When the Riverhead Town Board authorized a contract on Oct. 4 with the nonprofit Peconic Hockey Foundation to bring an ice rink to Veterans Memorial Park, town officials expressed excitement for the project and for the opportunity to continue developing the flagship park.
But since then town officials have been working to tie up loose ends and fulfill their commitments under the contract, including planning to install bathrooms and other infrastructure at the park.
Town officials also are contending with how the agreement may conflict with state law, including whether the action constitutes an alienation of parkland, or if the license agreement with Peconic Hockey Foundation and the town needs to be amended at all.
The license agreement with the Peconic Hockey Foundation requires the town to supply bathrooms for the facility, which will be built on an undeveloped area on the northeast side of the park property. The plans include two rinks: one indoor National Hockey League-sized ice rink covered by a bubble dome, and the other a smaller deck hockey rink next to it.
The town, in accordance with the contract, is responsible for acquiring the necessary permits and approvals to construct the dome facility. After the construction is complete, Peconic Hockey Foundation will donate the ice rink facility to the town. The Town Board has already accepted the donation of the deck hockey rink.
The current plan is for the town to install bathrooms connected to a septic system next to the rinks, according to Assistant Town Engineer Ken Testa. The bathrooms will sit north of the facility and will also be accessible from the recreation trail that spans the entire Calverton Enterprise Park.
The town is in the process of applying to the Suffolk County Department of Health Services to install the system using a variance the town received in 2007, which would allow it to install the bathrooms without needing to connect to the CalvertonSewer District, Testa said.
When asked whether he had an estimate for the cost of the bathrooms, Testa said the town was hoping to build the facilities for around $500,000. That doesn’t include the cost of the sanitary system, Testa said. The sanitary system would be built to handle 7,000 gallons a day for five bathroom facilities spread throughout the entirety of the park, he said.
Testa said he is not sure whether the town will be required by the county to install the more costly innovative septic system that reduces nitrogen, or if it can forgo the requirement because the system is temporary.
The county health department previously rejected the town’s application to build a bathroom facility at the park when the baseball fields were being built, absent a connection to the Calverton sewage treatment plant, requiring them to seek the variance issued in 2007. That hookup was, and remains, too costly because of the distance to the nearest sewer main and the need to construct a pump station to get the sewage to the treatment plant. There are currently portable lavatories at the park located near the ball fields and the start of the EPCAL trail in Veterans Memorial Park.
Council Member Ken Rothwell, who helped bring the ice rink proposal to the board, said the money to build bathrooms at Veterans Memorial Park will come from $750,000 allocated to recreation in a community benefits agreement with Riverhead Solar 2, a 36-megawatt 275-acre solar energy facility being constructed off Edwards Avenue in Calverton. Riverhead Town and the developers of the facility are still negotiating the agreement, and the details of the agreement, besides the $750,000 that could be tapped for the ice rink project, have not been discussed publicly.
“We feel very confident that in the next week or two, the community benefit money will be available, the agreement will be signed and we’ll have that money to do that,” Rothwell said in an interview Nov. 14.
Rothwell said the town has begun to do the design work on the town’s end of the project, which in addition to the bathrooms, includes extending water and electric lines to serve the ice rink facility, according to the contract.
However, Rothwell said the town will only be responsible for bringing electric and water to the bathrooms, not the whole facility, as stated in the contract.
Rothwell said there will be an electrical line near the bathrooms that Peconic Hockey Foundation will tap into to run the facility. Rothwell said the town will be relying on the $750,000 from the community benefits agreement to also hook up the water and electric lines. The water will come from a one-inch line that feeds the dog park’s sprinkler system, he said.
Riverhead Town is contributing money to cover electric costs for the facility every year per the agreement with Peconic Hockey Foundation. The board allocated $150,000 to cover its cost for the first year in the 2023 town budget adopted this week, a number that will increase every subsequent year based on the change of the Consumer Price Index.
As for fire suppression, Rothwell said the dome will not have a sprinkler system and instead have extinguishers and a dry chemical fire suppression system.
“You don’t have the water to support a sprinkler system, and a sprinkler system is not necessary,” Rothwell said. “Meaning that from the state code, and the work from our chief fire marshal and building department has said that because of the large open area that’s over ice, that it’s basically mostly non-flammable material in there [and] that those gathering places become exempt from a sprinkler system…”
The town is also required to supply a parking area for the facility. Currently, a 72 space expansion of the current parking lot at Veterans Memorial Park is planned for next to the ice rink facility. Rothwell said the town, with the assistance of the highway department, is planning on putting crushed stone for a temporary parking lot, and that the town will work to secure money to get asphalt, drainage and lighting in place in the future.
Rothwell could not say how much it would cost the town to build the parking lot, and said again that the town would rely on the $750,000 in community benefit agreement funds to pay for it. Rothwell said the material they need to put down has to be approved by the Department of Environmental Conservation.
