A proposal to build four restaurants on the northwest corner of Route 58 and Mill Road will be aired at a Riverhead Planning Board meeting Thursday evening.
Plans filed for the 7.1-acre site propose four buildings, three of which will be occupied by fast-food restaurants with drive-thru windows and a 200-seat sit-down restaurant with no drive-thru.
A 5,855-square-foot building on the southern portion of the site will be occupied by a Chick-fil-A restaurant, according to the site plan. It will have a three-lane drive-thru and 70 seats inside, as well as 38 seats outside.
A 2,560-square-foot building immediately north of the Chick-fil-A will house both a Jimmy John’s restaurant and a Dunkin’, which share a corporate parent, Inspire Foods. They will share one drive-thru window. This building will provide 30 indoor and 20 outdoor seats.
The fast-food tenant that will occupy the 2,600-square-foot building with drive-thru north of the Jimmy John’s/Dunkin’ building has not yet been named. It will have 40 seats inside and 10 outside.
The 6,400-square foot 200-seat restaurant on the property’s northern end will not have a drive-thru window, according to the plans. It will offer 30 outside seats.
All four buildings are one-story structures without basements.
The property, owned by Long Island Cauliflower Association, is currently improved with a vacant warehouse building.
Nelson + Pope engineers concluded after completing a traffic impact study that “the proposed restaurant development will not result in any adverse traffic impacts in the study area.”
According to the study, the proposed development is anticipated to generate 361 new trips (185 entering and 176 exiting) during the weekday AM peak — 7 to 9 a.m. — and 253 new trips (134 entering and 119 exiting) during the weekday PM peak — 4 to 6 p.m. It is also expected to generate 550 new trips (281 entering and 269 exiting) during the Saturday midday peak — 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Traffic counts were collected during the peak periods on Thursday, July 23, 2020, Saturday, July 25, 2020, Tuesday, Sept. 14, 2021 and Saturday, Sept. 18, 2021.
The plan proposes three access points for the site. There will be one on Route 58, providing a right-turn only enter and exit. The entrance on Route 58 will provide a turning lane in the westbound approach. The engineers recommend replacing the yield sign at the right-turn from southbound Mill Road onto westbound Route 58 with a stop sign. This change will eliminate any potential conflicts between southbound traffic turning right onto westbound Route 58 and westbound through traffic.
There will be two access points on Mill Road, each of them opposite the existing Riverhead Centre access points.
The southern access point on Mill Road is already signalized. The plan proposes restriping the northbound Mill Road approach to provide a 50-foot left-turn lane into the new restaurant development at the signalized access point, with one through-lane and one right-turn lane. The southbound approach will provide one left-turn lane and one shared through/right-turn lane, according to the plan.
The planning board classified the action as a Type I action for purposes of review under the State Environmental Quality Review Act. It subsequently determined that the project would have no significant impacts on the environment and issued a negative declaration, meaning no further environmental review would be required.
The public hearing on the site plan is scheduled for 6 p.m. on Thursday, April 7 at Riverhead Town Hall.
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