County, planning to open Beagle Club site to bowhunting, installing four parking areas

County workers clearing land on the old Beagle Club property along Edwards Avenue this week had local residents and Riverhead officials wondering what was going on.

The parks department, which owns the 151-acre site acquired by Suffolk County in 2012 for $8.9 million for passive recreation use, is creating four small parking areas along Edwards Avenue, Suffolk County Parks Commissioner Greg Dawson said in an interview yesterday afternoon.

The parking areas are intended for use by permit-holding bow hunters who will be allowed access to the site for deer hunting for the first time this fall, Dawson said.

“Any time we purchase a new facility, we look at it for hunting, especially in areas where we have deer population problems,” Dawson said in a phone interview.

“We’re putting in four parking areas. Each will accommodate two vehicles,” he said.

The parking areas are approximately 30 feet by 30 feet in size. The parking areas will not be paved, but the parks department plans to put down RCA — short for recycled concrete aggregate — on the surface area.

Parking will be by permit only, Dawson said, at least during bowhunting deer season, which runs from Oct. 1 through Dec. 31 on Long Island. Hunters will be required to display their permits in their windshields, he said. The permit requirement will be enforced by county park police, who make the rounds of the county’s permit-only parking areas, especially during hunting season, the commissioner said.

The parking areas will remain open year-round, Dawson said.

“In the offseason I don’t think anyone would object to cars parking there,” he said.

Neighborhood residents, town officials and even the local county legislator were taken by surprise when the clearing got underway earlier this week, since county officials had not announced any immediate plans for use of the site after a controversial rent-free deal with the motorcycle group headed by the county parks superintendent was withdrawn.

On Tuesday, Krupski said he was unaware of any clearing going on or any immediate plans for the site’s use. The county parks department plans to issue a “request for expressions of interest” for use of the site, he said. The Calverton Civic Association and an organization called Hunters for Deer have already indicated their interest in a license agreement allowing use of the site.

Riverhead Supervisor Sean Walter said Thursday he thought it was “inappropriate, especially with all the controversy, that they’d just come in and put the parking areas on a town road without discussing anything with the town beforehand.”

Highway Superintendent George Woodson, who was told about the parking areas from RiverheadLOCAL, expressed concern about the number and size of the “curb cuts” on the high-traffic town roadway. He said he didn’t think the county had to ask the town government’s permission, but said he would check with the town attorney.

“We took traffic and location into consideration when we looked at the sites,” Dawson said. Parks department planners designed the parking areas to hold only two cars, taking care to ensure parked vehicles would be able to turn around and not have to back out onto the roadway, the commissioner said.

The locations were chosen to provide access for bowhunters to different segments of the wooded site, to encourage them to hunt in different areas.

Walter said he didn’t think the parking areas posed a safety threat.

Local resident Michelle Smith disagreed. The volume and speed of traffic on Edwards Avenue makes exiting the subdivision across from the Beagle Club, where she lives, a sometimes-hazardous proposition, she said. Installing four parking areas along that stretch of road is only asking for trouble, she said.

“I’m not sure why they couldn’t have designed it so hunters could use one parking area off the main entrance to the property,” she said.