make a U-turn and like everybody here who lives in West Babylon you remember the last accident on July 1st when 17 years kid was killed on the uh motorcycle because Somebody was trying to jump out of the side street. As we add more cars into it to this neighborhoods, we're going to get more car accidents. And we have exactly the same car wash one mile up. Splash uh car wash is doing the same. It's automatically it's exactly the same. So I don't think we need another one two mile apart. It's have another property up the block where was uh Apple Bank. Big property. You have a lights for the entrance. Easy entrance. Easy go. You

can purchase that. You have a property on the 109 friendies. Huge property. Commercial, no neighbors. You can do that down the block. Uh on the 109, it's another property. Bank, no neighbors. Commercial zone. You can do whatever you want over there. But the car wash, it's not for this neighborhood. Thank you. Thank you. [Applause]

Thank you. Um Mike Solerno, 12 Cutter Place. You affirm the tell the truth.

Yes. So, just to reiterate the traffic problems, not to go through what everybody already said, but currently when you're on Montalk Highway heading east and you approach that light, you get backed up past the car wash, the proposed car wash. So, you're already backed up there. Now, picture state-of-the-art car wash. People want to come in. You have lanes. that lane will now get taken over by folks trying to get into the car wash. While that's happening, people are trying to get out of the car wash. So, anyone that lives in that area will not be able to access that right lane. You won't be able to make that right turn onto fleets to get home. So, that's a big issue right there. the winter conditions. They'll have a heated apron, which is great, great accommodation. That does not account for any water that can then get to the road. They won't be able to heat the road. They will be able to heat the apron and that'll look nice. The road will freeze along with any chemical residue that may be on the vehicles when they leave the site. you cannot get all of the chemical residues out of the undercarriage of the cars. So that will definitely become very oily on the road and will create another hazard. So and then the third thing is people will definitely make that right turn to make the Uturn onto fleets to get back to go west. There's no accommodation to go west. So with all of those, I strongly oppose this as well. But um without repeating what everybody else said, I wanted to add that. Thank you.

Thank you. Would anyone else like to be heard on this application? For the record, there are none. Great. Okay.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Um just before I call some of the experts up, uh just as as far as outline is concerned, um I'd like to call on Mr. rates is to come up and talk about uh the fact that the business model is not based on on weather. Um I Mr. Torellella is going to come up and he's going to address the traffic issues and then Mr. Hollowman who's going to address some of the sight specific issues. So just before I I do that, you want to go first? Um just to address uh some of the uh overarching issues that were raised by uh the residents. Number one, business competition. As this board is very well aware and as your council knows full well, um New York's courts recognize the fact that uh the fear of increased business competition cannot be used as a basis to challenge the zoning application. The case is uh Sunbrite Car Wash, ironically uh versus Board of Zoning Appeals of the Town of North Hemstead, the site 60NY2D 406, 1987 case, as well as Tapen Cleaners versus ZBA of the village of Irvington 57 AD3D 683. That's a second department case from 2008. With regard to the special permit application, which the board is hearing tonight, um New York State law is very clear. a special permit is quote tantamount to a legislative finding that if the special permit conditions are met, such a use will not adversely affect the neighborhood. That's the uh court of appeals case of Northshore Steakhouse versus the village of Thomas. That's a 1972 case. And finally, a special permit sort of edification of the board and members of the public that may not be aware. A special permit is dissimilar to a variance since it does not involve varying the restrictions of the zoning ordinance. Instead, the issuance of a special use permit is a duty imposed upon a board to be granted when all of the standards for the

issuance are met. That is Hampton's LLC versus Rickbach uh 98 AD 3D 736, a second department case from 2012. Um, in addition, uh, in your file with the planning department is the report from IMEG, which is the town's outside traffic consultant, dated April 22nd, 2025. And I quoted that in my overture, so I don't need to rehash that. And then finally, there was um, someone mentioned a fact about uh, notice. As uh the board is very well aware, um the town planning staff takes care of mailing all notices to residents within the radius. Um, and we take care of the posting of the the signage on the site, which I have in my hand, um, a email from Matthew Ingerber, who is my partner here, uh, dated September 23rd at 2:19 p.m. He sent it in to the town planning staff, along with an affidavit of posting and the signs that show that the site was adequately posted in compliance with the town code. Um many I couldn't help but um appreciate the fact that many of the issues that were raised here tonight were also raised at the planning board and are are really more sight related issues and as you heard uh the planning board did approve this application with specifically with regard to the easement behind the advanced auto. um we are the beneficiaries of the easements and what that means in legal terms for those who don't know is that uh if someone um just because it's on their property doesn't mean they could use it. It means that the benefit is held by the easement holder which happens to be our property. So uh the parking of a tractor

trailer there um you know it's 25 foot wide easement in and of itself and as you heard the testimony of Mr. rates this. It's very rarely used. I mean, it's just a bailout in for that one, maybe two cars that that needs to utilize it while in operation. Um, planning board also issued a secret neg this application. And with that, I'm going to ask Mr. Rates just to talk about uh some of the operational questions that were raised by the public or thank you.

