Pedram Bral on his 10 years as mayor of the Village of Great Neck

The Village of Great Neck’s ever-involved residents are bound to show up in droves and voice their opinions just as strongly as the mayor when a hot-button issue, like a new housing development, is being voted on.

In other settings, whether at an event or as he sat down for an interview to reflect on his life and 10 years as mayor, Bral speaks with a calm, measured, reflective voice.

Still, he poses the same striking figure—piercing eyes, white hair, tan skin, and often donning a suit vest over a button-down and a kippa atop his head.

Upbringing in Iran

For the first 14 years of his life, Bral lived in Iran with his mother, father, older brother, and younger sister.

His father was a teacher in Tehran, and his family was known in their community for their involvement in the import/export business.

“Before the Revolution, everything was fine,” Bral said. “We were like ordinary people.”

Growing up, Bral said, all of his friends were Muslim, and he didn’t even think that much about being Jewish.

“I wasn’t religious at all…we knew we were Jewish, but we didn’t know anything.”

The 1979 Islamic Revolution would change everything.

When Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini came to power, thousands of Persian Jews fled the country. Prominent Jewish community members were executed for their connection to the Shah. Jews were no longer issued passports.

Bral said Jews began to be segregated in smaller communities, and many started praying with Muslims to avoid being outed as Jewish.

When things started to change, Bral said his older brother fled the country on the last plane to Israel, but it would take until 1985 for the rest of his family to leave.

“[My father] took me out for a walk,” Bral started, his voice heavy as he recounted the story. “And he told me, ‘you’re gonna leave with your mom and your sister…I’m not coming…you will be the man of the house.’” 

Bral said it would be suspicious if his father joined the family, since he was well-known in the community, so he chose to stay and avoid the risk.

Bral sat back in the chair with his arms folded and said, “Really, I think in that moment, I went from 14 to 35.”

His family then bought fake passports with Muslim names and flew to seek refuge in Italy, Bral said.

“Hardship in many cases is a prerequisite to success.” 

Life in America

In retrospect, Bral said, he looks fondly on those days in Italy, but he would soon leave to stay with his mother’s family in Forest Hills, Queens.

Learning the language and customs was tough, he said, but he would adjust.

Like many Persian Jews after the revolution, Bral moved to Great Neck, where he finished high school.

The Great Neck peninsula is considered to have the second-largest Iranian community in the United States, after Los Angeles.

In 1987, Bral said his father joined the family after two years of living apart.

Bral would go on to study medicine at Maimonides, and after graduating, started a division of minimally invasive surgery where he was one of the first five OBGYNs in the Northeast to use particular cutting-edge robotic technology.

In 2008, Bral married his wife, Samira, and moved back to Great Neck, where the two would raise their four children.

Running for Mayor

Upon returning, Bral said he heard murmurs of dissatisfaction with then-Mayor Ralph Kreitzman over what some people saw as arbitrary enforcement of rules. 

Bral said he initially dismissed the complaints until he received a notice of violation for his HVAC unit that had been in the house since the 1970s.

“The law did not apply to everybody equally,” Bral said. “Certain people could get away with anything. Certain other people had to abide by every dot of the law.”

Many were fuzzy on the details of the general dissatisfaction with Kreitzman. “Lots of people had lots of reasons,” long-time Great Neck resident Rebecca Gilliar said. 

In a last-ditch effort that Deputy Mayor Barton Sobel called the “secret campaign,” Gilliar staged a write-in campaign to oust Kreitzman.

“Someone in [Bral’s] synagogue brought him to my kitchen and introduced him to me,” Gilliar said about meeting Bral. 

“He didn’t have a lot of experience…but he was willing, and he represented a community that had some presence on the peninsula.”

On the Saturday night before the election, Gilliar brought Bral, Mendelson, and resident Christine Campbell together and convinced them to run, according to Bral and Mendelson.

“The decision was made. I just had to agree,” Bral said.

Longtime Great Neck resident Jean Pierce said she has been going to board meetings for over 40 years and is a friend of Gilliar. 

“She was taken with him,” Pierce said about Gilliar and Bral. “He didn’t know anything about running, so she told him what to do and everything.”

