Amityville is pumping the brakes on its apartment boom.
After a half decade of rapid multifamily growth, village officials want a six-month moratorium on new apartments, condos and townhomes while they study whether the surge has pushed local services to a breaking point, Newsday reported.
The proposed pause would block approvals or construction of any building with three or more units, Mayor Michael O’Neill said. The village of about 10,000 people has the option to extend the moratorium another six months if needed and is set to take public comment Monday at Village Hall.
Amityville’s wave of development was encouraged in part by a $10 million Downtown Revitalization Initiative grant from the state in 2022, which included increased rental housing as a pillar of that revitalization.
But the buildout moved quickly: the village has added 500 new multiple “dwelling units” in the past five years, which amounts to a 20% increase over the total number, according to the proposed legislation. More than 300 came online in 2023 at AvalonBay Communities’ Broadway complex.
AvalonBay floated a second luxury building across the street while the first project was still leasing up, but scrapped the idea after local pushback. Even so, O’Neill said developers continue knocking and the village keeps uncovering five to eight previously unregistered rentals each month. The moratorium, he said, is meant to “make sure we don’t oversaturate the village.”
The pressure isn’t theoretical. Soon after the AvalonBay complex opened, village police and fire crews responded to nearly two dozen false alarms tied to what the developer described as construction glitches.
Officials also say they need better data — on occupancy, rents, traffic and infrastructure impacts — to gauge how the influx of renters is reshaping the village. Officials plan to tap internal staff and hire an outside firm through a request for proposals to run that analysis.
Residents say the pause is overdue. Joan Donnison, president of the Bay Village Civic Association, told the outlet she was “pleasantly surprised” by the proposal and said the village is at “a tipping point” as it tries to balance revitalization with quality of life. She credited the housing influx for boosting downtown energy but said the community needs a clearer picture of how much more it can absorb.
— Holden Walter-Warner
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