Two high-powered business development firms will meet with the Riverhead Town Board during tomorrow’s work session to discuss marketing the town-owned property at the former Grumman site in Calverton.
Supervisor Sean Walter said Tuesday that representatives of the Chicago-based firm of Jones, Lang, LaSalle, the NYC-based Pataki-Cahill Group will be making presentations to board members tomorrow concerning the services they can offer the town in connection with developing and marketing the EPCAL site.
“Jones Lang LaSalle is the largest commercial real estate broker in the world,” Walter said.
Pataki-Cahill is not a real estate firm, per se, he said. The firm, founded by former New York governor George Pataki and his former chief of staff, John Cahill, specializes in business development, Walter said.
According to its website, Jones Lang LaSalle is “a financial and professional services firm that specializes in commercial real estate services and investment management. We’re in business to create and deliver real value through commercial real estate for clients, shareholders and our own people,” the website says.
Walter said he’d like to see the board issue a request for expressions of interest to solicit firms interested in marketing the site. The firm selected would locate “interested suitors,” he said.
“Then we’d do an RFP to solicit proposals from prospective developers,” Walter said.
The supervisor said he has had “about one inquiry a week” of inquiries from developers who say they are interested in the entire site.
“This is not going to be a subject-to contract,” Walter said, meaning it won’t be made contingent on the purchaser obtaining financing. “Deposits will be non-refundable. If you dont have the money and can’t close in six months, then don’t even bother respond to the RFP,” Walter said.
The contract would be made subject to the town’s filing the final subdivision map and its completion of the final supplemental generic environmental impact statement, Walter said.
The impact statement and the subdivision process are moving forward.
The preliminary subdivision map is currently being reviewed by the town planning board. The Suffolk County Planning Commission signed off on the subdivision and impact statement this month. The town board, which is preparing the environmental impact statement, has just finished collecting written comments on the draft EIS following the conclusion of a public hearing on the document last month. The town’s planning consultants will now review all comments and prepare responses to all comments. The comments and responses become part of the final impact statement.
Walter said the town will need to demonstrate that it can build the required infrastructure that will be required by the subdivision approval before the map can be accepted for filing. That demonstration will likely require the town to procure a letter of credit, Walter said. The town has already gotten a commitment for a “letter of credit” from Suffolk County National Bank, Walter noted. Although the commitment was obtained in order to get financing to plug its operating budget gap pending the sale of property at EPCAL, the commitment would allow the town to be able to demonstrate the wherewithal to develop the subdivision, he said. That would allow the town to get the map approved as it works on selling the map and site to a developer, he said.
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