Suffolk County is purchasing the development rights on 30 acres of farmland on Reeves Avenue for $2.2 million.
The Kozakiewicz family farm, which has been farmed for three generations, produces broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, potatoes, pumpkins and hay. Thomas (“Smiley”) Kozakiewicz manages the family farm, marketing its produce through area farmstands.
County Executive Steve Levy held a press conference at the family homestead to announce the acquisition.
The Kozakiewicz farm is the 75th farm protected from development under the Levy administration, the county executive said. Thirty-eight of those farms are in the Town of Riverhead, he said.
“[T]here will now be 189 total acres of contiguous, county-preserved farmland stretching north from Reeves Avenue to Sound Avenue in Riverhead,” Levy said.
“It’s important to preserve contiguous acreage because farms surrounded by development tend to not do as well as farms surrounded by other farmland,” said First District Legislator Ed Romaine, who cosponsored the resolution authorizing the development rights purchase.
Former town supervisor Bob Kozakiewicz, a Riverhead attorney who lives adjacent to the farm where he grew up and sometimes works with his brother to harvest crops, was on hand for the announcement. He is handling the sale of development rights for his family and said they were probably about a month away from the closing.
Supervisor Sean Walter, who was hired by Kozakiewicz as a deputytown attorney to oversee the town’s farmland and open space preservation programs, credited the former supervisor with a very aggressive town preservation program. No town funds are being used to preserve the development rights of the Kozakiewicz family farm, however.
Family matriarch Hedwig Kozakiewicz said she is relieved that the farmwill be preserved forever. “The last thing I’d ever want to see is houses being built here,” she said.
Hedwig Kozakiewicz at a press conference where County Executive Steve Levy, left, announced the purchase of development rights on her family’s 30-acre farm on Reeves Avenue.
Photo by Peter Blasl
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