Consultants hired by the town last year to develop an updated comprehensive plan made their first public presentation to town officials at today’s town board and planning board meetings.
Representatives of planning consulting firm AKRF Inc and Louis K. McLean Associates gave town officials an overview of the process they’ll follow and the topic they’ll tackle over an approximately 18-month period.
The kickoff date for the $675,000 project, according to the agreement between the consultants and the town, was Feb. 1. But then the COVID crisis struck.
AKRF principal and project manager Robert White and senior technical director Lorianne DeFalco told members of the town board and planning board today the firm has been doing prep work — researching, reading previous planning documents and preparing maps.
Next steps include establishing an advisory committee, meetings with town officials, and holding up to 20 community meetings.
Some or all of the meetings will likely be held virtually, White said, due to the ongoing pandemic.
The planners, with community input, will identify “the goals and objectives for the immediate and long-range protection, enhancement, growth and development of the town.”
Issues to be addressed include responding to the impacts of COVID-19, sea level rise and resiliency, EPCAL, strategies for farmland preservation, housing needs, commercial vacancies, solar farms, downtown revitalization and traffic and transportation.
The planning firms will conduct a market study, analyze the town’s TDR program, as well as transportation and infrastructure. They will also conduct a market study, develop zoning code recommendations and prepare a generic environmental impact statement.
Councilman Tim Hubbard, who is the town board’s liaison for the comprehensive plan project, said he worked on the recreation component of the 2003 plan and is looking forward to working on the new plan.
“This is an exciting time and as we know 2003 was a long time ago,” Hubbard said. “Since March, (when the pandemic struck) “ the world has changed,” he remarked. “Had we done this 18 months prior to March, we’d be scratching our heads right now and saying how do we do this,” he said.
The pandemic has underscored the importance of the local farming community, Councilman Frank Beyrodt said. “Farming is more important than ever right now — having our own food source dedicated to our community,” he said.
“We have to make sure that we’re vigilant about preserving the farmland that’s left.” He said the COVID crisis town has learned that having a strong, profitable, vibrant farm community going into the future is more important than ever,” Beyrodt said.
Councilwoman Jodi Giglio ticked off a list of items she said the consultants should be made aware of, like Sound Avenue’s designation as a historic corridor, the downtown area being a nationally designated historic district, the paucity of TDR receiving areas and past land use and traffic studies specific to the Wading River hamlet and Calverton.
Giglio said she’d like to see the consultants “focus on Route 58 and the downtown area.”
In the downtown area, there are “many beautiful homes that are historic structures that have fallen into disrepair,” Giglio said, expressing concern about “losing those historic structures in the village to the north of Main Street.” She would not like to see them replaced with larger buildings and five-story buildings, she said.
Councilwoman Catherine Kent said she loves the idea of building up Riverhead’s downtown historic district where there are a lot of beautiful older homes that have never been restored. “We can really build upon the whole historic district downtown,” Kent said.
Giglio said she believes “we have done our fair share for affordable housing” and the town needs to pursue “more ownership opportunities” in its housing stock, perhaps by allowing market-rate townhome development on sites that may be vacated by big box stores along Route 58. The area would be ideal for housing for health care workers based at Peconic Bay Medical Center. “They could walk to work,” she said.
The town and the entire region is “in dire need of assisted living,” Hubbard added.
After this morning’s meeting with the town board, the consultants made a second presentation to the planning board this afternoon.
Planning board chairman Stan Carey had a number of questions and comments, including what the planning board’s role would be in the master planning process.
Carey said a real challenge will be to find data and facts that will be predictive of the future in the context of the pandemic — so as not to “use what’s going on right now to plan for the next 10 years.”
AKRF’s White agreed. ”As long-range planners we have to look at it holistically and not just look at what has happened in the past six months,” White said.
Carey brought up the capacity questions faced by the Riverhead Water District. “A big issue with the town is the town’s ability to meet the demand,” Carey said. “The water district hasn’t kept up with the infrastructure and every summer we’re at a real deficit. We need to take into account that the town’s infrastructure must not only keep up with what’s projected but we have to get out of the hole we’re in right now,” Carey saiid.
The planning board chairman said he and other town officials, while not opposed to solar energy, are “concerned that so much is concentrated in one area of the town.”
The town should incentivize redevelopment of vacant commercial buildings, so that developers will repurpose them “instead of continuing to build new.”
Riverhead’s planning and building codes should be revised to provide for resiliency against sea level rise, Carey said.
Planning board member Ed Densieski urged caution against providing for additional affordable housing.
“In my opinion we’re the affordable housing area for the East End,” Densieski said. “Workers live here and their kids go to school here,” he said, which has driven school property taxes to unmanageable proportions.
“I’d be extremely careful” about adding more affordable or workforce housing, Densieski said.
Editor’s note: This article has been amended to correct the attribution of a quote that was erroneously attributed to Councilwoman Catherine Kent rather than Councilwoman Jodi Giglio.
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