The attempt was close but failed with Bral getting 232 votes to Kreitzman’s 325. 

In 2015, with Giliar as campaign manager, Bral, Mendelson, and resident Raymond Plakstis made a second attempt under the banner of the Voice of the Village party.

Gilliar pulled together what Sobel and Mendelson described as a coalition between development-sceptics and the growing Iranian community to oust Kreitzman.

“We were a loose group of people, some of whom were answerable to me, and some of whom were answerable to Pedram,” Gilliar said.

One of the major concerns of the campaign was the approval of a 191-apartment development project by Avalon Bay.

Deputy Mayor Barton Sobel was already on the board and said he disagreed with Voice of the Village’s pushback against the approval of the Avalon Bay project.

“Before Avalon Bay, we had big rusting oil tanks…who would oppose getting rid of that and putting up a nice building?”

“I was very much on team Kreitzman,” said Sobel.

Sobel also said he saw much of the contention stemming from Gilliar. “She’s the one who pulled the strings in 2013. She pulled the strings in 2015. She fomented the protests against Avalon Bay, against Clover Drive, against anything.”

Shortly before the election, Bral said he had a falling-out with Gilliar, his campaign manager, and they parted ways, but Bral would go on to win a resounding victory—1,040 to 391 votes.

Mendelson and Plakstis each won their seats, dramatically changing the board.

Time as Mayor

“He was totally, from the first day, in charge,” said Pierce.

After Bral won, Sobel said he was nervous for the transition since everyone knew he was a Kreitzman partisan. 

“The concept that three people, including the mayor, were coming in without any experience, knowing nothing about running the village, having barely been to meetings, it was astounding to us that that could happen,” Sobel said.

But Sobel also said things turned out better than he expected.

“Pedram was a mensch,” he said.

And on his part, Bral said he understood the skepticism. “I don’t blame them. I just came out of nowhere.” 

“Once we came into office, we realized that some of the things that [Kreitzman] did were not as bad as we thought,” Mendelson said.

For one, Bral said he changed his mind on Avalon Bay. “I was against it because we all thought it would cause significant amounts of traffic, but I was proven wrong.”

“I appreciate that he has the humility to admit that he did make mistakes,” Sobel said.

Bral said he would come to realize that residents will push back against almost any change in the village.

“Even [the installation of LED lights], we had such a huge fight,” said Bral. “It took months of meetings and misinformation.”

Bral’s falling out with Gilliar would soon prove to be a problem for him in the 2017 election when Gilliar ran against him.

Gilliar said community members convinced her to run. “I ran against him because he wouldn’t listen,” she said. “He didn’t know a hell of a lot about American democracy and representative government…he was not aware of the scope of the job.”

But she clarified that her reasons for running were not personal. “I’ve never had ill will towards Pedram. I have impatience with him.”

“She’s a very smart woman,” Bral said of Gilliar. “But I think what she expected from me was very different than what I expected to do…I didn’t just want to be a rubber stamp for someone else.”

Come election time, Gilliar would garner significant support with 505 votes, but Bral would overcome the challenge from his former campaign manager with 983 votes.

Bral would overcome another in 2019 by James Wu, but has run uncontested ever since.

The COVID-19 pandemic was a shock to the whole world, and that was no different in Great Neck.

Bral recalled the day that a makeshift truck morgue came to New York City as deaths overwhelmed the city’s medical system.

“I remember that night I just lost it,” Bral said with a shaky voice. “It just hit me like a brick. It was probably the worst day during COVID. It was horrible—the death.”

On March 12, Bral declared a state of emergency and issued two executive orders restricting public gatherings and banning restaurants from offering indoor seating.

Bral said he received significant pushback on his executive orders but believed they were the right move. “We sort of stopped it from becoming exponentially worse.”

Development

When Sobel was asked which issue had garnered the most public pushback, the answer was not surprising. “It’s always development,” he said.

“I know the development—the buildings—are very controversial,” Bral said. “But it’s a no-brainer that we need more residential in Great Neck.”

“I do believe in development, but I believe in smart development,” he clarified.

In 2019, Bral unveiled a rezoning plan that he pitched as “revitalization” for the village’s downtown area.

