ROSEBANK — The former home of a Staten Island ink factory could be turned into 82 single-family houses.
The former Sun Chemical factory at 441 Tompkins Ave. is being sold to developer Tom Costa who hopes to rezone the lot so he can build residential units, according to a spokeswoman for the company and Borough President James Oddo.
While the Department of City Planning hasn't received an application yet, Oddo said he saw a version of it that calls for up to 82 attached homes with private roads.
Last week, Oddo wrote a letter to the city's Planning Department asking it to reject the potential application because of concerns over toxicity of the soil and parking issues.
"It is important that we protect potential future homeowners who may be unaware of the site’s history," Oddo said in a statement.
"This site should be developed as sustainable manufacturing or appropriate community facility that will help the existing community, instead of further taxing its infrastructure."
Costa did not respond to a request for comment.
The nearly five acre lot was home to the Sun Chemical color pigment plant for 101 years until the site was shuttered in 2008, Oddo said.
The factory was demolished and the lot has been empty, a spokeswoman for the company said.
Sun Chemical did not say how much the lot was being sold for.
Oddo said it's not clear if sufficient remediation of the factory was done on the site and objected to the "back-to-back" proposals for townhouses.
"The proposal is for the type of back-to-back housing that we have long fought to eliminate, and it would violate Growth Management by requiring less parking than usually required and allow more floor area than usual," he said.
He also said the development likely would need a variance to build private roads inside, which he has recently railed against with several projects including the controversial Mount Manresa one.