Uh, thank you, Keith. And uh obviously appreciate all the uh comments from from the public and the neighbors uh from behind uh the the site as far as uh weather and the actual usage of the site because of the um primary means of membership. Um most of our customers come when it is most convenient for them. It's not something that when you go to a full service wash, you'll typically be it's more of an event. Um it's more expensive. Uh and you'll typically do that before some um special time. Again, usually on on the weekend going out to restaurant, whatever. Um our washes are meant to be used by our members um as frequently as they would like. And it is more of a um restorative wash back to the condition of the car prior to it getting dirty as opposed to a full uh detail type wash. Um that lends itself to the usage being more spread out throughout the day. We do have usage data from our existing washes that show that we do know those peak hours are between 1 and three. Um and Mr. Toella discussed um our usage during those peak hours. So, we're not trying to um hold anything back from the board. We do uh we do design the sites and engineer them in order to accommodate the peak hours plus some more. Um so really um that is one thing we want to talk about. Then the weather being also a factor. Um we are open during weather events. Um like I said, rain uh or if it's just not a beautiful day, we are still open. We do still have people who use the wash. So it's not that it's everybody's waiting for that one moment to go wash their cars. Um obviously we know that uh there are times that there are more peak and that and that's what

we account for as far as the uh manager plus employees uh topic. Um the manager is one of the three employees on the site. So that's why the three vehicles are um three vehicle spots are appropriate. Shift change happen but they don't happen all at once. So, one employee leaves, another one arrives. Um, and that's well managed on our existing sites today. Uh, lastly, if we do anticipate higher than average usage, like I said, after a a snowstorm, we'll actually pay for our employees to take um Ubers or Lift rides to work uh so as to avoid any additional vehicles on the site entirely. Uh so that is something that our company does. We're very proactive uh in communicating with our employees about those topics. So, I just wanted to touch on a few of those items. And the last thing was around the the rinse of the vehicle. Uh, again, we said the the the soaps are all biodegradable. Uh, it's no different than than Dawn dish soap. Um, again, most of it does end up in the uh re reclaimer in the trough. Um, but the final rinse on the vehicle is a very important part of the wash process. And that's because if you left the tunnel and we didn't do a proper final rinse and also the blow off using the dryers, um there would be spots left on the vehicle. That would not be good for us, not be good for our business, and certainly not good for um memberships. So that we have just as much of an incentive to keep those um soaps off the vehicle as um as anybody else. But thank you.

Where you go? Yes, sir. So, I don't know if you can answer this, but garbage pickup times.

So, garbage pickup is contracted once we um uh get ready to open a site. Uh but we can certainly work with the hours of um that would be prescribed by the board. Again, uh different from a um assisted living facility. Uh we don't generate medical waste. we don't generate a lot of waste because there's really not much activity happening on the site from people. There's obviously people who have some trash receipts, things in their cars, but all of that is is kept into those dumpsters. So, we don't need multiple pickups per week. We can definitely work with a schedule that would be during business hours or during the non uh um during the the business hours from a sound perspective, the 7 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. time frame. So,

you'll have no objection to us setting hours? No. Okay. And the other there was a woman I don't know if he can answer this. The other 15% of the water. Do you know what happens to it or where it goes? We're gonna have Mr. Holland is going to cover that. Yeah. So um our our engineer is is I'm I consider myself a reclaim um enthusiast but not an expert. He he's an expert on that and can talk to what happens to that to that water. Uh but know that we do buy the best and the the most expensive equipment for reclaim because that is a big part of what we do in terms of as a company from an environmental steward stewardship standpoint. Just a question. Yes.

I don't know if you answered as well. Um the heated apron when they leave, does that area have any drainage? So when it does all that water does accumulate, does does it go somewhere? Yeah, there there is there is drainage there. So it wouldn't go out to into the street onto Mont Highway. Not from the from the apron itself. No. Okay. We'll defer to Mr. Holland for the rest of that. Any any before I sit down. Okay. Thank you. Thank you.

Yes. Um, Alex Halman here to speak on some of the aspects uh that were concerns that were raised by the public in regards to um the on-site reclaim system, application of water and uh kitchen grade detergents um various drainage items and such. Um so our application which is in its final approval um as I mentioned before is in final it has received approval from Suffach County Water but we have submitted to the Suffach County Department of Health Services Wastewater Management Suffach County Department of Public Works sewer authority and the Suffach County Office of Pollution Control which are all required submissions and they're in their final approval. Uh these agencies do a strict review of plumbing systems, mechanical systems, and apparatus that we've talked about here this evening. Um and their mandate is to apply strict standards related to public health and environmental health. So these things have been reviewed. They're in their final approval stages and approval is uh anticipated as imminent. um to speak more on these systems from just a uh business and uh cleanliness standpoint. As or had mentioned before, uh in order for the car wash to operate effectively as a business, it needs to be clean inside outside of the car wash tunnel, it needs to produce a clean car. So the idea that um there is a um this is a new bill. This is the brand new technology in regards to application of water through the um wash tunnel, applications of these food grade detergents. Um and then when the car is leaving, it is dry, it is clean, it is not spilling water everywhere. Um and it is uh a system that um as I've said before has that central trench uh area that collects 85% of the water. to speak on the 15% that is uh not collected or not directly

reused. This area has a uh a previously built an existing sewer system which we will be tying into that sewer system. The reason for the submissions and approvals as I mentioned before Suffach County Wastewater Management, Suffach County DPW sewer authority and Suffach County Office of Pollution Control is that these that's a very regulated discharge. They have reviewed. They are fine with this with this situation and they are um essentially very pleased with the reclaim system we're proposing here. To speak on um the heated aprons and water potentially leaving the site, it is a town requirement that all water stay in sight in regards to uh storm water. There is drainage provided in the uh turn as you leave the tunnel. It is curbed. It is not intended to go into the rightway. It is designed not to go into the rideway. Um and for all these aspects we feel that our application has provided a efficient way of uh cleaning the cars without providing any negative environmental impact.

Last uh Dick Torella to cover the traffic issues.

