Hearings slated on hot topics
Comments sought on Irish Cultural Center, cell tower plan Nov. 19
City planners are expected to hear from residents on two controversial topics during public hearings this month.
According to the Planning Board agenda, public hearings will take place on the proposed Irish Cultural Center and a plan for a cell tower on Flatbush Avenue.
The public hearing portion of the regular Planning Board meeting Monday, Nov. 19, will take place at 6 p.m. at City Hall, 420 Broadway.
The first hearing will focus on a plan for a proposed Verizon cell tower.
At the Planning Board’s October meeting, the board requested a balloon test that would provide a visual representation of what the tower would look like from the surrounding area.
According to the Planning Office, that test has not taken place yet.
City Planner Suzanne Cahill said Monday that details of the balloon test still must be worked out with the applicant. She said her office also will circulate the application for the tower to other involved agencies.
“The bottom line is we do have a need for a new facility in this area,” attorney Scott Olsen told the Planning Board at its October meeting. He said Verizon is “capacity exhausted” in the area.
Olsen has said that did not mean Verizon customers users are having
their phone calls dropped. Rather, he added, more people are using additional devices that require the company to have more towers.
Mike Crosby, a Verizon Wireless radio frequency engineer, said the company has only one facility in the city of Kingston.
The proposed tower, which would be on a residential property at 261 Flatbush Ave., would be just high enough to clear the tree canopy in the area.
The proposal is to erect a 95-foot tower with a narrow lightning rod on top. The structure would be slightly lower than the city’s nearby water tower.
Some residents have urged the Planning Board conduct a full environmental review of the project.
Barbara Stemke has raised several concerns about the proposal and also questioned the need for another tower.
“The basic concern is electromagnetic radiation,” Stemke said at the October meeting. “It makes people sick. It causes cancer.”
She said the environmental review conducted by Verizon states there would be no impact on humans from the tower, but she added
that there are scientific facts about cell tower radiation and how it makes people sick.
The second public hearing will focus on the Irish Cultural Center plan at 32 Abeel St.
The half-acre parcel where the center is to be built is bordered on two sides by private properties and to the rear by the cityowned Company Hill Path and a retaining wall.
The Irish Cultural Center plan is undergoing a second review by the city Planning Board because its original approval expired without the developer obtaining a building permit.
After some excavation began at the site earlier this year, nearby residents complained the work was causing excessive noise and damage to surrounding properties, including Company Hill Path. In August, the developer was cited by the city engineer for violations at the site, but those violations have been corrected since, according to city officials.
In response to complaints about the excavation, the Common Council adopted changes to the City Code intended to provide more oversight and regulation of such work when it takes place on private property.
The 16,213-square-foot Irish Cultural Center is to include a 171-seat theater on its ground floor, which would be built into the hillside facing West Strand and Company Hill Path; and a restaurant with a pub space, among other amenities.