The Village of Atlantic Beach has agreed to pay Chabad of the Beaches $950,000 over two years and to approve zoning variances for a religious community center and drive-through café, ending a long-running dispute over a former bank branch on Park Street. The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York announced an agreement with the village to resolve allegations that its zoning code ran afoul of the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, according to the office's own announcement.
Under the deal, the village will pay $700,000 this year and the remaining $250,000 next year, according to liherald.com. The settlement also requires Atlantic Beach's Board of Zoning Appeals to grant Chabad the variances it had requested for the site at 2025 Park Street, the outlet reported. The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York, which announced the agreement in a post from its account, US Attorney EDNY
, is the office that brought the matter to resolution.
A Bank Branch, Then an Eminent Domain Attempt
The dispute traces back to November 2021, when Chabad purchased the former Capital One bank branch at 2025 Park Street with plans to build a Jewish community center and drive-through café, per the same account. Weeks later, the village attempted to seize the property through eminent domain, the report states.
Accounts differ on when Chabad took the fight to federal court. One report says the organization sued the village in July 2022 over the property dispute, while another report states that Chabad filed its federal lawsuit against the prior village administration in July 2023. The discrepancy between those two accounts has not been resolved.
Variances Approved for Parking, Signage and Café Hours
The approved zoning measures include a special permit for religious use, a special exception for a sign on Park Street, and variances covering accessory parking along with several structures and encroachments, the news outlet reported. The parking variance allows seven spaces where 11 would otherwise be required, per the same account.
The drive-through café approved for the site may operate no earlier than 5 a.m. and no later than 11 p.m., but it may not run between 3 p.m. and 6 p.m. on days when Lawrence district schools are in session, according to the report. A court approved a consent decree signed July 30, after which the revised variance requests moved forward, and the village's Board of Zoning Appeals unanimously approved those revised variances at its Aug. 20 meeting, the outlet noted.
The zoning board consented to the settlement on the condition that there be no admission of liability, according to the same report. Atlantic Beach's underlying zoning chapter was originally adopted by the village Board of Trustees on April 7, 2003, under Local Law No. 1-2003, according to ecode360.com.
Part of a Broader Legal Landscape Around Religious Land Use
The federal law at the center of the case, RLUIPA, prohibits zoning and landmarking laws that substantially burden the religious exercise of churches and other religious assemblies or institutions unless the government meets the law's strict requirements, according to the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division. That standard has drawn fresh national attention: the Supreme Court agreed to hear a RLUIPA dispute involving a proposed religious shrine, as reported by SCOTUSblog. In that case, Missionaries of Saint John the Baptist v. Frederic, a religious group had sought to build a shrine to the Virgin Mary along with a surrounding plaza, walking path, and retaining wall next to a Catholic church in northern Kentucky, and the Kentucky Supreme Court held that blocking the project would not violate RLUIPA, per SCOTUSblog.
Back on Long Island, the Atlantic Beach settlement closes out a dispute that began with a bank branch purchase and an eminent domain attempt and ended with a federal consent decree and a unanimous zoning board vote. The village has not issued its own public statement addressing the allegations beyond the terms of the settlement itself.
