Industrial development, especially warehouses and EPCAL plans, are on residents’ minds at workshop with planners Saturday morning

A crowd of about 90 people turned out for a public workshop on Riverhead’s comprehensive plan update this morning at the Suffolk Theater.

Today’s workshop was the first of two workshops planned to gain public input as planners draw up a “long-range blueprint” for the future of the town.

BFJ Planning, the firm hired in December to finish the comp plan update, replacing a firm hired in 2019, introduced four areas of discussion for today’s workshop: housing, economic development, agriculture, community facilities and cultural resources, and sustainability and resilience.

Then people in attendance split up into seven groups, each with a moderator, to discuss those topics for about 45 minutes.

The whole group then reconvened for presentations by each of the seven groups, summarizing their discussions.

See BFJ’s presentation slides below.

There was a lot of overlap in topics raised by people during the small-group discussions, according to the presentations given afterwards.

An overriding concern among members of the community who attended today’s workshop was the prospect of overdevelopment in Riverhead.

Use of industrially zoned land was a topic on a lot of people’s minds — with many citing current proposals for large warehouses and logistics facilities as worrisome for impacts to roads and traffic, air quality and the character of the area (particularly in the hamlet of Calverton.)

Redevelopment of the former Grumman site in Calverton was another subject on a lot of people’s minds — especially the prospect of the site being developed as a cargo hub with more than 8 million square feet of logistics warehouses along the site’s two runways.

Residents were also concerned about losing active farmland in the town — and about losing the open vistas farms provide.

They were also concerned about water quality in the Peconic Riverhead and the bays, and impacts from runoff of fertilizer and petroleum products.

Traffic, especially truck traffic, was also a concern that came up in multiple round-table discussions.

Safety — especially downtown — and quality of life issues were raised in some of the breakout discussions.

‘A lot has happened in 20 years’

Riverhead’s existing comprehensive plan, developed between 1999 and 2003, is outdated in many ways.

“A lot has happened in 20 years,” BFJ’s Noah Levine observed.

For one thing, the town has grown. Riverhead’s population grew 30% from 2000 to 2020, faster than the rate of increase in the county, which had an 11% increase in the same period. The Hispanic population has increased nearly fivefold from 2000 to 2020, he said.

Route 58 has been built out. New ”destination retail” zoning on Route 58, adopted pursuant to the 2003 comp plan, spurred a lot of development in the corridor. The corridor remains strong, said BFJ’s Frank Fish, though planners will be considering adding residential uses in certain locations, he said.

Fish said the planners will be looking at the amount of industrial zoning in the town, its location and the types of uses allowed.

“Agriculture is very, very important in the town,” Fish said. Planners will look a the transfer of development rights program to assess potential receiving areas.

“This was really helpful for us, in understanding what people want and where we should be,” Levine said.

“It’s good to know people are concerned about agriculture and want to support it, including understanding the need for agritainment,” L.I. Farm Bureau Administrative Director Rob Carpenter said.

Greater Calverton Civic Association President Toqui Terchun said she was glad to see the geographic diversity in people attending today’s meeting. “I really liked the mix of people,” Terchun said.

She said the discussion today “really reinforced the idea that a moratorium is a necessary tool.” The idea of a moratorium came up in several group discussions, according to the summaries.

“Every step that they take, they must reach out to more and more people,” Terchun said. “Meetings should be live-streamed online and on Channel 22,” she said, referring to the cable company’s government access channel.

“I thought it was awesome,” Council Member Tim Hubbard said after the meeting. “I was very happy with the turnout. It was better than expected,” he said.

“The thing on everybody’s mind obviously is industrial development in Calverton,” Hubbard said.

Hubbard said he appreciated the group discussions. He stopped by at each group to hear what people were saying, he said.

“We need to kind of have these community roundtables on occasion. I think people are more apt to come to them, than come to an official meeting and speak to the board from the podium,” Hubbard said.

“You get a lot more out of people when you sit around a table and talk with them. We need to hear from people more and that’s a good way to do it,” Hubbard said.

Steering committee member Sid Bail, who was a member of the committee that worked on the 2003 comprehensive plan, said he was relieved that there was a good turnout today.

“I was a little bit nervous about the event, because so many of the events in this comp plan have been so disappointing,” Bail said.

“This was the same day as Earth Day and a lot of people are busy doing other things on Earth Day, participating in clean-ups, for example. But I was pleasantly surprised,” he said.

“There’s a common series of concerns. It isn’t just a few people,” Bail said. “These things have to be addressed.”

Bail said the comp plan has to address “the EPCAL situation.”

“How can you do a plan for the next 10 or 20 years and saying we don’t have to really focus on what potentially is going to happen inside the fence?”

Resident Andy Leven, who presented the summary for one of the breakout groups, also raised that issue.

“Ten million square feet of warehouse space would be one of the largest in the world,” he said, referring to the most recent development plans presented by Calverton Aviation and Technology, which is in contract to buy nearly all of the remaining vacant, town-owned land at the Calverton Enterprise Park. “According to national traffic safety statistics, we can expect 35,000 daily truck trips from this facility,” Leven said.

Today’s meeting was attended by Supervisor Yvette Aguiar and all four council members. Many members of the comp plan update steering committee were in the audience.

Aguiar said she was happy with the turnout and with the discussion that took place.

Development of the comp plan update has been in fits and starts so far, getting underway just before the COVID-19 pandemic struck, with only sporadic progress and missed deadlines over two years. The Town Board terminated the contract with the planning consulting firm hired in late 2019, citing lack of progress. It recently suspended the head of the town’s planning department on charges related, in part, to his handling of the comp plan update.

Riverhead made a fresh start with Manhattan-based BFJ Planning, which was hired in January to finish the work begun by the previous firm. The town has also hired planner Janice Scherer of Calverton to oversee the process in the absence of Building and Planning Administrator Jefferson Murphree.

A video recording of the presentations will be posted on the comprehensive plan update website by May 1, Levine said.

BFJ’s draft summary report of prior work will also be posted there by May 1.

Currently the website makes available a number of documents prepared by the prior planning consulting firm, including summaries of public comments and memoranda on certain topics, such as affordable housing.

Next steps for BFJ include holding stakeholder meetings, working on draft chapters of the comp plan update document and commencing the State Environmental Quality Review Act process.

The second public workshop will take place in the fall, according to a BFJ timeline. The firm plans to complete the draft comprehensive plan update and the draft generic environmental impact statement in the fall, with the final plan and the final environmental impact statement to be completed in the winter of 2024.

comp-plan-workshop-agenda