Costco plan gets public airing in Yorktown

A Long Island developer”™s plans for a Costco Wholesale Club retail store and filling station off the Taconic Parkway cleared another municipal hurdle in Yorktown this month after surmounting earlier this year a legal challenge from a partner in the sale of the development site.

The Yorktown Planning Board recently accepted a draft environmental impact statement for the approximately $50 million project proposed by Retail Store Construction Co., an affiliate of Breslin Realty Development Corp. in Garden City. A public hearing on the environmental impact report and developer”™s site plan will be held at the planning board”™s Oct. 15 meeting.

Developer Wilbur Breslin, president and CEO of the Long Island company, has said construction of the approximately 152,000-square-foot Costco store will take one year. His company will do site preparation work and Costco will build the retail warehouse. The development will include a 12-pump gas station for Costco club members and 610 on-site parking spaces.

The project will be built on a nearly 19-acre parcel near the intersection of Crompond Road and the Taconic Parkway. The property includes the nearly 14-acre site of the former Yorktown Country Inn, an abandoned, decaying eyesore to passing motorists on the Taconic.

In 2006, fuel industry businessmen Majed “Mitch” Nesheiwat and Musa “Sammy” Eljamal, partners in Best Rent Properties L.L.C., paid $3.8 million for the motel property with plans to flip it to a developer.

After an Ohio shopping-center developer dropped its tentative plans for the site in the recession, the Best Rent partners in 2009 signed a $6 million purchase agreement with Breslin.

The project stalled in 2010 when Eljamal, a Thornwood-based fuels distributor and an owner and operator of several gas stations in the area, refused to close on the sale and filed a lawsuit in state Supreme Court seeking to void the contract with Breslin. Eljamal claimed he was duped into signing the contract and had been told the developer planned to bring a Lowe”™s home improvement store to Yorktown.

Eljamal”™s partner, Nesheiwat, countersued and sought a court order forcing his partner to sign over the property title and stop interfering with the project. Nesheiwat claimed his partner”™s refusal to complete the deal was a ploy to keep a lower-priced gas-station competitor from threatening his and his family”™s virtual monopoly on gasoline sales in the area.

Eljamal”™s efforts to kill the Costco project began soon after he and partners in a newly formed fuel holdings company in Thornwood made a $43.3 million acquisition of Shell service stations in Westchester, New York City and on Long Island.

The competing claims led the Yorktown Planning Board, the lead review agency for the project, to halt the Costco application process in April 2011 until the board had evidence of developer Breslin”™s “undisputed authority” to proceed.

In March, a state judge cleared a legal path for the project when he ruled that Eljamal”™s attempt to block the sale was based “solely on his personal business interest.” Eljamal was ordered to sign sale documents and do what was needed to close the deal.

While his triumphant business partner hailed the judge”™s decision, Breslin said the court intervention was not needed, as Eljamal already had sent a letter to Yorktown officials rescinding his objection to the Costco project.

According to Westchester County land records, the sale of the property still has not been completed.