Save the best for last. Um, so just to touch on a few of the specific items, I'm just going to go kind of one by one as they were written out, but the way I'd like to start is none of what I said in my presentation is based on just my opinion because I felt like thinking it for this application. Um you know we've prepared extensive analyses based on data published in industry standard engineering sources uh observations at existing spark facilities and experience uh that I have frankly working on hundreds of development applications that generate traffic similar to or higher than this. Um so just starting off with the trip generation itself it or the institute of transportation engineers is considered for lack of a better term like the holy grail of traffic engineers. It establishes the bounds for which development projects of all kinds generate traffic. Uh this use that we cited for the proposed spark car wash is specifically for an express car wash. There is a separate use for a hand car wash. Those data points are taken from existing sites and surveyed at peak times when weather was poor in the previous five days. It is based on a fitted curve of hundreds of study sites taken at the times when these facilities generate the most trips. Again, we're talking about we're just I'm just going to use the one single hour. The Saturday peak hours is 145 total trips into and out of the site based on that data published by it. That takes no credit for what we would refer to as a pass by trip. So for instance, someone on Saturday going out to get groceries, they're a member at the Spar Car Wash. They decide on their way to the grocery store, let me go into the car wash. I'll get my car washed. I'll continue on my pre-existing trip to the grocery store. It estimates that for automated car washes, up to 40% of their peak hour

trips are comprised of pass traffic. So you would take that 145 total trips in an hour, reduce that by 40%. And that's actually the volume of new traffic to the study area. Even if you were to use the 145 total with no pass by credit, we're talking about one new trip to this general short segment of Montalk Highway every minute, every 55 seconds. It's not a constant stream of traffic in and out like has been mentioned this evening. you're you're looking at it on a total hour basis again based on that data published by it. Um in terms of the queue and vacuum space demand all of that information the average turnover rate for the vacuums the average processing capacity of those space station gates that's based on observations that we've taken from existing spark facilities. It's not from a splash. It's not from another express car wash operator which I'm sure they have great technology. I'm just not that familiar with it. it is from operational spark sites. Um even the vacuum demand seven minutes on average that is based on the existing spark sites. Uh we've observed at other high volume spark facilities that are on the border of state and county roadways that carry total daily traffic volumes that's almost double what's on Montalk Highway in front of this site. The max Q's in the non-member lane it's typically three to four vehicles at one time. the max Q and the member lane where they're almost seamlessly processed through it is typically two vehicles. So again, we just don't expect that the queuing at the pay station would have any significant potential to extend all the way through the vacuum area and back onto Montalk Highway, which would be a very undesirable situation for the Spark team as well. It's that's not something that the operator wants to do. I think it's a valid concern. I think it's just something we thought about very closely and have used the data to conduct an

analysis to prove that it's extremely unlikely that will happen. Um, in terms of being able to make a right turn out of the curb cut onto Montalk Highway, we have studied the intersection between Montalk Highway and Fleets Point Drive and the traffic model that we prepared did show that the 95th percentile Q in the eastbound direction extends past where our proposed curb cut is. But again, we're talking about 95th percentile queuing, meaning that in the one highest peak hour that we study, only 5% of that hour is the queue actually reaching that length. When you look at a signalized corridor with signals up and downstream of a curb cut, that's where unsalized accesses are most efficient because the location of those signals with the stop start create gaps in the traffic stream that allow people to enter from an unsalized driveway. If you look at the signal between Montalk Highway and Fleets Point Drive, it's a 90 second cycle. The eastbound phase is active for 70 of those 90 seconds. So that means that that queuing condition is only has the potential really to happen while the fleets point drive phase is active. Again 20 out of the 90 seconds every cycle every hour. Uh so again in our opinion we feel that that design and that the placement of our driveway with respect to that signal is efficient in allowing people to exit the site. And even in the case where someone is trying to exit the site while the signal is red, we've provided space between the street and the wash tunnel exit for a few cars to queue so that there is room and it will not disrupt the wash tunnel operations until the light turns green and people can then make the turning uh maneuver, excuse me, onto Montalk Highway. And the last point I'll make with that is we also modeled the intersection of our site access with Montalk Highway and the projected queue is at a maximum or excuse me the

projected delay is at a maximum of about 10 seconds. Um just just for context there. Uh, and the last thing is with the cross access to Fleets Point Drive. As you know, we've heard from a lot of residents, I would also have a concern uh with that being the sole entrance and exit to my community for a large stream of vehicles to exit onto that private roadway. Again, that driveway is not an operational driveway for this site. It will be restricted by a chain link fence that will only be opened by the Spark employee that operates the kiosk when needed, when someone needs to bail out of the queue. Really, if you think about it, it doesn't make a lot of sense for someone to even exit at that location because it's before the wash tunnel. So, if you went through the wash tunnel, you'd have to go through the pay station again to even have the opportunity to exit in that location. But regardless, it is still not a designed exit for this site. And having one garbage truck a week and emergency vehicles as needed use that, in my opinion, this is my opinion. I don't view that as an overburdening to a minor street approach to Montalk Highway.

Okay. Thank you. Um I do have a question. I don't know. I didn't hear you uh address this. The concerns about the uh customers that are interested in going westbound.

So there are numerous opportunities to make left turns from Montalk Highway onto public roads to then make a U-turn maneuver. The first one that I see would be Beachwood Drive. You make the left turn at Beachwood Drive and then there's a segment of West Main Street that runs parallel to Montalk Highway. A very easy U-turn maneuver to make. Um especially when considering that it's an unsalized maneuver. So as soon as you approach the intersection again with Montalk Highway, you can just make the right turn as soon as there's a gap in the traffic stream. You don't need to wait for a traffic signal.

Okay, that that's an option. Um, and as far as the easement, so currently AutoZone does or does not use that easement or do we know I'm use it in what? In what respect? Um, be in the rear of AutoZone. That's you're you guys own as for access to our property or are they using it? Is there any agreement that they can use it? What's going on with that easement? tractor. It's 25 ft wide. Yeah, I'm I'm being told, as we've heard before, that it's used to park a tractor trailer for deliveries.

Is that an agreement? Is that an agreement with you guys or not? That's what I'm really interested in. I'm sorry, Madam Chair. One more. Is that an agreement that you guys have in place currently? Yes, the easement runs with the land. It's been an easement that's been in place. It's it's recorded in the county clerk's office. So, AutoZone is using that for tractor trailers currently, right? Okay. Because one of the concerns is I was thinking maybe that we could be able to set in place was making that an exit only because you guys are using it for exit, but obviously that's not going to work if you guys are allowing Autozone to use that. Right. That's what I'm trying to figure out.

