By Adam Kramer
Queens Village and Bellerose residents should notice a few more people shopping along Hillside and Jamaica Avenue in the upcoming weeks.
The new gated community, Country Point at Alley Pond Winchester on the Creedmoor Psychiatric Center’s campus, is located on an 8.5-acre plot of land at the corner of Winchester Boulevard and Hillside Avenue. It is about a mile from the section of Creedmoor where two elementary schools in Districts 26 and District 29 and a high school are being built.
“We are really just wrapping up and construction should be completed within the next 60 days,” Les Lerner, president of the Jericho, L.I.-based Beechwood Winchester Building Corp., said last week. “All of the homes are sold and later this week people should be moving in.”
He said his company built 100 two-family homes on the parcel, where the owner will live in one part and rent out the other. The homes, Lerner said, sold from the mid-$300,000 range to the mid- $400,000 range depending on the unit.
The homes have been built in groupings of four to eight units, each with a backyard and two assigned parking spaces. In addition, he said there will be a 60-foot-by-80-foot community sitting area and a 24-hour guard.
The community is gated, Lerner said, so there will be a guard house at the entrance and only residents and their guests will be given access. The city will provide some of the public services such as garbage pickup, Lerner said, but the community, which will be run by a home owners association, is responsible for plowing the snow and repaving the street.
“We would absolutely bid for land if it became available,” Lerner said, when asked if he would like to build a similar community on other Creedmoor property.
Richard Hellenbrecht, chairman of Community Board 13, said the gated community was a positive development, but it will put a strain on already overcrowded schools and the parking on congested streets.
The new complex with a large influx of school-age children will stretch the already overcrowded schools in the area to the brink, he said. The existing schools — PS 18 and PS 116 in School District 26 — cannot handle many more children, said Hellenbrecht, who estimated there would be about 200 to 300 students in the new community.
“The Glen Oaks Campus will not be ready until 2003 and the kids will be starting in 2002,” he pointed out, “so there will be at least one year where there will be a severe strain on the schools.”
The elementary schools will hold 1,685 students: a 760-seat PS/IS 266Q and a 925-seat PS/IS 208Q serving Districts 26 and 29. The 1,182-seat high school — the High School of Teaching Professions — will be open to all Queens high school students.
Hellenbrecht said parking is going to be another major issue even though each new unit will have a parking spot. Today many families have more than one car, he said, so they will be forced to park on Winchester Boulevard, which is already extremely congested.
The additional services required by the new homes, he said, such as trash and sanitation will not pose a problem to the neighboring communities.
The Creedmoor site was part of the sale of surplus property at five state mental health facilities under Gov. Pataki’s effort to privatize state property to generate tax benefits.
Reach reporter Adam Kramer by e-mail at Timesledgr@aol.com or call 229-0300, Ext. 157.
