Greg Blass
With opportunity knocking, the town, county and state must work together so former Grumman site can fulfill potential

When we hear the term EPCAL, we’re discouraged to the point of disinterest. It brings to mind the ancient warning that government isn’t meant to do things well. When Riverhead Town received the whole 3,000 acres from the U.S. Navy back in the ‘90s, it was a brighter moment in an economic earthquake for us on the North Fork, and beyond. A huge private business, our region’s major employer, the Grumman Aerospace Corp, had just shut down its whole operation at what is now the EPCAL site in Calverton.

Riverhead, with a good lobbyist’s help, was lucky to get the place in bulk for a buck. But this lucky streak fast became anything but. Developers of every stripe converged upon our hapless town, hawking a litany of time-consuming, hodge-podge ideas: a ski mountain here, a movie studio there, an airport, water park, race track, zoo, and on and on. Then there was the town’s fire sale of the core property, with most of Grumman’s vacated infrastructure, for badly needed but way-too-little cash. A seemingly hefty sum, that $17M, was stashed in the town’s surplus account, then whittled away to plug gaps in the town’s operating budgets, year in and year out.

Truth be told, Riverhead Town has had vital support for its operating budget from surplus cash used as slush funds of one kind or another for years, even prior to getting the Grumman site, from diverted revenues from the town landfill, but that’s a topic for another time. For purposes of this discussion, we need only to understand that the good old days of the town’s long budget road down the primrose path, with surplus funds along for the ride, are over.

But with EPCAL, the town might have had a crucial, running start with some common sense: get help to define in detail what you want, then post a clear request for proposals to fit that definition. With such a far more specific vision, at least there could have been a workable narrative, a point of reference everyone could get behind. Yet with changing town boards, such a central theme never gelled together for the property. The harsh reality has been a clumsy composite of pipe dreams too dazzling to allow for solid management.

In its heyday with 3,000, good-paying jobs here, Grumman paid total property taxes of almost $1 million for their buildings alone (Navy land was exempt). Since the town took over and fostered some private sector development, total property taxes have doubled to over $2.2 million. This is OK, but woefully less than it could and should be. Then there’s that regulatory obstacle course.

Take the December 2008 letter from the “Coalition for Open Space at EPCAL,” based in Southold, made up of such groups as the Brooklyn Bird Club, the Seatuck Environmental Assoc., the Affiliated Brookhaven Civic Org., the Pine Barrens Society, the Ridge Civic Association, the South Shore Audubon Society and many others. This letter, accompanied no doubt with much lobbying, urged the state DEC to adopt strict, new regulations “as soon as possible” for the “sake of clarity” of existing ones, so as to be “explicitly clear” with “the Town and the EPCAL applicants.”

The DEC complied promptly, setting the tone with intensified regulations meant just for EPCAL to be sure. But the DEC was all over EPCAL well before this. One private project, which eventually never happened, as with so many, was favored with a DEC, mile-long “to do” list in April of ’08, that even required special curbs for salamanders. There was also the struggle against state insistence for a new, totally useless sidewalk all along Route 25, prolonged nit-picking about every proposed cesspool and buffers galore.

We might argue that these and legions of other regulatory demands have merit. But how about the state and the county helping out just a bit more? Why not have all this “fast-tracked,” as regularly happens for projects in NYC, Western Suffolk, and even locally at Gabreski Airport?

Fortunately or unfortunately, personalities have as much to do with government as the issues. For years, the personalities connected with the EPCAL saga routinely broke a golden rule best explained by the late mayor of Providence, Rhode Island, Buddy Cianci (who didn’t exactly practice what he preached): “The toe you stepped on yesterday may be attached to the a– you have to kiss today.”

Right now, EPCAL is mired in delays. The town is in court versus the DEC over regulations that have sweeping impact on the future of the site. A host of environmental groups and the town are barely on speaking terms amidst private and public mutterings about the town’s being in too deep. Yet Riverhead is about to accept its “Final Generic Impact Statement” for the project. This is a big step and long in coming, a prerequisite to the approval of a subdivision, adoption of new zoning and applications to the state DEC for permits required by the state Environmental Conservation Law.

What’s more, a major manufacturer of pilotless aircraft is poised to make things happen on a large scale at EPCAL. Ironically, a familiar face – the airspace industry – comes again to the North Fork’s economic rescue. If Riverhead Town does it right, and if the state, the citizen groups, and the rest make this work, the entire Long Island region has much to gain. The town for its part could climb from the edge of its own, largely self-created, fiscal cliff.

That’s why the whole EPCAL cast of characters, including the county and our state representatives, many of whom have been supportive already, must enlist the governor’s personal involvement in EPCAL once the town’s environmental review is completed and the project is ready to take flight. Up till now, the governor has seemed cool and distant on EPCAL. Let’s persuade the governor that the North Fork’s time is now for some balanced fast-tracking at EPCAL.

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Greg Blass has spent his life in public service since he enlisted in the U.S. Navy as a teenager. He has worked in the private sector as an attorney and served six terms representing the East End in the Suffolk County Legislature, where he was also presiding officer. Greg has worked as an adjunct professor at Suffolk County Community College, as Greenport village attorney, as N.Y. State family court judge and as Suffolk County social services commissioner. Now retired, Greg is active in volunteer work and is a member of the board of directors of several charities. A resident of Jamesport, he and his wife Barbara have two grown children.

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