Yeah. I mean, you want to cover it. I said I mean, it's 25 ft wide. The average tractor trailer is eight and a half feet wide, you know, so there's ample room for that that, you know, bailout vehicle as per chance that it needs to use it. Okay? You know, I mean, I don't know how many times it's going to happen where there's a tractor trailer there and a car needs to get out, but there should be ample room for both to uh coexist. Okay. Um, and another question I have, the chain link fence, is that are is that the ideal situation to have there? Yeah, it's just a chain. Not a chain link fence. Just a chain. Yeah, chain link fence is what I like the little droopy thing. A chain, I guess.

Just to prevent the vehicles from going through there to discourage them. Okay. Not the best discouragement, but I understand, I guess. Um, and the exit on Fleet Point, could we have we considered making that a left only turn? Does that make sense? Would that make sense for

Yeah, we um that property is not before the board. We don't control it. So in terms of I mean operationally it doesn't serve any purpose for vehicles to go out to the right but you know we have no control over that and it's not properly before the town.

Um okay PBC fencing that was a concern. Do you guys want to address anything regarding that? That was a concern about noise any type of other fencing that we may be able to Sure. I'm going to have Jack come up and address that.

Sure. So, there kind of two components to I'm not sure which one was questioned. So, the canopy structures that we're designing here are made from PVC, but the interior of them are perforated and they're sound absorbing. So, they're they're slotted. Sound gets in there, it gets absorbed. The tunnel enclosure would be uh also faced internally with sound absorbing material. So, while the PVC, yes, is reflective, we're treating the inside of those enclosure with sound absorbing material. Um the vinyl fences on the perimeter are currently vinyl. Um wood fences aren't really that much absorptive than vinyl. Um if you want to think in percentages, vinyl fence might be 2% absorptive and of wood might be 5% absorptive compared to the stuff in the tunnel that we're doing which is more like 70 75% absorptive. Um the decision as to what those perimeter fences are is really the client decision. It'll have maintenance implications if it's wood versus PVC. From an acoustic reflection standpoint, they're more or less the same in my world.

Thank you.

Yeah. And at the heights for especially for the vinyl fences on the sides, they're at six feet. So they're providing some reduction, but we're not relying on that. The bulk of the work is h is happening in those canopies and through the selections of low noise equipment. That's what's really doing the bulk of the noise control work on the site, right? Thank you. Um the shrubage around uh they there was some concerned are these arbivites? Are the what what height are these? I'm sorry. I'm sorry guys. We're like playing here.

So uh in combination with the the fencing there the the the proposed vegetation on the south side is meant to um both provide acoustical deadening and also shrouding. So um it's it's um it's ground cover. It's also arbor body style. It's um uh yeah pencil pencil based uh colmer style uh high plantings. Perfect. Thank you. Yes.

All right. So with that, as long as the board doesn't have any more questions, um you know, in addition to the three sign concessions aformentioned, um the sign 6A removal at the entrance of the tunnel sign one, removing the logo from the east elevation wall sign, and finally uh sign five, removal of the logo from the pole ID sign. Uh we're happy to submit to the town planning department revised elevations depicting that. Um we agree with Mr. Shepard's um suggestion of two conditions of approval. One for uh hours of garbage pickup uh to be coveted as well as hours of operation from 8:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. Um and we respectfully submit uh in summary that the subject application should be granted for the following reasons. One, as testified by the project experts this evening, the single area variance and sign variances will not have a negative impact on the surrounding properties or change the character of the area. Further, the car wash will not have a negative impact on existing traffic additions or on-site parking as testified, and the development will have no adverse impact on adjacent property values or reasonable use of adjacent parcels. The development will bring uh construction jobs as well as full-time jobs as well as increase the tax ratables for the property. And finally, the use of the property will comply with the town's ordinances and to issue a special use permit. You have anything else?

Right. Okay. Um, so my my client's telling me that they would concede putting a no right turn on their property before the bailout lane. So kind of in the southeast corner. Uh, yeah, right about Nope. Other side. Yes, right there. So we would concede that as well to make that a condition of approval. That would be fine. Okay. So as such, we respectfully submit the board grant the application as far as the special exception of variance criteria have been satisfied on behalf of my client. Thank you for your time. I know it's late. Thank you. Thank you. Um we are going to reserve leave the record open and um

for written submission. Uh I guess we can first Okay, let's leave the record open for both applications. Um and you guys will get this decision in the mail. So as far as the public portion is closed. Yes. Yes, we closed the hearing. That is correct. Okay. Yeah, he's gonna he's going to be open. Yeah. And if there's anything submitted, we would have an opportunity to respond. Of course. Okay. Great. All right. Thank you all for coming down. Thank you so much. We will consider. Thank you for your patience. Have a good night.

You guys [Music] have serious All right. So the next application is application 25-159 that is 1034 route 109 realy corp and Lindenhurst.

Name and address for the record. Colgart Mayor from Long Island Perfect Permits 124 Front Street 205 Masipa Park New York 11762. Do you affirm to tell the truth? I do. There you go. All right. So, I have a planning division memo dated September 17, 2025. An environmental control memo dated September 24th, 2025. Uh, we will need a negative declaration. A Suffach County memo dated September 23rd, 2025. A decision of local determination. A fire marshall memo dated September 25th, 2025. Did you see that? Did you get that fire marshall report?

Um, I don't believe so. No. There are some things there that you need to address. Um, a survey by Harold Bush. I'm guessing I don't have a date here. And a tax map acting as an area map. Madam Chair, there's six photograph seven photographs in a site plan by uh Joseph Ambello dated June 2nd, 2025.

