GRYMES HILL — A developer who didn't have a street leading to his planned project decided to build a private road through a swath of Staten Island forest.
The planned development on a currently un-built section of Cunard Avenue would include the road connecting five single-family homes to Cedar Terrace.
The move has led Borough President James Oddo and neighbors to ask the city to reject the application, worried the new street would increase danger on the narrow and windy Cedar Terrace.
"That is a big time problem for us," Oddo said about the private road.
"I think it's unfair to the existing community, I think it's unfair to anybody who would buy this new development and come in here."
One of the developers for the project, Leonard Katz, did not want to comment for this article.
Currently, Cunard Avenue stops past Van Duzer Street and has a block of woods between it and Cedar Terrace.
Residents fear the new road would exacerbate traffic problems that currently exist on Cedar Terrace. Emergency vehicles already have trouble on the narrow street, especially in the winter.
"Winter time nobody can come here," Levystkaia said. "My mom went out and broke her arm, I couldn't even send her to the hospital."
Oddo said that, aside from the traffic problems, the development would put a strain on the infrastructure of the neighborhood by adding five homes where there used to be only one.
He told the Board of Standards and Appeals — which will review the application for the homes but not the street — that the development violates zoning laws because the lot is for residential use, not a road.
"The underlining zoning is residential, here you would have certain things allowed because there’s a residence built on it," Oddo said.
"Not in this project. There’s no residence built on it, the only use for this lot is a road, is connector. There’s no house associated with it, we think that violates the zoning resolution."
The project is one of several that Oddo has dubbed the "New Inappropriate Model of Overdevelopment," which has builders trying to cram as many homes as possible into a single lot.
