Serving Manhasset
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Friday, december 25, 2015
vol. 3, no. 52
TO
GUIDE ing New Year’s Din
2015 • decemb er 25, tions special section / litmor publica a blank slate media
NeW year’S toWN hoNorS Port DiNiNG GUiDe aLUM’S WritiNG
kaiMaN eyeD For LiPa ceo
PAGEs 27-38
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Ritz Cartlon changes raise concerns
t w O t O tA n G O
Developer, mayor disagree on apartment count By N o a h M a N S k a r The North Hills Board of Trustees and the developers of a luxury condominium complex there are not seeing eye-to-eye on numbers. The board on Wednesday delayed a decision on whether to let RXR Realty combine several smaller units at its Ritz Carlton Residences into fewer, larger condos, after Mayor Marvin Natiss said the changes were a way the developer could circumvent the limit of 244 units. “Your client has been here 10 times, and 20 times has been told no more than 244,” Natiss told Anthony Guardino, RXR’s attorney, Wednesday night. That number has stood since 2006, when the board first approved RXR’s plan for five luxury condo buildings at the 17-acre site on New Hyde Park Road near the Long Island Expressway Service Road, managed by hotelier Ritz Carlton. RXR’s amended plans for the
first two buildings combines 28 of 124 individual condos into 14 larger ones, for a new total of 110 units. The developer plans to add the extra 14 to the fifth building in the project’s second phase, keeping the total at 244, Guardino said. RXR First Vice President Frank Haftel said the board allowed for combined condos to count as a single unit in 2009, when it approved the firm’s plan to reduce the average unit size. Counting them as one also PHOTO COURTESY OF THE PORT WASHINGTON UFSD. makes sense under the village Students from Guggenheim Elementary School are seen strutting their stuff during the code, Haftel and Guardino said, school’s Dancing Classroom finale for parents. which says a “dwelling unit” ought to be “intended, designed and built for use by one family.” “All we’re saying is let’s not change things around,” Haftel said in an interview. “Let’s just stick with what we agreed to do.” But Natiss said the board has always held that two condos sold as one unit still count as two toward the total because the final plans approved in 2013 list them Cordero, a woodwind playBut this year, they join a Continued on Page 52 B y N o a h M a N S k a r select few from the school who er and Chan, a sophomore vioAdam Cordero and Mikay- have gone to play at the Mu- linist, will travel to Indianapolis la Chan are among the many sic for All National Festival in in March to play in the festival’s music students from Herricks groups comprised of the best Honor Band and Honor OrchesHigh School who have played young musicians in the country. tra, respectively. “(I’m) very, very honored,” There, they will rehearse in county- and state-wide honor Continued on Page 52 said Cordero, a junior. ensembles.
herricks pair selected for a national festival
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