Democratic candidates for Riverhead Town Board are calling on the town to pull out of its joint application with Calverton Aviation and Technology to the Riverhead Industrial Development Agency and to reject the developer’s plans to build an air cargo hub at the Calverton Enterprise Park.
At a press conference yesterday at the enterprise park, Supervisor candidate Angela DeVito and running mates Andrew Leven and Renee Suprina demanded that the Town Board rescind resolutions passed last year joining CAT’s application and authorizing the transfer of town-owned enterprise park property to the Riverhead IDA.
“We want what you want, which is to put a stop to this ridiculous deal once and for all,” DeVito told two dozen supporters gathered for the press conference.
If CAT’s plans for the site become reality, they will “forever destroy all the reasons we live here… destroy the character of our community and the surrounding towns,” DeVito said.
CAT’s plans, which were first publicly unveiled in its September 2022 application and presentation to the IDA, call for the phased development of some 9 million square feet of logistics and distribution buildings along the site’s two runways. The buildings would be leased to tenants that would fly in cargo for regional distribution by tractor-trailer to other facilities, known as “last-mile” distribution centers, according to CAT representatives who presented its proposal to the IDA. The site would fill a need that is currently unmet in the Long Island region, according to the developer.
“We’re here today at Enterprise Park (at) Calverton to state with no hesitation whatsoever…that we are opposed to the proposed CAT deal at EPCAL,” DeVito said.
The plans made public in the IDA application are not the plans CAT has been presenting to town officials since 2018, DeVito said.
“It’s a far cry from CAT’s presentation at the qualified and eligible hearings of 2018 of an aviation research and technology hub,” DeVito said, calling it a “bait and switch” that she argues violates CAT’s contract of sale with the town.
Suprina and Leven spoke about the impacts of jet noise and truck traffic resulting from the proposed use.
Leven said the proposed use of the property would greatly reduce the value of homes in the surrounding area, both because of the noise of jets landing at and taking off from the site and because of the volume of truck traffic residents will have to cope with on local roads. The development will put “thousands of additional trucks on our already-clogged roads,” Leven said, amounting to “35,000 to 66,000 new vehicle trips per day that this 10 million square feet of mixed use development represents,” he said.
Suprina said tractor trailers and other trucks traveling on local roads and jets landing and taking off in Calverton will have severe impacts on air quality in the area.
Leven questioned the value of benefits the town will see from such a development. “Our town government is about to grant the developer tens of millions of dollars of tax abatements without any showing that $1 will be used to buy construction materials from a Riverhead firm, without any showing that one actual job will go to one actual resident of Riverhead,” Leven said.
“The current administration is imposing this upon us,” he said. “Our current administration… is co-applicant on this monstrosity.”
DeVito zeroed in on the Republican candidate for supervisor, Council Member Tim Hubbard, who is the only sitting board member that was on the board when the CAT deal was approved in 2017 and when CAT was given the green light in 2018 as a “qualified and eligible sponsor” as required by the State Urban Renewal Law.
Hubbard voted against approving the contract in December 2017 — it was approved in a 3-2 vote — and in favor of the “qualified and eligible” determination in November 2018 — which was also approved in a 3-2 vote.
The town has been “plagued by poor decisions” and “failure to act on behalf of you, the residents of Riverhead,” DeVito said — “eight years of just plain craziness, again and again.”
Calling Hubbard’s record on the Town Board since 2016 “dismal,” she faulted him for being “the deciding vote in a 3-2 split to deem CAT eligible and qualified despite CAT’s failure to provide qualifying financial documents and a detailed development plan.”
The town was unable to get the land subdivision needed to actually transfer the EPCAL land to pursuant to its contract with CAT. One reason the DEC has declined to approve permits needed for the subdivision is the lack of a detailed development plan, DeVito said.
When the town failed to get the subdivision approved within the time specified in the contract, either party had the tight to “terminate the contract without liability or obligation,” DeVito said. But the Town Board refused to exercise that right to terminate, “gaslighting the public with fear of lawsuits,” DeVito said.
“In March of 2022, Mr. Hubbard voted along with the Town Board to abdicate their oath of office to serve the people of Riverhead. He voted to transfer the responsibility for the sale of our town’s largest asset to an unelected town agency with limited accountability to the people of Riverhead,” she said. “The IDA has been plagued for years by their lack of transparency and accountability to the public.”
Hubbard says the “qualified and eligible” determination was a fundamentally different from the vote on the contract.
In comments last night, Hubbard explained his vote against the contract. “The price was low, albeit undeveloped land with no infrastructure, should never had included the 1,000+- acres and the runways. I believe the town should have retained the runways for control,” Hubbard said.
“I also thought the timing of that vote was inappropriate with three Town Board members starting new terms only weeks later,” he said. Two of the new board members were the incoming Supervisor Laura Jens-Smith, who defeated Republican Sean Walter, and Council Member Catherine Kent, who filled a vacant seat. Both ran on a platform that centered on opposition to the CAT deal.
“However the vote for whether or not CAT was qualified and eligible was a different analysis,” Hubbard said. “They did provide information that they could purchase the property and develop it through the first phase,” he said.
Triple Five, the conglomerate that owns 75% of CAT and is the company’s managing member, refused to provide the town with certified financial statements during the qualified and eligible process. They offered the town the opportunity to examine their books, but at the town’s own expense, which town officials said would have cost about $50,000, something the town declined to pursue.
Hubbard said last night CAT’s plans have changed since their “initial presentation” of “an aviation and aeronautical technology center.”
“I did not, and still do not support any type of an air cargo port. That was never discussed as a viable option for the property,” Hubbard said.
He said he intends to ask for CAT representatives to attend a work session “for clarity on their development plans.”
“I will not support any project that remotely mentions an air cargo port,” Hubbard said.
Hubbard voted in favor of the Town of Riverhead/CAT joint application to the IDA, which described CAT’s development plans.
He later said he didn’t know included all the logistics and distribution buildings and had not seen the drawings and plans presented to the IDA in September, when the IDA accepted the joint application.
“I have no plans to advocate pulling the current application before the IDA. There is a process they must go through with the IDA,” he said.
Should the project “pass muster with the IDA,” Hubbard said, “If possible, I will be requesting covenants on the property that preclude an air cargo port.”
“The property needs to be developed as an economic generator to provide jobs paying a living wage for the people, particularly our younger residents, of our area,” Hubbard said.
He said his opponent is complaining about a decision made six years ago without offering “a single plausible solution to the problem.”
DeVito and her running mates yesterday stressed the urgency of getting out of the CAT contract.
The current proposal is “so bad…so absurdly and incredibly bad that almost anything short of storing plutonium on this site would be better,” Leven said.
“Our current administration has lit this place on fire,” he said. “And our commitment is to put the fire out.”
After that, he said, “we engage in a process where you figure out what to build.” That process will be guided by “certain criteria,” he said. “And for us, they’re very simple. Whatever project comes in here, it can’t be something that destroys the surrounding community with noise and pollution. And it can’t put tens of thousands of vehicles on Route 25, which is absolutely ridiculous,” he said.
“There’s a lot of things going on in this town. This is one of them. But this is a prism through which to look at the performance of our current administration,” Leven said. “They have mishandled this so badly that it is absolutely breathtaking. They’ve got to be fired. I don’t know how else to put it. I don’t have anything against them personally. They need to be fired,” he said.
“Give us a chance, give our ticket a chance. And if we don’t do a good job, fire us. But they have already proven actions do speak louder than words,” Leven said.
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