GRAND ISLAND, N.Y. — Dozens of residents showed up to the regular meeting of the Grand Island town board to protest a proposed 1.2 million sq/ft warehouse facility.
The proposed site on Long Rd. is the same site that a developer and Amazon envisioned for a 4 million sq/ft facility back in 2020.
"First of all, we don't think it's appropriate," said Cathy Rayhill. "We don't think it's appropriate for the zone they're in."
Cathy Rayhill is one of the organizers at the Coalition for Responsible Economic Development for Grand Island, a 501c3 non-profit organization.
"We are protesting the fact that for basically eight months, the town board has committed to doing public reviews of that environmental impact study with their paid consultants so that the public can view them."
At the end of last months board meeting, deputy supervisor Peter Martson announced they would be voting to approve the draft supplemental environmental impact study (DSEIS) for the project.
"There's no reason that this process needs to be rushed," Rayhill said. "There are no regulatory reason why they have to shorten this timeframe."
Rayhill says that the public has not been able to react to the study or ask questions to the consultants that conducted the study.
"They were very late posting all the documents to the public site," Rayhill said. "We're talking 1000's of pages."
On the agenda Monday night were two items related to the project. The first was the approval of the DSEIS.
The town attorney and councilmembers reiterated that this vote was not the final approval the project needed to move forward.
"It seems completely awkward we have to accept it to tell them what we think is wrong with it," said Deputy Supervisor Peter Martson. "But that is the process and we are willing to follow it."
The board unanimously approved the study and set a date for the public hearing on September 20.
The other item on the agenda was a resolution calling for a moratorium on all warehouse projects on the island. Councilmember Mike Madigan proposed that.
However, councilmember Christian Bahleda proposed an amendment to the moratorium that would instead have the council drop warehouses from the regular zoning laws all together and mandate that any proposed warehouse projects apply for a special zoning permit instead.
Additionally, the amendment would cap the limit of all construction projects on the island to 300,000 sq/ft.
The council passed the amended proposal unanimously and the public hearing to discuss those changes will be on September 18.