WEST NEW YORK AND BEYOND – Around 30 local residents gathered in the meeting room of Boulevard East’s Versailles building in West New York on Sunday, bearing protest signs and their concerns over a high-rise proposed to be built in a lot zoned as mid-rise across the street.
Virginia Datto, a lifelong resident in her eighties who spends her days caring for her husband who is ill, was among those gathered that evening. To say she has an intimate interest in the project would be an understatement, as the two-family home she has lived in for 59 years lies a literal few inches south of the lot set to house the thirteen-story Meridia Le Boulevard residential complex.
Many years prior, a mid-rise apartment complex was built so close to the south of her home, nothing but wind can pass through; a wind, she says, that has risen to epic proportions ever since the high-rise Versailles was built across the street.
If granted the more than 15 zoning variances (changes to existing zoning law) required to build, the high-rise proposed by Meridia Le Boulevard L.L.C. – a division of Capodagli Properties – would stand just about as close to Datto’s house on the north end, sandwiching her in.
“It’s ridiculous,” she said. “My property is 50’ by 150,’ and theirs is 100’ by 150.’Where is my privacy? What will happen to my trees? It used to be so beautiful here, and now it’s just too much.”
The residents who have banded together against the high-rise, spearheaded by West New York resident Joshua Breakstone, have compiled a website: www.concerned-citizens.net. The site outlines the variances required, the impact on local quality of life, and calls others to join the cause.
“They’ve touted this as a green project,” Breakstone explained. “What they’re doing is trading 70 and 80-year-old green trees for a green ivy-clad, concrete wall.”
For more detail on the protest, read this weekend’s edition of The Hudson Reporter. – Gennarose Pope
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