Riverhead Town wants your input: Workshop on comprehensive plan update set for April 22

The public is invited to a workshop on Riverhead’s comprehensive plan update on Saturday, April 22 at the Suffolk Theater on Main Street. The workshop will take place from 10 a.m. to 12 noon.

Town officials and members of the comp plan update steering committee will be joined by the town’s planning consultants to discuss the future of the town with residents, businesses and property owners.

Public feedback will help ensure that the updated comprehensive plan is representative of the community as a whole and that it includes realistic and publicly supported goals and objectives, Riverhead Town Supervisor Yvette Aguiar said in a press release.

A comprehensive plan is “a long-range ‘blueprint’ for the future of the town,” the supervisor said in the release. “It details the community’s vision for the future and guides Riverhead on a wide range of issues such as future decisions on land use and development, capital spending, and general policy direction,” the release states.

The plan also provides strategies addressing economic development, farmland preservation and the agricultural economy, housing, revitalization of Main Street and hamlet centers, transportation, sustainable development, climate resiliency, and natural resource preservation and water quality, the supervisor’s release said.

Aguiar said the current “planning effort builds off of research and public engagement completed by the town and its previous consultant team between 2020 and 2022.”

The purpose of the upcoming workshop is to present a summary of work completed to date and to discuss priority issues and opportunities that the town should address.

“We urge all residents and businesses to participate in this effort,” the supervisor said in the release.

There will be a second public workshop in the fall and subsequent public hearings before the plan is considered for adoption, the supervisor said.

The town’s last comprehensive plan update was developed between 1999 and 2003 and adopted by the Town Board in November 2003. Most of its land-use recommendations were implemented by revisions to the town zoning code following the plan’s adoption.

Riverhead hired a planning consultant through a request for proposals process in October 2019. The town signed a contract with AKRF in January 2020. The planning process was soon interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic and was slow to move forward. Dissatisfied with the plan’s progress, the Town Board terminated its contract with the consultant last year and in January hired a new planning firm, BFJ Planning, to complete the job.

For more information about the plan, meeting notices and updates, visit the Riverhead Comprehensive Plan Update website.

Watch video recordings of the comp plan update steering committee meetings here.

Comments can be sent to compplan@townofriverheadny.gov.