Great Neck trustees weigh backyard chickens amid zoning debates
Great Neck trustees put backyard chickens into the village code lane, asking staff to study setbacks and coop rules after a packed zoning-heavy meeting.
More than 20 residents, developers, attorneys and property representatives filled Village Hall on Tuesday as Great Neck trustees worked through a meeting that stretched past two hours, and backyard chickens landed on the agenda as another land-use question, not a novelty item.
The board spent much of the night on development matters first. A major item involved Millbrook Apartments at 240-250 Middle Neck Road, where project engineer Alex Holloman said two additional fire hydrants were needed because none served the western frontage. Trustees questioned parking, right-of-way placement and maintenance responsibility before approving the amendment, a $20,000 fee to offset about 15 years of hydrant upkeep, and a separate settlement over roughly $180,000 in disputed building permit fees.
Trustees then approved another change at 265 East Shore Road. Attorney Paul Bloom said the apartment project had evolved since its original approval in 2021, and the board signed off on a revision that expanded the plan to 64 apartments while reducing the building’s overall size and trimming total bedrooms from 130 to 120.
Against that backdrop, the chicken discussion moved into the same lane as the rest of Great Neck’s zoning business. Mayor Pedram Bral directed village staff and counsel to review the code and draft possible rules covering setbacks and coop requirements, signaling that the village was looking beyond a simple yes-or-no answer. Great Neck is one of nine villages in the larger Great Neck community, part of the Town of North Hempstead in Nassau County, and the village already posts zoning maps and code resources online, so any poultry rule would have to follow that formal local-law path.
That process matters because chicken keeping in New York is municipal by municipal. Cornell Small Farms tells prospective poultry keepers to check local ordinances and talk with neighbors before starting a flock, and the New York State Department of State says village laws move through Municipal Home Rule procedures. In plain terms, if Great Neck writes chicken rules, they will not be a casual neighborhood preference. They will be a village code issue with public action behind it.
Nearby communities show how detailed those rules can get. Long Beach limits fowl tightly, allows one live fowl as a pet on a lot if the coop or pen sits at least 20 feet from another person’s dwelling, bars crowing fowl and requires coops, pens and yards to stay clean and sanitary. Glen Cove takes a different route, requiring a permit from the Zoning Board of Appeals after a public hearing before a resident can keep chickens, ducks, pigeons, poultry or other fowl. Great Neck’s chicken debate is now headed toward that same kind of ordinance-level scrutiny, with the real question still whether hens become legal at all, or remain one more item on a crowded zoning agenda.
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