Calverton Aviation & Technology, the Triple Five affiliate in a $40 million contract to buy 1,644 acres of vacant industrial land from the Town of Riverhead, is exploring options for using the existing rail spur in the Calverton Enterprise Park to move goods to and from future tenants at the site, the company said in a press release Monday.
“As plans proceed by Triple Five’s Calverton Aviation Technology (CAT), to redevelop the former Calverton Flight Test Center into a strategic economic engine for the Town of Riverhead, the company is envisioning how best to utilize the existing freight rail infrastructure initially built to support Grumman’s manufacturing of Navy jets during the height of the Cold War,” the release said.
CAT principal Justin Ghermezian has written a letter to MTA leadership and New York and Atlantic Railway, which operates all rail freight on the Long Island Rail Road, according to the release, sent out yesterday by Triple Five’s public relations firm Rubenstein Associates.
“Exploring how best to make use of the existing rail infrastructure would create considerable environmental and economic benefits for the Town of Riverhead,” Ghermezian wrote, according to the release. “It would enhance the viability for a return of manufacturing to the Calverton property, where goods and services would arrive and depart by train rather than trucks. The benefits would be obvious, immediate, and underscore the strategic location of the Calverton property as one capable of leveraging rail to strengthen the economy of the East End,” he said.
“Triple Five CAT is entrusted by the Town of Riverhead with redeveloping the former Grumman test center at Calverton. Their efforts during 2023 are aimed at a sweeping reinvention of the property as an economic engine powering job growth, investment, manufacturing, research and development and technology innovation,” the release said.
“The beneficial role of freight rail on Long Island is already obvious in Yaphank, where a private rail yard serves the region and brings in a broad range of commodities and construction materials. The LIRR’s recently completed Second and Third Tracks modernization program brings further options for rail scheduling to our Calverton site,” Ghermezian said in the release.
Ghermezian is already in discussions with Andrew Kaufman, president at Brookhaven Rail Terminal, the release said.
Brookhaven Rail Terminal opened in Yaphank in September 2011 on a 28-acre site on Sills Road.
Triple Five said the rail complex is an “award winning example of how best to move thousands of tons of materials to Long Island, eliminating the need for hundreds of truck trips required by Long Island companies.”
According to the Triple Five press release, Kaufman recently toured the Calverton site with Ghermezian and told him the existing rail infrastructure there, once strengthened and improved, would enable CAT to create a strategic transportation alternative for the property’s tenants.
“Opening Calverton to rail will quickly accelerate its ability to be an economic powerhouse for the Town of Riverhead,” Kaufman said, according to the press release.
The Town of Riverhead Community Development Agency, which took title to the Calverton Enterprise Park site from the Navy in 1998, rehabilitated an old, abandoned rail siding that branches off the LIRR main line. The main line runs along the southern boundary of the site, and enters the enterprise park near Scott Avenue. The rehabilitation work was funded by a $4.8 million American Recovery and Reinvestment Act grant.
Due to its length and location, the existing siding can currently serve only two businesses at the site, Eastern Fence and Metro Biofuels. Both are located on the west side of Scott Avenue, adjacent to the siding. The parcels occupied by both businesses are in the southwest corner of the “industrial core” of the site, sold by the town to developer Jan Burman, who subdivided the property and sold lots to individual businesses.
The development plans publicly presented by CAT to the Riverhead Industrial Development Agency in September show a 400,000-square-foot rail distribution center located to the east of the currently inactive 7,000-foot western runway at the site — and west of the refurbished rail spur. CAT’s rail distribution center is depicted roughly in the location of a “freight village” pitched by the Riverhead CDA in 2011 to take advantage of what was then the newly refurbished rail spur. The rail distribution center would be accessible from other proposed buildings situated along the two runways on the site, including eight distribution buildings ranging from 300,000 square feet to 1.44 million square feet in size, via a new internal roadway, according to CAT’s plans.
CAT said in the press release its mission is to “develop the EPCAL site as an economic generator, creating jobs and private investment while providing Town of Riverhead residents with approximately 1,000 acres of preserved environmentally sensitive land.”
CAT has scheduled a public forum to discuss its plans for the EPCAL site Wednesday, May 3 at the Hotel Indigo, 1830 W. Main St., Riverhead from 6:30 to 8 p.m.
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