Rothwell also said the construction of the rinks at the park will not go through the regular Town Board site plan review process.
“Because it’s our building and it’s our project. It’s being overseen by our town engineers and our building department, as well as the Town Board,” Rothwell said. “So we don’t need to get site plan approval for a town building and town project. So we’re working with them [Peconic Hockey Foundation]. So I think that you’re not gonna see a public hearing or anything of that nature on this project.”
The board classified the site plan for the project as having no adverse environmental impact for the purposes of the State Environmental Quality and Review Act on Oct. 18. The town assumed the lead agency and determined the project is an unlisted action for the SEQRA review of the project. Town employees prepared a full environmental assessment form, giving consideration to the SEQRA record for the area, including the 1998 comprehensive plan update for the Calverton Enterprise Park, which plans for a recreational park in the area, according to the resolution. The 1998 update originally placed the public park in the southeast corner of the EPCAL property.
The resolution also references a plan created for Veterans Memorial Park, then just labeled as a public recreational park at the Calverton Enterprise Park, created by Araiys Design in 2004.
Facilities within the town that have an associated parking area with more than 50 spaces, such as the ice rink, are deemed Type 1 actions under SEQRA, which requires coordinated review, according to the Riverhead Town Code.
When asked why the town did not declare the ice rink project a Type 1 action, Rothwell said he was told by the planning administrator and deputy town attorney that the town had already done a SEQRA analysis on the expansion of Veterans Memorial Park that included the 72 space parking lot and that a new analysis was not required. The 2004 park plan includes a parking lot at the site proposed by the ice rink site plan.
The Parkland Alienation Question
The town is also making sure it is operating within the bounds of the law with its agreement with Peconic Hockey Foundation, after concerns were raised by Supervisor Yvette Aguiar when the contract was being negotiated about parkland alienation.
Parkland alienation is a process that restricts the ability of a local government to convey parkland to another entity or change its use, according to the state Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation alienation and conversion of municipal parkland handbook. All parkland is subject to the parkland alienation process, although only certain acts, such as conveyance or sale of parkland, constitutes alienation.
Incidental uses, or those that are in conjunction with a park, are permitted without the need for alienation legislation. Whether the use is incidental is determined by if “the purpose is substantially similar or related to park purposes.” Recreational facilities, including skating rinks, are included in this category, according to the handbook.
Leases and license agreements are also examined in relation to potential cases of alienation. License agreements for park purposes, such as the one the town entered into with Peconic Hockey Foundation, are “usually not an alienation of parkland,” according to the handbook.
The handbook states that in one case, Ott v. Doyle, a license agreement for the operation of a public golf course was deemed allowed without the need for state alienation legislation.“Among the factors the court considered were the termination at will clause; significant city oversight of fees, hours, operating procedure, marketing and hiring, and the non-exclusivity of the rights granted,” the handbook states.
The ice rink license agreement between Riverhead and Peconic Hockey Foundation includes a termination clause that allows the agreement to be terminated both for reason and for no reason at all.
The agreement does not, however, include a non-exclusivity clause, which declares that the contract is not an exclusive arrangement.
Riverhead’s conversations to bring the ice rink to the park were exclusively with the Peconic Hockey Foundation. The town did not issue a public request for the facility at the park, such as a request for proposals, or solicit from any other organization within the public eye. The whole ice rink project is also contingent on facilities currently owned by Peconic Hockey Foundation to be donated to the town.
Rothwell said the contract does not require the town to go through the state alienation legislation process. Both the town attorney and Peconic Hockey Foundation’s attorneys are communicating with the New York State Attorney General’s office on the contract, and the Town Board is expected to vote to amend the contract with the office’s recommendations, Rothwell said.
“Before we start pouring concrete, we want to know we have the blessing of the New York State Attorney General,” Rothwell said.
Town Attorney Erik Howard did not return a call seeking comment for this article.
Beyond the Peconic Hockey Foundation project, the Town Board was approached with another, separate project three weeks ago to further expand Veterans Memorial Park. The plans, pitched by Peter Bellard of the Conscience Bay Group, propose building three multi-purpose indoor athletic buildings totaling 45,000-50,000-square-feet and two professional-sized outdoor multipurpose fields north of where the rinks would be built.
Town officials suggested the agreement with Bellard would be similar to that of its agreement with Peconic Hockey Foundation during his presentation, although Rothwell said in an interview that Bellard’s plan would likely require a lease agreement with the town — an action that would likely require a more critical eye with concern to parkland alienation.
Rothwell said that Bellard’s proposal does not change how the town is approaching its obligations under the Peconic Hockey Foundation contract. He said the proposal — if the town goes along with it — would likely require additional infrastructure, as well as more environmental review.
Denise Civiletti contributed reporting.
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