Nov 10 - The Nyack Villager

4 The Nyack Villager November, 2010
REPORTER
at large starts on page 3
New Greek in town
After a battle with the village over parking, the
owner of the former Woolworth building on
Main Street will be allowed to convert the
space to a restaurant, greek by persuasion,
Kuzina, by name.
e owner, Harry liapes, was required, by the
inscrutable laws of our village, to pay for 16
phantom parking spaces. (“Phantom” because
they do not exist; new restaurants need 16,
new retail shops need six.) e logic, if there
is logic, is that monies collected are supposed
to build new parking lots. ough there have
been numerous restaurant openings in the
past decade, nobody seems able to point to
any brand new parking lots.
After much arguing, Mr. liapes said he could
secure only six spaces and, to the applause of a
packed meeting room, Nyack’s zoning Board
of Appeals allowed the exception. Many of
those applauding were owners of downtown
businesses expressing solidarity.
Kuzina’s opening is many weeks in the future;
the restaurant and its bar will remain open until
10pm on weeknights, 11pm on weekends and
not feature live music.
Goodbye, good riddance
e site of several violent incidents in which
police were called, the Riviera Steakhouse at
the foot of Main Street was padlocked, in
mid-October, for non-payment of rent and
utility bills.
last month,e Nyack Villager received letters
to the editor from some unhappy residents of
the Clermont condominiums, protesting
noisy brawls—one at 3am—and shots fired
from a .38 revolver.
New Tourism Director
County executive Scott Vanderhoef appointed
C.J. Miller, a former journalist, to be the new
Tourism Director, a post that became vacant
last July following the death of Heather Duke.
Ms. Miller, 47, a former journalist, had been
Vanderhoef’s chief spokesman since 2005,
prompting charges of cronyism.
e $102,000 a year appointment comes at a
time when the county legislature is seeking
ways to trim expenses. A proposal was made
to eliminate the county Tourism Office and
turn over the work of promoting Rockland’s
business to a private organization, such as the
Rockland economic Development Corporation
(ReDC), which functions as a contract
agency for the county.
Many problems ... one solved
At their Oct 14th meeting, the Village Board
was expected to present a resolution of the
problems caused by their new amendment
adding a vendor fee to Nyack’s peddling and
hawking laws. In August, the trustees temporarily
suspended enforcement of the new
laws for the remainder of the 2010 Street Fair
season pending “collaborative discussion” with
the business community. At this writing, no
real “collaborative discussion” has yet been held.
Attorney John Costa carefully explained to the
board that, even if the village is in need of
funds, it is not legal to use licensing fees to
raise revenue. He pointed out why it is incorrect
to apply language designed to regulate the
activities of peddlers to owners of village shops.
In support of Street Fairs, Joe Hazucha, of the
Homeless Project, said that he and many other
charities depend on their free Street Fair
spaces to raise funds. ACADA & e Chamber
have always donated free space in the
Street Fairs to local churches, VFW and
American legion, Soup Angles, YMCA, Rotary
and many more Nyack groups.
As it stands, the new vendor fee will be imposed
in 2011. No one knows what the effect will
be—and whether the vendors can afford to
participate in future. In the opinion of many,
Street Fairs are important to Nyack’s shops; in
these economic hard times, the income from
sales on Street Fair days helps pay the rent—-
or may pay the rent. Without Street Fair revenue,
ACADA would have no funds to promote
shopping and dining in the village.
On a related topic, the village board said that
it could no longer afford to pay the DPW its
half of the cleanup cost (as it has done for 35
years), making ACADA responsible for the
total amount—about $1,500.
e board neglected to acknowledge that the
cleanup problem had been solved four days
before the meeting.
After the Oct 10th Street Fair was over, John
Dunnigan, president of ACADA and a hearty
group of volunteers, rolled up their sleeves and
ended the problem. ey worked for hours
and cleaned up the Street Fair area.
Miele Sanitation donated a large dumpster;
Rockland County Solid Waste Authority contributed
recycling bins and bags. e good
folks were covered by ACADA’s Street Fair insurance
policy. ACADA paid for removal of
every speck of litter and the tipping fee too.
Mr, Dunnigan said, “Next time well do it
even better.”
Walgreens on Main Street, Nyack
Members of Nyack’s Architectural Review
Board and zoning Board of Appeals are in a
debate over the sign Walgreens Drug Store
plans to display when it moves onto the former
site of Hilltop Restaurant on Upper Main
Street in Nyack.
e drug chain already has a variance for its
larger-than-usual One Way and Do Not Enter
signs, but Nyack board members worry that
the electronic advertising display proposed by
Walgreens will be a powerful distraction to
drivers at an already busy and hazardous intersection.
It was noted that children frequently
cross at that corner on their way to and from
school.
e sign that Walgreens proposes does not
conform to the size limits imposed by village
code. Its electronic text, advertising items for
sale, changes every fifteen minutes. e attorneys
for the drug chain suggested that village
events could be displayed along with their advertising
messages. eileen Kuster-Collins,
chair of the ARB said the sign is "obnoxious,
offensive and out of context," and called it
"visual clutter.” She added, “ere are other
ways to market yourself."
e zoning Board of Appeals moved to delay
their decision until the ARB reaches their decision
on the sign, positive or negative
According to Walgreen’s attorneys, the sign
they propose is essential to their success.
Nyack attorney David MacCartney, working
on the Walgreen team, said, “We will lose the
deal without the sign,"
So for now, it remains to be seen what happens
at the ARB and zBA meetings in late
October and beyond. e saga continues in
e Nyack Villager’s December issue.
At the Nyack 2010
Halloween Parade—
the Nyack Homeless
Project float.
Photo: Shel Haber