All right. What would you like to tell us? Um so the previous um owners of the property were before the board in 2020 case number 20- uh 007 um and received approval to operate a public garage for auto body and autoglass repair shop. Um that was uh Supreme Auto Collision. Um, so Supreme Auto Collision had closed and my client took over the space in March of 2025, um, and opened up Northstar Auto Body. Uh, they operate four, um, auto body shops in Nassau County. This would be their first venturing into SuffK. Um, part of their business is they work to get on the tow lists. Um it was at that point of submitting an application um for the toll list that they were notified that they needed um to essentially renew their special exemption permit. Um and at that point that was really when they were made aware that there was an issue with that. So they had immediately um reached out to us and worked to um getting to where we are now. Um, so that was I believe there was some correspondence requesting reason for the lapse in that approval. That is essentially why the business had changed hands and it was really just once um unfortunately at the time that the business was changed um our clients were not notified by the pre-existing business owner that this was uh something that needed to be maintained. Um, so I believe you guys also had some questions uh regarding the any alterations to the building. Um, there have been no alterations. The only thing that was done was they had painted the outside. Um, they do um have an application for some additional signs,

but as of right now, any signage on the building and property is permitted um under the town of Babylon. Um, so no no other alterations been made other than painting. Um, believe current operating hours are Monday through Friday, 8:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Um, and the think that concludes it. If uh, the board has any questions, be happy to answer. Thank you. I'll turn the hearing over to Mr. Riggney. How are you doing? Well, how are you? Good. Few things new ownership, right? Correct.

You guys following the same site plan as previous owners change? No. To my knowledge, everything is going to follow the pre-existing um setup. The only difference is again with the businesses is essentially just they also have an element where they work with the uh you know being on a tow list. That's really the only difference. Everything should be the same.

I drove past personally today. Um there's cars along the sidewalk area in the parking lot. Is that employee parking? I also noticed that behind the fence there's cars that are in disre. Um, so I'm going to have my client um, step up just to provide a little bit more context to maybe some of those vehicles and as far as the cars behind the fencing, what what type of volume or what we're seeing with that. And just your name and address for the record. Hi, how you doing? Anthony Jaganti, 137 Monroe Boulevard, Valley Street, New York 11581. Do you affirm to tell the truth?

Yes. So, majority of the vehicles that you see parked along the front of the building are employee um vehicles. The ones that you see in the back lined up are customers um customers vehicles that get um locked up at night. So, do those stay outside at night or do those all come in? They stay outside in the back because of new ownership that ain't going to happen again. I'm being told that there's car washing and detailing going on at the site. Is that accurate?

No. So, there's no detailing at the site. Occasionally with regular business operations, the cars are rinsed off, but it's not in any official cleaning or detailing capacity. Um they do there is a car wash from my understanding uh within close proximity that that is really what they utilize for any official washing or or you know anything relative to like detailing. Understood.

Understood. Like I said, there is a number I think there's three items that have to be addressed this application once that's addressed.

Okay. And we would address those directly with the fire marshall then and then Okay. Understood.

Would you agree to the previous Um, did you guys get it? Let me just confer with them. Yeah, it's just some concern. They would have been already.

Yeah, we I agree with the governance and restrictions. So, our client agrees and again they already impose on the property. So, just before I plan on putting vehicles outside behind the fence, I'm sure.

Okay. So, it's been a it's been an auto body shop for 30 years. We would need your name and address. Ricky Ricky Valente uh 161 Second Lane West in West Icel I I own the property. Do you affirm to tell the truth? Yes. Okay. Good. Uh so it's been a established auto body shop for 30 years and they I know the shop well. It's been a bing cars outside for years. Is it possible there's permit already in place? How does that work? It's always part he's always had cars outside this prior collision shop owner.

So the site plan that's submitted is showing five parking spaces in the rear yard. It's not labeled as outdoor storage. If you wanted to pursue that, you have to label that outdoor storage and adjust the parking. So as long as it met everything, it would be okay. if they we will file appropriate designations and everything like that. Um should they intend to continue to use that for any outdoor vehicle storage or anything of that nature. We just want to see them off to a good start. Understood. Be good neighbors, right? I think you heard it from Mr. Shepherd earlier. That's all I got to say. Any other questions from the board?

Good. Would anyone like to be heard on this application? For the record, there are none. All right. So, we're gonna close the hearing. We're going to reserve decision and leave the record open for you guys to get the fire marshal. Thank you. Hope that was short and sweet. Thank take care. You guys picked a good night. All right. Next application is application 25-158. Capo Truck Equipment Corporation in West Babylon. I name and address for the record. William Gerano, attorney with Gerano and Cahill, 4250 Veterans Highway, Hullbrook, New York. Good evening.

Good evening. All right, so we have a planning division memo dated September 17th, 2025. Environmental control memo dated September 24th, 2025. This will need a negative declaration. Fire marshall report dated September 25th, 2025. Do you have a copy of that? I do not. Do not. Survey Sakafico land surveying dated November 14th, 2023. Tax map acting as an area map. And Madam Chair, there's four photographs and there's a site plan by German Clemen's architect dated July 23, 2024. What would you like to let us know?

Okay. Um, I'm here on behalf of the applicant, Cuda Realy LLC, and the property user, Cappo Truck Equipment, Inc. Frank Kappa, who's here this evening, is the principal of the business. Uh, also present is James German, the project architect and engineer. Uh, this property is located at 65 Edison in West Babylon. It's approximately 1.1 acres in size in a rectangular shape uh on the on a in its corner lot. and it's operated as a public garage since 1972 when the original certificate of occupancy was issued which explicitly identifies the permitted use as public garage. Unfortunately, in August of 2023, a severe storm caused a catastrophic damage and the building was deemed a total loss. That event has brought us here tonight with a proposal not only to rebuild but to improve the facility for the continued use uh by Capo Trucking. Kappo is a Kappo is a family founded locally based business that has been serving Long Island's commercial vehicle community since 1993. They are not a retail auto shop. rather they provide businessto business commercial truck repair, fleet services, parts and sales. Um, their customer base consists of other businesses who depend on commercial vehicles for their operations. Um, they also do uh sales of new pre-owned and new commercial vehicles. Uh the new facility will expand modestly from 8,500 square feet to just under 11,800 square feet and will include dry basement storage, offices on a partial second floor and seven repair bays. A daily staffing is expected to be approximately 11 employees, which would include seven technicians and four uh

