Peconic Y founder: YMCA stalled town lease, discussed new site without local board knowledge

So close and yet so far.

Joe Van de Wetering has been working to build a YMCA in Riverhead Town since shortly after he moved here in 1995 and read a newspaper article about the lack of activities for kids. The retired Grumman executive made it his mission to fix it.

Since then, the Calverton resident has assembled a board of community volunteers, established a formal affiliation with the YMCA of Long Island and spearheaded a successful fundraising effort. He’s pursued at least a half-dozen potential locations, on both privately and publicly owned land. All proved elusive for one reason or another.

But Van de Wetering believed the Peconic YMCA had finally found a home at the Calverton enterprise park — a location he originally spurned when first offered several years ago. After Peconic Y’s plan to buy vacant land on Main Road in Aquebogue sparked loud community opposition, the town board last April offered the Y a 7.3 acre lot depicted on the town’s proposed subdivision map.

The board chose the lot in question because it is adjacent to the Stony Brook University Business Incubator, and officials reasoned the YMCA would be able to gain temporary road access and sewage hookup via the incubator property. This would allow the town to lease the site to Peconic YMCA, which could then pursue permits to build the facility — even before the town’s subdivision is approved, an approval that requires county and state sign-off.

The lease was negotiated and drafted by the town’s outside counsel, Frank Isler of the Smith Finkelstein law firm in Riverhead, and forwarded to YMCA of Long Island’s corporate office in Glen Cove three months ago, Van de Wetering said in a phone interview Thursday afternoon.

And there it’s sat.

“It was ready to be signed three months ago,” Van de Wetering said. Once the lease is signed, the Y could pursue its building permits.

But new leadership at YMCA of Long Island — a new CEO took the helm in July — apparently had other ideas.

“I was told about it two weeks ago, on a Friday at lunch,” Van de Wetering said. “Three people from the Y who had just come from [Riverhead Schools Superintendent] Nancy Carney’s office. They said ‘We have some good news,'” Van de Wetering recalled.

The good news was the idea of siting Peconic Y on the Riverhead school district’s central campus on Osborn Avenue.

The Peconic Y founder said he initially thought, “Wow, that’s fantastic.” But when he thought more about it, “I saw nothing but holes,” he said.

The biggest pitfall of the school district property was lack of land. The Y would get just 3.1 acres, he said. “The facility needs a minimum of eight acres,” Van de Wetering said. He said his rule of thumb has always been three acres for the building and five acres for fields to be used for recreation and camping.

The suggestion that the Y and the school district can share athletic fields doesn’t work, Van de Wetering said.

“What we intend to do with the fields and what they do with the fields are two different things,” he said.

In addition to offering a parcel less than half the minimum size Peconic Y wanted, the corporate officers are pushing a bigger building, Van de Wetering said. “They are talking about a building that’s 47,000 square feet, about the size of the Y in Patchogue,” he said. “We’ve been taling about a building that’s 34,000 to 40,000 square feet.”

Van de Wetering said the corporate officers also “don’t like our numbers.” He said “they don’t believe we have the monies.” But “fundraising is going fine,” Van de Wetering said. At a July public hearing, the Y said it had $6 million in written commitments from donors.

Van de Wetering is not willing to give up on the Calverton enterprise park location just yet. Representatives of Peconic Y, including Van de Wetering, have a meeting scheduled Monday evening with YMCA of Long Island corporate officials to hash things out.

“What bothers me the most,” he said, “is going behind our backs to talk to other people without our knowledge or having us there,” Van de Wetering said.

Town board members are perplexed by turn of events. Supervisor Sean Walter told the board at yesterday’s work session he had called Isler and told him to put the lease on hold. He suggested pulling from the upcoming meeting agenda a resolution scheduling a public hearing on a zoning code amendment to allow health spas in the light industrial zone, because it was intended to allow the Y in that zone at EPCAL. After discussion, the board decided to hold the public hearing anyway, because they said a health spa in an industrial park was probably a good idea in any event.

“The town has spent a significant amount of money on this,” Walter said. “The Y has spent a lot of money, doing the sewage study and other things,” Walter said.

“I think they’ve shot themselves in the foot,” the supervisor said after the work session.

A phone call seeking comment from YMCA of Long Island was not returned before presstime.

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