Reject rezoning for film studios in Hastings

As a longtime High Street homeowner now residing at the Riveredge Cooperative Apartments on David Lane off Dudley Street, I am sensitive to the Village’s need to increase tax revenues. Yet I am opposed to the massive Electric Owl film studio’s film production project that, if granted major zoning concessions, will be shoehorned in the former Graham School property. If this ill-suited project is green-lighted, citizens living in the vicinity of the Hastings-Yonkers border will lose their peaceful, relatively traffic-free environment. Although the film production complex, with its glamour and cachet, appears to have the support of many village residents, most will not have to live under the shadow of this grotesque project. 

Mindful of the deleterious effect on those living and traveling in the film complex’s vicinity, I attended two meetings with the developers where I voiced concern about the dangerous conditions created by large trucks bearing heavy equipment and the hundreds of crew members commuting daily along Broadway from north and south funneling into the Graham School property. Add the volume of normal traffic exiting onto North Broadway from Dudley Street, Tompkins Avenue, the Pinecrest neighborhoods, and the Andrus nursing home there is increased potential for confusion, traffic accidents, and injuries.