A loud and boisterous protest outside a building worksite has brought a small victory.
Apparently, because of the Saturday, October 18 protest, the builders of the 3030 Middletown Road condo tower are now asking to meet with the Waterbury LaSalle Community Association and a number of other civic groups concerned about the involvement of Jacob Selechnik, once named NYC’s worst landlord, in the LLC responsible for the building’s construction.
While members of the WLCA said that the meeting might never occur, the construction plans on file with the Department of Buildings were nevertheless altered, with an additional 15 parking spaces added to the project in the sub-basement of the building in a filing approved on October 20, bringing the total to 34 on-site parking spaces.
“Parking at 3030 Middletown Road was upped 15 spaces, and they are going to dig down another level to make this change,” said Mary Jane Musano, vice-president of WLCA at the Thursday, November 13 general meeting. “We are going to have another protest at the site regarding union workers, and then a third protest on the steps of City Hall.”
Musano speculated that with Mayor Michael Bloomberg running for reelection once-again in 2009, he might be inclined to listen to the hue and cry being raised in many quarters over the project.
When Department of Buildings and Department of Finance records linked Selechnik, who amassed over 20,000 housing code violation on 100 properties he owned prior to 2004, to the construction of the 7-story, 44-unit condo complex earlier this year, it set into motion a chain of events that culminated in a protest by virtually all area civic groups.
The group with which Selechnik has ties, 2419 LLC, bought the property from a carpenters union that formally used it as an office and meeting space for $1.2 million. McNulty Funeral Home at 3006 Middletown Road was originally going to purchase the property for a parking lot, but was outbid by the real-estate development group.
While the 15 new parking spaces do not seem like a major victory, it does mark a change in the project’s impact on the area.
