Community Board 18 Opposes Chabad House

Canarsie, Brooklyn — Under a blanket of darkness, Community Board 18 last week unanimously rejected a plan that seeks to bring a synagogue to a residential block in Mill Island.

Moments before the board was to take its vote, as if by divine intervention, all the lights in the Kings Plaza Community Room went out, providing a strange end to the board’s 2006-7 session.

Board members sat quietly, illuminating the room as best they could with cell phones and other electronic devices.

The arrival of the synagogue, reported in this newspaper last week, has generated concern from local residents who say it is oversized and inappropriate.

Moshe Friedman, the project’s architect, said the building proposed by the Chabad House of Canarsie for 6404 Strickland Avenue would be three stories with a cellar, and would be used as a synagogue, preschool and mikvah, or ritual pool.

“We tried to keep the building as low as possible,” he told the community board. “If we could lower the building, we would.”

The building’s highest point could be about 43 feet, according to the architect.

The architect did not reveal the cost of the construction. According to city records, Rabbi Yehuda Friedman of the Chabad House of Canarsie purchased the property in 2004 for $680,000. The current owner of the property is listed as the Chabad House of Canarsie, according to city records.

Friedman, the architect, said Chabad’s synagogue and preschool located at East 65th Street are too small to meet the needs of a growing congregation.

“They have to turn people away during the High Holy days,” the architect said, referring to the period between the Jewish New Year and Yom Kippur.

Also, he added, there is no mikvah at the synagogue’s present location.

In order for the project to legally proceed, the applicants will need the city’s Board of Standards and Appeals to grant them a variance. The community board’s vote is only advisory.

“A synagogue, or a church or a mosque is a service to the community. That is what community facilities are here for,” Friedman insisted.

But local residents felt otherwise.

Geraldine Walker said the new building would only increase traffic in the neighborhood and potentially increase the number of accidents. “This will change the community entirely,” she said. “What do we do? Where are we supposed to park?”

Moshe Friedman said most people who use the synagogue live in the area and would not being using up parking spaces, and that the mikvah would only have room for about eight women maximum on any given night. “It’s a tiny mikvah,” he said.

A night before the community board meeting, the Mill Island Civic Association voted to reject the proposal, arguing that the propose building would be out of character with the neighborhood.

Melvin Levy, the engineering advisor to the civic association, said the problem is beyond the building being out of character with the community.

He warned that construction could undermine adjoining properties, and ultimately, devalue them.

“Would you pay $2 million to look out into a wall?” Levy said.

Arnold Sadownick, who said he lives a mere 100 feet from the proposed building, said he was never notified of its arrival.

“The proposed building would take up 95 percent of the property,” he said. “There’s no parking, and traffic there is horrendous,” he added.

Friedman insisted that all residents within a 400-foot radius of the site were notified of the project, but some residents felt otherwise.

Lori Shapiro Shemelzman, a member of the synagogue’s congregation, defended the project.

“We need this. It is giving us…a chance to worship where we want,” she said.

“I think it is an asset to the neighborhood,” Shapiro-Shemelzman said.

Rabbi Friedman called the board’s vote “disappointing.”

He said with two other synagogues already near the proposed site, “there is no reason not to have another.”

“It’s better to have them all on one block,” the rabbi said.

Afterwards, Dorothy Turano, the district manager of Community Board 18, said she wasn’t surprised by the board’s vote. “The community was riled up, and rightfully so,” she said. “It’s a poor site. The need is there, but this isn’t the place for it.”