The owners want to build a temple, which they can do since it will be a community facility. However, they seek a variance so they can provide fewer parking spaces than legally required and to build a larger building above ground so the women will have enough space to sit above the main sanctuary. They can legally build on what they have, but they worry that what they can build will be too small for their needs or wants. But if they are permitted to provide fewer parking spaces, it will cause problems for their neighbors.
Plans for new temple rile Jamaica Estates
The lot at the corner of Chevy Chase Street and 80th Road would be the third temple site on the block, with Hillcrest Jewish Center behind it on Union Turnpike and Anshe Shalom under construction at the corner of 80th Road and Kent Street. Another temple is across Union Turnpike at 180th Street.
CB 8 votes down temple over parking
After the meeting, one resident said the temples influence who chooses to move to the area, that when she moved into a neighborhood 34 years ago with people of all faiths and ethnicities, now the majority of newcomers are Jewish.
"I feel like I'm living in a ghetto. And I'm Jewish," she said.
5 comments:
Not intended as a shot, but isn't there little need for parking at a synagogue because most of the time the building will be occupied for its intended purpose, the congregants aren't allowed to drive to it anyway?
Reply to Anonymous 1 -
...so they say. But they are providing valet parking at times when there will be crowds.
Questions to ask:
Where will the valet park the cars and how will said valet get from a car parked many blocks away back to the synagogue to get the next car?
It's a shtetl/ghetto!
As far as I can remember, Jamaica Estates,
along with Forest Hills (and Great Neck in Nassau)
has been a destination of choice (since the 1950s),
for Jewish families who fled the Bronx and Brooklyn when some of those neighborhoods went to hell.
It might have been originally more culturally diverse,
but still had a heavily Jewish population 35 years back.
2 BLOCKS down from 180th i noticed no more cars parked in front of my house. ( May 2012 ) Thought it was a relief.Later found out this temple under construction and making it big.I see bigger parking problems in the future.Many times i have to park away from my house too late in the evenings.A residential war will start soon on these outside parkers.This is a strictly residential area and community should pass the rules only residents and guests allowed to park like other counties.
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