New industrial and commercial development in the 21st century requires the development of rental workforce housing on site or nearby, according to a group of real estate brokers and trade organization representatives who met with the town board this morning.
Among the brokers were representatives of the firm that has the exclusive contract to market the Calverton Enterprise Park for the Town of Riverhead, Cushman and Wakefield.
Their purpose, they said, was to urge the board not to change the zoning at the site to eliminate housing as a permitted use. Housing as an accessory use to a principal commercial use — by special permit — was included in the Calverton Enterprise Park zoning adopted by the town board not quite one year ago.
The new zoning at the enterprise park was the result of a multiyear effort by the town and its planning consultants. Councilwoman Jodi Giglio was the only board member to vote against the resolution adopting the new zoning on Aug. 16, 2016.
“I appreciate the efforts of the board,” Giglio said at the time. “I disagree with the housing and retail and I’m going to vote no.” The zoning resolution passed 4-1.
Opposition to the prospect for any housing at the Calverton Enterprise Park has gathered steam this year, with Democratic supervisor candidate Laura Jens-Smith and her running mates for town board, Catherine Kent and Michelle Lynch standing up against housing at the site and a new civic group, calling itself the Coalition Against EPCAL Housing, forming to urge the board to repeal that provision of the code.
Councilmen John Dunleavy and Tim Hubbard, who both supported the code last year, have since decided to withdraw their support and join Giglio in opposition.
In an interview yesterday, Hubbard said he intended to present the board today with a resolution calling a public hearing on a repeal provision. Dunleavy said in an interview last night he supports eliminating housing at EPCAL and would vote to set a public hearing on the revision.
But Hubbard didn’t offer the resolution for consideration today. That had nothing to do with today’s presentation, he said. The resolution was not prepared by the town attorney’s office in time for the work session discussion, he said afterward.
David Panetta and David Madigan of Cushman and Wakefield, the town’s exclusive broker at EPCAL, were joined by Sammy Chu of the U.S. Green Building Council, Kevin Moran, assistant to Mitchell Pally of the Long Island Builders Institute, and John Damianos of Damianos Realty Group and the Real Estate Institute at Stony Brook University School of Business.
Companies won’t locate someplace unless they know they have access to the right kind of workforce, the brokers told the board. Long Island is losing is workforce population in part because of lack of adequate housing opportunities, they said.
Panetta urged the town board to “stay the course” with the EPCAL zoning. “What you did was really progressive,” he said, referring to the zoning adopted by the town board last year. “I don’t know if you really understand how progressive that was.”
The Coalition Against EPCAL Housing urged the opposite and asked the board to move to repeal the code provision authorizing housing at the site.
“Citizens of Riverhead who have expressed an opinion on this issue are overwhelming against housing at EPCAL,” the Coalition Against EPCAL Housing said in a press release issued yesterday. He cited an online petition with 132 signatures and an online survey with 82 responses, 73 of which were opposed to housing at the site.
The Calverton Enterprise Park was once the home of Grumman Aerospace Corp., which beginning in the early 1950s manufactured, assembled and tested military aircraft on a 2,900-acre site owned by the U.S. Navy. Grumman fighter planes built in Calverton included as the supersonic F14 Tomcat and the A-6E Intruder. When Grumman moved out of the facility in 1996, Riverhead lost 3,000 jobs and $1 million a year in real estate tax revenues (technically payments in lieu of taxes, known as PILOT payments, because the land was government-owned and tax exempt.)
The Navy deeded the site to Riverhead Town in 1998. The town sold the 491-acre “industrial core” of the site to developer Jan Burman for $17 million in 2001. Since then it has struggled with the redevelopment of the remaining mostly vacant land, much of it zoned for recreational and entertainment uses pursuant to a reuse plan adopted in 1996.
In 2011, the town embarked upon an update to its reuse plan and existing zoning, as well as an effort to sudivide its remaining vacant land there.
The town signed a letter of interest with Luminati Aerospace in April. A Luminati spokesperson said the company has no interest in housing at the site. Riverhead is still negotiating a contract with Luminati Aerospace and, according to town officials, has not begun vetting the company as a “qualified and eligible sponsor” as required by state urban renewal law.
“If the current deal doesn’t go forward,” Panetta said, the ability to build accessory workforce housing is going to be important for marketing the property to others.
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