office and sales staff. As part of this application, we are respectfully requesting a special permit for the continued operation of a public garage, variances for front yard parking on Edison Avenue and Mayan Street, approval for the outdoor overnight storage of commercial vehicles, and a parking relaxation of approximately 21% from 38 stalls required to 30 provided. The site is located in the heart of the industrial district. Uh, and it's buffered by similar uses like Penske Trucking to the north and west, a a bus depot just further north, both of which have outdoor storage of vehicles. There's also a solar farm on the opposite side of Edison Avenue uh, for the pro the residentially zoned property owned by the cemetery. Um, the closest residential home is approximately 1,200 ft to the west. We believe the proposed plan respects the town code and allows site safety by separating customer parking from the truck service yard and allows a long-standing local business to reinvest in the community. The planning board heard the application 10 days ago, reserved decision. However, there was no opposition from the public. Uh with respect to the site plan itself, there are two existing driveways on Edison Avenue and one on Mayan Street. Those are not changing. There's an interior lot that would contain 18 parking stalls and 11 larger stalls for the outdoor storage of the trucks that will be either awaiting repair or for the for the sale of those trucks. Uh, this interior lot will be fenced and gated. There's one southern gate facing Edison and another eastern gate facing Mayhem.

And during the day, the the the gate facing Mayhem is actually closed, but there's about a three foot gap for the staff that parks in those stalls to enter the building. Uh the front of the building where the will be along Edison where the there are eight parking stalls outside of that southern gate. Four of which are located in the front yard. The side of the building on Mayan also deemed a front yard is where there are another four parking stalls outside of that gate. Uh the design benefit here is that the fence storage and interior lot provides sight safety and separates the trucking operations from customer parking so that the customers are not walking through an active service yard. Again, it is anticipated based on the prior use of the site for this exact use that the customers uh will park on Edison to enter the building. Um, also we are seeking the a 21% parking relaxation, which in and of itself is not necessarily substantial, but I'll draw the board to a couple of points. Um, the outdoor storage consists of 11 large truck stalls, uh, which the total area is approximately 3600 square feet. So, per the code, the outdoor storage of the trucks requires an additional 5.2 parking stalls. Um, this raises the parking stall requirement from 33 to 38 stalls, which brings the relaxation request over 20%. But I'd like the board to recognize that these storage stalls are used for the storage of vehicles that are going to be brought inside or be sold. So, it's not as if there's going to be it's going to bring in additional staff to work in that storage yard. a technician would go out, bring the vehicle into the inside or a salesperson would go out and get the

vehicle. Um, so it's not it's not going to demand more on-site parking for staff. Um, that's why I mentioned that we anticipate this site to have approximately 11 employees at a given time. There is sufficient parking. Uh, the property has historically operated as a public garage since at least 1972 per the certificate of occupancy. The request for parking relief is reasonable and consistent with the actual staffing and customer needs and the out overnight truck storage is integral to operations and does not create extra parking demand. Generally speaking, the relief being requested is practical, consistent with its historical use and protective of public safety and site function. Based on the forego, we respectfully request that the board approve the application for the requested variances as well as the special permit. It's our additional request that given the long and continuous historical use of the property as a permitted public garage for at least 53 years, the board not impose any durational limit on the special permit. The use has been established. It's consistent with the character of the surrounding district and it's integral to the operations of this family-owned business. Uh we are only here today because of a fluke weather event that destroyed my client's building and nobody else is in the neighborhood and it's disturbed its operations for going on three years now. Um that concludes my initial remarks. So if anybody has any technical questions about the building or the site, Mr. German is here to assist with that. And if anybody has any questions for Mr. Capital Biano about the operations. He's also ready to he's prepared to talk about it.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I'll turn the hearing over to Mr. Shepard. How are you doing? Well, thank you. Um, so you have we're getting 11 trucks outside and seven bays. That the total Yes, there'll be 18 trucks inside the property. That's correct. I drove by there yesterday. All the trucks that were outlined on out on the street, were they waiting to be serviced? Was that part of yours or the the trucks that are currently sitting outside the gates are actually the neighbors trucks? Home Depot. Pensky, they're taking advantage of the fact that we're not operating out of the site and Home Depot trucks and all.

Are those the Home Depot? Okay. Why doesn't uh Mr. Capoenko? Hi, my name is Frank Capoenko. 1971 Lakeland Avenue in Ron Cona. Do you affirm the tell the truth? Yes, I do. The tr of the situation at 65 Edison, if you look at 21 Lamar Street on the map, Penske is allowing us to use that facility um temporarily just to sell parts. We don't have a permit to operate to do repairs. Uh so what we're doing is we're you we're allowing them as an exchange for them to let us in that building. We're allowing them to park trucks on ours.

The rent has been significantly reduced to allow us to be there as uh temporary.

Okay. You agree to the subject standard covenants and restrictions with public garage? We haven't had an opportunity to review them, but I'm familiar with the town's uh standard covenants, and we do provided that we can uh sell new and used uh commercial vehicles. However, I will point out that one of the items in the planning board covenants was no outside repair, which we don't dispute. We're not we don't do outside repair. However, there is a specific emissions test that requires the the vehicle to idle outside for a few minutes, and that is um a a uh a an exception that we've requested the planning uh staff to consider.

Sorry. I I think it would be helpful if Mr. Capiano addressed that. I can address that. It's part of a regeneration process when cleaning the exhaust system which is required and we cannot do that operation indoors. Okay.

And Are you? It's a good question. Are you buying and selling car? I mean trucks. Did you say that earlier? No.

Yes. Yes. We we buy uh we buy we sell trucks. We repair trucks. We have sell parts for trucks. That's what it's it was when we bought it. It's always done that. Not part of your application though. Be part of it.

What? Well, it's an important part of the business. So, in light of that, we'd respectfully request that we permitted to uh amend the application to include the sale of vehicles.