The proposed amendments to the zoning code would give the board the ability to waive zoning restrictions and grant construction of up to four stories for mixed-use buildings with a commercial ground floor and up to five stories for assisted-living facilities.

The zoning changes were proposed to be limited to corridors on East Shore and Middle Neck Road.

After much resident pushback, the village abandoned the plan, which Bral said was one of his biggest regrets during his tenure.

“The village board has effectively given away the village of Great Neck,” Gilliar said about what she calls “overdevelopment” on the peninsula.  

“It’s not our responsibility to do multi-family housing just because there’s a multi-family housing shortage in the rest of the state of New York.”

Pierce, who has lived in the village since 1961, is a strong opponent of development projects whenever they are proposed.

“It used to be a nice, quiet village,” she said. 

“He has a vision of little Manhattan,” Pierce said about Bral.

Bral said he is concerned with affordability. “If we stop building, we stop the growth completely,” Bral said. “You’re going to have a mass exodus of young people.”

“Population is important. You need to do whatever you can to keep the young people.”

Great Neck, the inspiration for West Egg in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby,” is a very prosperous community.

According to Zillow, Nassau County’s average home value is just over $800,000, and on the peninsula, the average home is worth around $1,400,000, more than 40% above the county average.  

The village has approved several multi-family housing developments during Bral’s tenure, mainly along the Middle Neck Road corridor—23 units on 846 Middle Neck Road, 60 units on 733 Middle Neck Road, and 26 units at 719-731 Middle Neck Road.

The approval of a center for the United Mashadi Jewish Community Center of America has also drawn significant pushback across the peninsula.

“I do understand that there are people who are set in their ways,” Bral said. “I understand that there are people who have been here for 60, 70 years, and I know that they don’t want the village that they love to change. But change is inevitable.”

Politics Beyond the Village

Beyond the village, Bral has a lot to say as well.

The mayor is active on social media, where he often posts his opinions on the latest headlines.

Originally a Democrat, Bral said he switched parties when President Barack Obama was in office because he said the party was becoming too liberal.

“Unfortunately, the party of the Democrats is being taken over by the socialist movement,” he said, but pointed to U.S. Rep. Tom Suozzi, whom he called a friend, as an example of a reasonable Democrat. 

Bral identified himself as center right and says that the country is caught between “the socialist left and the narcissist right.”

“We all get along,” Mendelson said about the board. “We have different opinions from left to right, but I think there’s respect.”

As President Donald Trump’s approval ratings continue to slip, Bral said that he still stands with the president.

“Trump, this term, is doing a lot better than his first term. Listen, I don’t agree with everything that he does, really not, but I really think that he has matured in his late 70s,” he said with a chuckle.

Bral is also a strong defender of the state of Israel. 

As the country faced international condemnation over the way it waged its war on Gaza following the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks by Hamas, the Village of Great Neck flew Israeli and American flags down Middle Neck Road in support of the war efforts.

“I don’t blame anyone in the Israeli government that I can think of because they had to come and defend themselves,” Bral said.

“The Arabs could’ve had a state if they wished to have a state,[but] they were only interested in destroying Israel.”

A little closer to home, Bral said he is close with Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman.

“Great Neck was instrumental in him winning 4 years ago,” he said, and he would gladly endorse him in the gubernatorial race.

Bral also said he is close with Nassau County Legislator Mazi Melesa Pilip, who represents Great Neck and has worked closely with her to secure grants for benches and garbage cans in the village.

Looking Forward

Right now, Bral said he is focused on finishing the construction of the new village hall.

Bral said that when he first ran, he thought he could accomplish all his goals in four years, but the biggest surprise he had after taking office was how slow the bureaucratic processes of village government are and how much longer it takes to get things done. 

He said he also wants to attract people from other areas to the village.

“It’s my goal, has been for the past 10 years, to really make this area of Great Neck a destination point for people to really have something to do,” Bral said.

Bral said he has a vision for a promenade area with activities and concerts like those held at Steppingstone, and he wants businesses to be open later on weekends.

Bral is also writing a book about his life, and he has completed four chapters so far. 

“It’s really a great story,” Bral said