Costco stop-work order to be lifted by Riverhead Town

Riverhead Town is lifting the stop-work order issued Friday on the Shops at Riverhead construction site, where a Costco Wholesale club store is nearing completion.

“We issued the stop-work order because we wanted to put everyone on notice that until the rest of this is done, they’re not getting a certificate of occupancy,” Riverhead deputy town attorney and counsel to the planning board William Duffy said late yesterday afternoon. “We want to let them get back to work.”

The tactic worked, Riverhead Supervisor Sean Walter said.

“We got Costco’s attention.”

Costco executives came from Pennsylvania and Delaware to meet with him on Monday, Walter said.

The company was planning a June 15 opening for the 150,000-square-foot warehouse store on County Road 58, Walter said.

“We told them in no uncertain terms the store is not opening until the developer fulfills its obligations pursuant to its approved site plan,” Walter said. “I told them I don’t care if that means they don’t open until July 15 or until June 15, 2015. This town will not issue a C.O. until the requirements of the site plan approval are met.”

The Costco building is one of several depicted on The Shops at Riverhead site plan approved by the Riverhead Planning Board in October 2012. So far, construction has not begun on any of the other buildings: no building pads, no pavement, curbing or landscaping.

In fact, other than the mostly finished, massive Costco Wholesale warehouse building and its parking lots on the southwest corner of the site, the rest of the 42-acre site is just dirt, Duffy said. Lots of dirt. And that’s another problem the developer must resolve, he said.

The developer has about 85,000 cubic yards of excess dirt piled around the site, Duffy said. It is now seeking planning board approval to spread the excess materials over the northern portion of the site — the 11-acre area cleared for excavation in order to grade the low-lying areas in the southern portion of the property, pursuant to the “balanced cut-and-fill plan” approved by town officials. The “balanced” plan was not in balance after all, Duffy said, and the developer wound up with excess dirt — lots of it.

Depositing the excess materials across the northern portion of the site will raise the elevation by one to two feet, Duffy said.

“The planning board approved the balanced cut-and-fill plan so the developer wouldn’t have to excavate at a later date,” Duffy said. With the excess material deposited there, if the developer builds the second phase, it will have to excavate anyway.

The developer, NYC-based Brixmoor Property Group, used the development rights on the 11 northern acres of the site in order to increase the development density on the 30-plus acres to the south. It won’t be able to build on the northern 11 acres unless it buys development rights off farmland.

“It will not be cost-productive to develop that site any time in the near future,” Duffy said yesterday. “It may cost them as much as $1 million to buy those development rights,” he said.

It’s up to planning board members to decide whether to allow the developer to spread the excess material on the portion of the site it’s not developing. The planning board could say no and require the developer to remove the excess material from the site, Duffy said.

Either way, the rest of the site work must be completed before Costco will get its C.O. The extent of the work to be done will depend on the contents of a revised site to be approved by the planning board.

“We told them they won’t get a C.O. with the rest of the site in such an unfinished state,” Duffy said.

Duffy said the developer has agreed to increase plantings on the berm along the northern border, adjoining the Foxwood Village community, where residents have been up in arms over the clear-cutting of the previously wooded 42 acres and the design and construction of the berm that is supposed to provide a buffer between their homes and the shopping center.

The current site plan approval requires the installation of an irrigation well and irrigation systems along the berm, planning director Rick Hanley has said.

The approved site plan also depicts four additional buildings — one 81,000-square-foot building divided into three retail stores, a second 22,600 square-foot building divided into two retail stores, a third 12,800-square-foot building for one retail store, and a 3,900-square-foot bank pad.

According to the town supervisor, the developers “seemed genuinely surprised” that they could not get the Costco store open while the rest of the site remained in its current state. But the approval was not for a phased plan, Walter said.

The town will work with the developer on issuing the Costco C.O. before the other buildings are built, he said. But the other site work, including grading, paving and landscaping pursuant to a revised site plan will most likely be required by the planning board before the Costco C.O. can issue, Duffy said.

“It’s up to the planning board,” he said.

The Shops at Riverhead is on the planning board’s agenda tonight as a discussion item, Duffy said.

“After that, they will put in an amended site plan,” he said. 

Editor’s note: This article has been revised to reflect the name of the current developer, Brixmor Property Group Inc. The Town of Riverhead assessment roll for 2013-2014 lists the owner of the property as Heritage Riverhead Retail Developers LLC, a company based in W. Hartford, Conn.