Plans for Sonic Drive-In Riverhead location move forward

(Correction appended.) Plans for a Sonic Drive-In restaurant on Route 58 and Osborn Avenue cleared a key hurdle at the Riverhead Planning Board Thursday night.

The planning board closed a public hearing on the preliminary site plan after residents, a local business owner and representatives of the Riverhead Volunteer Ambulance Corps voiced concerns about traffic congestion on Osborn Avenue — especially if lines of enthusiastic Sonic fans block the driveway of the ambulance company’s headquarters next door.

Planning board members and staff expressed their concerns about traffic flow on site and landscaped buffers.

The developer will now work on a final site plan application, which will be crafted after the state Department of Environmental Conservation weighs in. Because of the site’s proximity to wetlands, a state DEC permit is needed before the plan can be built.

Two longtime RVAC members told the Riverhead Planning Board Thursday night they are worried about lines of cars blocking the driveway at the Osborn Avenue ambulance headquarters when the proposed Sonic Drive-In opens up.

When Long Island’s first Sonic opened in North Babylon, “traffic was lined up a half-mile or more for a year,” RVAC member Bruce Talmage said during the planning board’s hearing on a preliminary site plan submitted by Sonic franchisee Spencer Hart.

Talmage, who is also an owner of Talmage Farm Agway on Osborn Avenue, directly across the road from the proposed new restaurant, said traffic issues concern him as a business owner too. He said one entrance to the restaurant site, directly across from the entrance to the Agway parking lot “would be preferential.”

He also asked the board to seek installation of a left-turn arrow signal from County Road 58 onto northbound Osborn Avenue and to ask the county to move the stop line for southbound traffic back to allow tractor-trailers turning north onto Osborn Avenue more room to make the turn.

RVAC director Keith Lewin said the group has “nothing against” the fast-food company’s plan to locate in Riverhead — EMS volunteers “tend to live on fast food,” he told the planning board, “because we often don’t have time for anything else” — but RVAC is concerned that increased traffic on Osborn Avenue will impede its operations.

Lewin asked the planning board to suggest to the town board that the ambulance facility be moved as a mitigation measure, noting that the ambulance company has outgrown its existing facility anyway. (RVAC has been lobbying the town board to relocate its headquarters for some time.)

Baiting Hollow residents Rachel and Dan Harrison-Smith, brother and sister, also expressed concerns about traffic impacts on Osborn Avenue.

Spencer Hart, of Harrison, New York, principal in Cinos Riverhead LLC, said he owns the Sonic Drive-In franchise for Long Island. He opened the island’s first Sonic location in North Babylon in 2011 and currently has plans in the works for sites in Smithtown and Valley Stream, in addition to Riverhead.

Hart said he has a 30-year lease on the site in Riverhead, which is owned by Islandia-based Inheritance Development Co. The property is located just west of the gas station on the northwest corner of County Road 58 and Osborn Avenue and juts out behind the gas station property to Osborn Avenue, where it has road frontage of 150 feet.

Hart plans to build a 2,590-square-foot, 60-seat restaurant on the northeast corner of the 1.7-acre site — the portion that’s north of the gas station and fronts on Osborn Avenue. There will be 44 seats indoors and 16 seats on an outdoor patio. There will be 20 parking stalls with menu boards, where customers can place orders and have their food delivered by servers who skate from the building to the car. There will also be a drive-through window.

The preliminary site plan (see below) shows an entrance and an exit on Osborn Avenue as well as a combined entrance/exit on Route 58, where the site has 263.5 feet of road frontage.

The owner of the property plans to build a second 8,250-square-foot, one-story building on the site to the west of the restaurant, which will be occupied by an a retail tenant that has not yet been determined, according to Riverhead attorney Charles Cuddy, who represents the applicant.

Because the site is within 100 feet of mapped wetlands, the applicant needs a wetlands permit from the state Department of Environmental Conservation; the application has already been filed, the developer’s environmental consultant, Dr. Ron Abrams told the planning board. Abrams said he has met with DEC staff and expects to get DEC agreement on a footprint for the buildings sometime this month.

Once that agreement is in place, the developer can work on a final site plan to present to the planning board. Another public hearing will be held on the proposed final site plan.

“We’re very excited to come here,” Hart told the board.

Sonic is a public company based in Oklahoma that’s been in business more than 60 years. There are 3,500 Sonic Drive-In restaurants in the United States, Hart said.

The drive-in concept is used by a lot of people “like a drive-through but a lot more friendly,” Hart said. Customers can get their kids situated with food to eat on the go before having to pull out into traffic, and people like that, he said. Diners can also eat in their cars parked in the drive-in stall, he said.

Servers walk the food out to the cars when weather precludes the use of roller skates.

“We serve a full menu all day, so you can have breakfast in the evening or a burger and fries in the morning,” he said.

Sonic is open every day except Thanksgiving and Christmas, Hart said. It’s open from 9 a.m. to midnight, Sunday through Thursday and 9 a.m. to 2 a.m. on Friday and Saturday.

Correction: A previously published version of this story incorrectly stated that the planning board approved the preliminary site plan for this project. That action has not yet been taken.