Riverhead Town has a tentative deal to sell the remaining 634 acres of land it owns at the Calverton Enterprise Park to a Melville-based company that plans to turn develop the site as an industrial office park.
The town board has made a “tentative decision to move forward” to sell the 633.8-acre property to Suffolk County Industrial LLC at $72,000 an acre, which adds up to around $45.5 million.
“We’ve made a tentative decision to move forward… to the final negotiations of the contract at this point,” said Supervisor Sean Walter at Thursday’s work session. A $1 million contract down payment is non-refundable.
The closing will be staged over 18 months, Walter said. The final purchase price will depend on the exact acreage, which will be determined by a survey.
It has been five-and-a-half years since the town began working to subdivide, zone and market the remaining land it owns at the former Grumman plant in Calverton. The board recently added a new chapter to its zoning code to implement the planned development zoning use district devised by planners through a process begun early in 2011. It also adopted an amendment to the town’s zoning map to reflect the new zoning at the site.
The new zoning replaced a code adopted by a previous board and widely criticized for inviting unrealistic proposals for large-scale projects.
Earlier this summer, the town also completed an updated use plan and the requisite environmental impact study, concluding with the adoption of a findings statement under the State Environmental Quality Review Act. A 50-lot subdivision application is pending before the town planning board. The town must also obtain a permit from the state Department of Environmental Conservation under the Wild Scenic and Recreational Rivers Act.
The announcement comes after Walter said last week the town was negotiating with two prospective buyers for the property. Both bidders were brought to the town by Cushman and Wakefield, the real estate broker, hired by the town to market the site.
Suffolk County Industrial is a company headed by commercial real estate developer Tod Buckvar. The company is in contract to buy the former Entenmann’s Bakery site in Bayshore, according to Newsday.
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