Thank you. You agree to have outdoor storage permitted only as per the site plan? Yes. Any other questions from the board? Can we just clarify? You're selling vehicles. Are they are they displayed outside or you just selling from inside? Commercial vehicles is typically sold um at the client's place of business. So, the trucks are prepped and then we would deliver them to the customer as they're done. Most of the trucks are custom built. It's a very similar to what Pensky does next door.

Do you display them outside for a show or Some of the parking stalls will have a couple of trucks, but most of the trucks that we build are custom to the client's needs. No showroom.

No, no showroom. Commercial trucks are kind of unique that way. It's been a commercial sales and service operation for at least 25 years, if not longer than that. There were Mitsubishi truck dealership there and they got that franchise, I believe, in 1989. So, Brana Brothers was the operation that we purchased. So, Brana Brothers Trucks was a Mitsubishi truck dealership and at one point it was actually a Kenworth dealership, but that was even before then. So, but we have a permit to sell from the state. We had a permit to sell vehicles. I didn't know there was anything that was missing to be honest with you.

So, this outdoor storage, those are the trucks you're working on. There's not signs for sale that people come to the site. No. No. Madam Chair, I'd like to make a motion to amend number five to read allow outdoor storage of 11 trucks waiting repair site for application 25158.

Second. All in favor? Hi. Hi. All right. So again, we will close the hearing, reserve decision, leave the record open. You get the decision in the mail after we advertise. We'll be in contact. Very good. Thank you very much. Thank you.

All right. Last but not least,

All right. The application 25-160 Coolf Fox LLC and COEG name and address for the record. Uh Joseph Fuches, 16 Larry Lane, West Icel, New York 11795. Do you affirm to tell the truth? I do. For the record, we have a planning division memo dated September 17th, 2025. Environmental control memo dated September 24th, 2025. This application will need a negative declaration. fire marshall memo dated September 25th, 2025. Have you received a copy of this? Can I confirm? I'm I'm pretty sure I have.

Um, and a survey by Paul Burleski, land surveying dated se oh October 19th, 2021 updated and uh tax map acting as an area map. Madam chair, there's uh four photographs uh site plan by combined resources consultant and design dated July 17, 2023. All right. What would you like to

So um um we have four items in front of you all in the board. Um we want to be a public garage. We want to have parking. There's two lots on the property. I've seen it mentioned as front lot, but I'm going to look at it from a compass point of view. So that wedge corner, that's the east lot. I think that's being referenced as the front lot by some people. And the back lot, the long rectangle, that's the north lot. Um they're both marked, they will be marked for parking. Um but we're asking for uh parking stalls and outside storage in the back lot. Um and we're we're a touch off of um the required amount, right? So there's 28 required. We're asking for 23. Um, and to be clear, this business, Coolf Fox, um, we manufacture refrigerated vans. So, we take a, everything that comes to us, 95% of the vehicles that come to us are brand new, direct from the factory, and we take that steel box, then we insulate it, and we mount the refrigerator on them. Um, and then it goes out to customers both locally and up and down the East Coast. Um, while they're being worked on, it takes three, four weeks from the day we get it till the day it leaves. So, they rotate throughout the shop and then between stations as they're in the shop, they have to be parked elsewhere. They go outside. Um, that's all those white boxes you see, those are the vans that we're working on. Um, the people that work on that, I have 12 employees. Um, they work seven a shop is open from essentially 7 to 7. It's somewhat staggered based on their commute uh capabilities. Um there's two car poolool guys at net 12. So you'll see on average eight cars there a day, eight to nine cars there a day. Um so I have two two gentlemen that also take the train. Um so of the 23 parking spots

that we're going to have, we're going to utilize I'll go heavy and say we're going to use 10 of them. So we have 13 spare. I would like to use those for the vans as they rotate in and out. And then the outside storage that we're going to ask for, vans will also be there as well. Again, these are new. Everything we work on is new. If it's not new, it's a year old. It's a significant investment people put in to these vans for us to do this work. So, very rarely are they putting it into something that's in disrepair. We don't work on junk for for lack of a better term. Um, what else are um what we're working on also does not involve the refrigeration process. There's no hazardous material. There's no waste oil. There's it's there there's there's nothing to speak of as far as a hazardous material. Um, this process that I'm in front of you today was born from the fire marshall making a visit to our place and finding quite a number of things that he wanted us to update. I purchased this building four years ago from a company who's owned it for 30 years. So, in the process of us applying for updating our fire suppression system and alarm, it came about that we had to have a side plan. And this brings up our parking issues. Um that's uh that's why I'm in front of you.

Thank you. I'll turn a hearing over to Mr. Decia. Good evening. How are you? Good. How are you? Um so your employee parking that's going to be I guess what we would call the east side.

I'm I'm open to wherever they can park it. You have to appreciate the aspect of this business is these these vans move. It's six workstations within that building. We don't work on anything outside. Absolutely not outside. It's a combination of carpentry and fiberglass work. All occurs inside. Um so really it's first come first serve as far as the spots go. Like my my guys might pull up and they're going to go there's three vans in an empty spot. They're going to park in between. Um it's not a retail establishment. I don't have customers coming by. So, it's if it's not a van that we're working on, it's going to be one of my uh employees or myself parking there. Okay. Um Yeah, because I drove by today

and you know, I can't distinguish what's what. You know, there's just vans everywhere. Yeah, I'm try try and keep it early. One of those 12 employees is a full-time porter. His job is to obviously keep the inside clean, the outside clean, which is a lot of fun on a corner lot uh in that area, but also to keep the vans organized, right? cost me money when they bang into each other. So, it it's organized chaos and and you know, I I could walk you through it and show with you if anyone wants to come by and worry yourself to death on how we organize everything. Um, but yeah, we we do not park them in the street unless it's a case of they're moving things out of the way and there's a, you know, something dramatic has to occur for us to park something on the street.

