A request for a zone change that would allow for the construction of a 162-unit assisted living housing development on a 25-acre site on Mill Road drew strong objections from the community during a two-hour public hearing last night at Riverhead Town Hall.
The property, located on Mill Road between Route 58 and Middle Road, is currently in the Agricultural Protection Zone district and the change would put it in the Retirement Community district, which allows for high-density age-restricted residential development and assisted living facilities.
The zone change petition of Genrac Associates LLC met with objection from farmers, environmental advocates, civic groups and area residents last night. They objected to farmland being rezoned for high-density development and said traffic impacts on already-overburdened local roadways would be significant.
The developer’s representatives gave the Town Board a one-hour presentation about the plan, which has been publicly discussed with town officials since at least 2011. Company principal Ronald DeVito stressed the need for assisted living facilities in Riverhead, where none exist. DeVito said the town’s lack of assisted-living facilities is forcing its senior residents to move out of town when they needed such housing. He said he is committed to making the assisted living units “affordable” based on Riverhead Town’s median household income.
After the developer’s presentation, Councilman John Dunleavy, who has been an outspoken advocate for the proposal and sponsored legislation in 2012 amending the Retirement Community zoning code to allow for the construction of assisted living facilities, objected to allowing time for town planning department staff to address the application before the public could come to the podium.
“This is a zone change not a planning board discussion,” Dunleavy said. “I don’t know why you let us go through a site plan hearing for an hour,” he said, turning to Supervisor Sean Walter. “People are leaving. I want to listen to these people here to see if they feel we have a need for changing our zone.”
“They took an hour for their presentation, John, and the planning department has some questions about the environmental assessment form that was just submitted and I want to hear them,” Walter shot back.
Walter, who in the past had expressed support for Genrac’s plan, known as Concordia Senior Communities, has recently suggested — and he repeated last night — that the use would be better suited for Riverside, where zoning code changes recently adopted by the Town of Southampton would already allow it.
Planning and building administrator Jefferson Murphree told the board that the State Environmental Quality Review Act requires the town to scrutinize the proposed development’s impacts on not only traffic but also the loss of prime agricultural soils, the change of the acreage from a development rights sending area to a receiving area and the proposal’s growth-inducing impacts. There are three other properties in the vicinity that are currently zoned APZ but meet the criteria for the retirement community zoning use district, including a horse farm immediately to the east of the subject site.
The planning department just received the developer’s expanded environmental assessment form a week ago and needs another two weeks to review it and write a report for the board, Murphree said.
Four representatives of the Long Island Builders Institute spoke in favor of the proposal. LIBI associate director Will Hubbs said seniors and their families “desperately need” these facilities. They also said the proposal would bring construction and other jobs to the town. No one from the public spoke in favor of the zone change, though David Wilcox of East Marion, son of an owner of the horse farm and stables adjacent to the site on its eastern boundary, told the board he does not object to it.
More than a dozen spoke in opposition, with many saying they understand zone the need for assisted living facilities in Riverhead, but urged the board not to allow their construction on land zoned for agriculture.
Neighbors of the site said they worried most about traffic impacts.
“I already have trouble getting out of my driveway to go shopping,” said Middle Road resident Marcia Kipperman. She said people who live in Southold refer to Middle Road as “the bypass.”
A traffic engineer for the applicant told the board last night the intersection of Mill and Middle Road already sees 890 vehicle trips per hour during the busiest hour on a peak day. The development would add 24 trips per hour at that intersection and would not result in significant delays, according to Rebecca Goldberg, a traffic engineer with Cameron Engineering and Associates of Woodbury.
But neighborhood residents and the town supervisor disputed those claims.
“I hear what you’re saying but I don’t believe it or a minute,” Walter told Goldberg.
Kipperman also said the impact of the senior housing communities in the Middle Road corridor has had a big impact on the town’s EMS system.
Calverton Civic Association president Rex Farr told the board the population of Calverton has tripled in the last 20 years, “according to the postal service,” he said.
He read a letter from the civic association asking the town board to reject the zone change application, based on the goals and objectives of the adopted master plan and the zoning of the site put in place as a result of that plan.
The Genrac petition and plan “is a flagrant disregard of the collective vision of the town boards that adopted the master plan in 2003 and the subsequent town board that adopted zoning regulation that complied with the recommendation of the master plan,” Farr read.
Former councilman George Bartunek also spoke in opposition, speaking, he said, on behalf of the prior town boards that adopted the 2003 master plan and the zoning that implemented it.
He reminded the town board that the 1973 master plan, which preceded the current one, projected a population of 150,000 people in Riverhead.
“We could have been another Huntington,” Bartunek said. “The 2003 master plan has done everything to find a balance for commercial development and the protection of farmland,” he said.
Linda Nemeth of Calverton, representing the Riverhead Neighborhood Preservation Coalition, asked how many of the people who will live in the development will be Riverhead residents.
“How many people can afford $6,500 per month?” she asked.
Longtime resident Richard Wines, chairman of the Riverhead Landmarks preservation commission, said he was “part of the team” that worked on the 2003 master plan. The master plan is the result of “two overriding principles,” Wines said: first, to cap the town’s population; and second, to preserve the town’s agricultural heritage and the farmland that goes with that.”
The Genrac proposal is “a double insult to the master plan and to the farming community it’s trying to sustain,” Wines said.
“First of all, I think the RC zoning as it’s planned now — the code that was done for Concordia anyway,” he said, referring to the Dunleavy amendment, “is
flawed because it doesn’t require any transfer of development rights in order to support something like this. In the principles of the master plan there should be no additional population, no additional housing anyplace in the town unless it’s transferring development rights off agricultural lands.
“It’s double, because not only is it not preserving agricultural lands, it’s taking agricultural lands,” Wines said.
“Even worse than that, if you change the zoning, this sets a terrible example,” he said, because the sewer extension will open up other agricultural lands to the possibility of high-density development.
Dunleavy, who has maintained that the site has not been farmed in over 30 years, asked Wines if he knew when it was last farmed.
Wines said he didn’t. “But you know why it’s probably not farmed now? Because somebody thinks they can get a lot of money selling it to Concordia. I can tell you if not, it would be farmed. It’s happening throughout Riverhead, John,” Wines said.
“Farmers are hungry for land.”
The public hearing was adjourned to March 15. In the interim, the planning department will complete its report, which will be provided to the developer in advance to allow it the opportunity to prepare a response.
Correction: This story has been amended to reflect a correction regarding ownership of a horse farm adjacent to the site of the proposed development.
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