Riverhead will celebrate the groundbreaking for the Calverton rail spur Friday, May 7 at the new Metro Bio Fuels facility at the Calverton Enterprise Park.
The rail access rehabilitation project is “central to the adaptive reuse plan of the former Naval weapons industrial reserve plant,” according to Riverhead Supervisor Sean Walter, who announced the groundbreaking in a press release Wednesday.
The project will rehabilitate an old, abandoned rail spur that branches off the LIRR main line and enters the Enterprise Park, the former home of the Grumman Corporation, which built military aircraft there from the 1950s until 1994. Grumman had leased the land from the U.S Navy. The Navy deeded the 2,900-acre tract of land to the Town of Riverhead in 1998 for redevelopment aimed at replacing the jobs and tax base lost when Grumman left. Grumman had been one of the largest employers and taxpayers in the town.
Today, the site has close to 1 million square feet in active use, with another 2 million square feet planned, Walter said. The rehabilitated rail spur is a big part of the expansion and reuse plan, he said. Rail access to the site will take trucks off Long Island’s clogged roadways, help improve air quality and reduce consumption of fossil fuels. The rail access rehabilitation project was awarded the GreenLITES Gold Certification by the N.Y. State Department of Transportation on Earth Day this year.
In February, following a competitive bidding process, the town awarded a $3.5 million contract to Railroad Construction Co., Inc. of Paterson, N.J., to refurbish the long-defunct spur. The project is being funded by a $3.5 million American Recovery and Reinvestment Act grant. Work is scheduled to be completed next winter.
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