I mean, there were some cars parked on Beth Page and Wreath today, okay, while I was there and one of them on Wraith was half on the street, half on the sidewalk. That was probably me. White pickup. Yeah. Yeah, that's me. I'm I'm an offender there. Yeah. So, I I can I can change that. That That's the It was the apron into that lot, which we don't we don't use the apron. Gotcha. Yeah. Um so, I just wanted to make sure that you're going to be able to comply with your site plan as you I can I can I have the room. You can see I have the room if you were there today. It's just a matter of, you know, sticking to it.

Absolutely. Yep. One one thing I'm not mentioning is we do own a tractor trailer. If you saw today, it's wedged against the building that is on the road three or four days a week picking up and delivering these things, but it does live with us overnight and it does live, you know, if I don't I don't have a job for it every day. So, that does live on site and that does consume a ton of parking, but it never gets parked on the street. It's it's always behind the gate. We don't idle it. It's brand new. It's, you know, we run a very I know for the neighborhood, we run a very clean operation as far as, you know, besides for the cars everywhere, it's clean. H um did you see the memo from environmental? I don't know if you have that I never received. No.

Do you have 55gallon drums on site or will you ever have 55gallon drums on site of liquids etc. I have empty um resin drums from spray foam that we do. They're empty. We crush them on a weekly basis. I bring them to the scrap metal guy. They are never outside ever. They never go outside. Uh they are what's in them even when they're filled is inert. isocyanate. It's not it's not explosive at all. Um we do have a we have a storage room that the farm has been on site to see. It's got no electricity in it that stores probably three gallons of flammable material. There's just some recommendations from them that Okay. I probably just take a look at make sure you comply with I'm curious. Why would I have not have seen this?

Is it is it is it is it on me to to to find this? Well, it's in that memo that you just grabbed. Right. But Okay, that's that's normal. Okay, gotcha. Thank you. Um, do you agree to the four um conditions page number two? Standard co the standard covenants and restrictions for auto body repair. Outdoor storage permitted only as per the site plan. Should be no outdoor storing or staging u vehicles permitted in the front yard. Yep. And this front am I understanding front what are we calling front yard front of the building line. So this whole area

like where you my address is wreath street right so that to me that I'm not I'm not trying to I I just want to be clear on what what's expected of me that sideyard we're not storing anything in and spots one through 10 as you got labeled there correct Katie? your corner lot. So you have two front yards and anything cannot be used for storage. Okay. Would would would a truck I own for my business be considered outside storage? If you're leaving it there for overnight? Yeah.

Okay. That's that's I'm going to have to lease property to park a truck that I own. So that's is there something that I can plead with the board on on that for that that's not there is no safe way for the driver when he backs in. That's the only way to do it. This is the only spot he can back in on the north lot. It's it's a hazard. Um inside the building for the night.

No. No. It's it's it's 75 ft long. Yeah. Yeah. No, it does. It's this it's it's an albatross, but it's a necessary one for for my business. Um I I don't know. Uh I I I I I don't want to make this a longer process than it has to be, and I don't want to lie to you and say, "Yeah, sure. I'm not going to park it there." I It's It's a necessary evil for me. Um I mean, during the day, he could be there, but overnight we're saying, "Yeah, I mean, overnight's the problem." you know, it's I can't tell my guy to take it home with him. And I Yeah. You know, I don't want it off site where it's out of sight, out of mind because I mean, it's generally what happens is they load it in the afternoon with the next day's work and they'll leave at 5 in the morning to go up to Boston with it. Um,

you can't back it into this backyard. Backing into that backyard, you can do it. It blocks it's a hazard. It blocks the road. That other one, you just you come up, you you face the wrong way on the shoulder and you back straight in and it fits perfect. the other way. I mean, facing the wrong way on the shoulder is also a hazard. I mean, I'm a truck driver. It's for 15. It's for 15 seconds. And he and he backs in the other way. He's got to he's first he's got to go. You can't do it on the driver's side. You have to do it on blind side. And Beth Page Road around that corner just where that combined resources is. I mean, people are going 50 miles an hour. There's accidents. There's a pole just north of my building gets hit once every two years because people flying around the corner. It's just it's But he can't store it in the alleyway overnight.

What? You have all these spots with parking spots.

That's what I mean. To get in that lot is is is more dangerous than than anything. Yeah. You would need to work with your professional design services and propose outdoor storage in the front yard and that would have to get reverted. Outdoor storage is only permitted in the rear yard. We advertise outdoor storage for you in your yard. Okay.

And then just to clarify, you're doing auto body work here. I have I don't know why that's on there. No spray booth in there. There was a spray booth. We spray spray foam in the inside of the van in there. There's no body work done on premises.

Need to amend it or no? boo. So instead of auto body just say end. So Mr. Chairman, Madam Chairman, I'll make a motion to amend application 25-161 uh for variance number one to read and spray booth. Second. All in favor? I. All right. So, the plan is for you to apply for

Would anyone like to be heard on his record? No, because no one is here. Um, the plan is for you to apply for an outdoor storage. It has you have to do it. Yeah. I mean, I think you can get a truck in there. I drive. I I mean, I can get a truck. You can get in there. It just you you block the road and that road people fly on that road. Stop and slow stick. Stop traffic back and I'd rather apply for the

because the problem is we park. So there's two see the see the gray right in the middle of that north lot. That's the entrance into the building for my guys to bring the work in and out. And I the truck just I I he would sit there and have to work it all the way over against the fence. It's it's not it's it doesn't make sense.

All right. So, we will close the hearing, reserve decision, leave the record open. You guys will be in contact. I think you also have to meet with fire marshall too, right? Yeah. Yes. Fire. Say that again. You also have to meet with fire marshall. Um everything that's everything else that's going on after this is continued on this. So we have a plumbing I have a uh fire suppression company queued up ready to go to change everything the fire marshall wants me to change. But I can't do that till I have a building permit which is contingent on this. Gotcha. So Okay. Thank you.