Oyster Bay Town considers Hicksville storage facility plan
A developer is proposing transforming this Hicksville parking lot into a self-storage facility. Credit: Newsday/Alejandra Villa Loarca
A developer is seeking approval to transform a 1.6-acre lot in Hicksville into a three-story self-storage business.
The Town of Oyster Bay is considering the proposal by 350 Broadway Hicksville LLC for a 936-unit storage facility located alongside Route 107, near Lee Avenue Elementary School. The plan requires site plan approval and a special use permit similar to one granted for parking on the site in the 1970s, Erik Snipas, an attorney for the developer, said at a town board meeting earlier this month.
The 108,000-square-foot facility would have a PIN-activated gate open to customers between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. every day.
Nicholas Girardi, one of the project’s developers, said the facility will be able to track PINs for unusual activity, like someone entering the facility but not exiting it.
“We’ll know who’s going in; when they’re leaving,” Girardi said at the Aug. 12 board meeting, adding that the units aren’t individually temperature controlled. “That should solve any living situations in the units,” he said.
Town Councilman Steve Labriola asked if the developer would be open to “more intense” landscaping buffers between the property and nearby homes.
Snipas said the developer is willing to plant 15-foot “green giants” to enhance that barrier, up from trees that were initially supposed to be around 6 feet tall. Snipas said the trees can eventually grow 20 to 40 feet high.
The plan proposes 29 parking spaces, which is one more than required by town code.
Wayne Muller, the project's traffic engineer from the Huntington-based R&M Engineering, said a study of the property found there would not be significant impacts to car traffic as a result of the self-storage facility.
"There are many different uses from a traffic generation perspective that would generate a lot more traffic" than the self-storage proposal, Muller said.
If approved, Snipas said, construction will take between 12 and 18 months.
The town board kept open the public record for the project for 30 days.
