Chick-fil-A on Route 58 in Riverhead gets final approval: May 1 Planning Board wrap-up

A site plan that will bring a Chick-fil-A to Riverhead received final site plan approval Thursday from the Riverhead Planning Board. 

The new development, on the northwest corner of the Route 58 and Mill Road intersection, will include a 5,840-square-foot building with a drive-thru and patio seating for the Chick-fil-A, and three other buildings — 1,427 square feet, 2,600 square feet and 6,400 square feet in size — for use as medical offices.  

Chick-fil-A is a fast-food chicken sandwich chain based in Georgia. It is the third-largest quick-service restaurant company in the U.S., with 3,236 restaurants. The company is influenced by the Christian religious beliefs of its founder and is famously closed on Sundays. The Riverhead location would be the only Chick-fil-A on the East End; the nearest restaurants in the chain are in Port Jefferson Station, Selden and Farmingville.

The development of the site, owned by the Long Island Cauliflower Association, has been years in the making. The project received preliminary site plan approval in April 2023 and several extensions since. The medical office buildings were originally intended to be restaurants — two of them with drive-thrus — but their intended use has been changed in the new plan.

“I guess the market [has] changed. The owner and the applicant decided to make the change,” Riverhead Town Senior Planner Greg Bergman said during the Planning Board meeting. “The site layout essentially remains the same.”

Although the traffic for medical offices are “significantly less than a restaurant with a drive-thru,” Bergman said, the Planning Board is still requiring the traffic mitigation measures associated with the environmental review completed for the project in 2022. The mitigation measures include the creation of a northbound left turn lane and modifications to the traffic signal timing at the intersection of Mill Road and Riverhead Centre, at which there will be an entrance into the shopping center.

“We’ve essentially mitigated the more intense use of the [environmental] analysis, and the mitigation will remain in place,” Bergman told the board. “At some point down the road, if they decide to shift gears again and do another drive through restaurant, it’s consistent with that analysis.”

Easement at Wading River farm

The Planning Board discussed in a closed-door executive session a Town Board referral to modify an open space easement previously imposed by the Planning Board on nine acres of an agricultural property on the south side of Route 25A in Wading River, immediately east of the CVS Pharmacy. 

Half of the 18-acre property was going to be developed into a commercial plaza known as Central Square, before it was sold and preserved last year for agricultural use. Peconic Land Trust, which coordinated the preservation of the property, requested at a Town Board work session earlier this year that the town remove the open space easement so the whole property could be farmed. The property will be farmed by the Condzella family, which purchased it from brothers John and Bill Zoumas early last year. 

After coming out of the executive session, Planning Board Chairperson Ed Densieski said, “We don’t believe we have a legal mechanism to fix this” and asked the town attorney to draft a memo to the Town Board with the Planning Board’s findings.

Later in the meeting, Long Island Farm Bureau Executive Director Rob Carpenter voiced support for allowing the entire property to be used as a farm.

“I think this is an incredible opportunity that the largest town of agriculture on Long Island has the ability to actually put land back into farming with a family that’s been here for a number of generations…,” he said.

Densieski said the board is “absolutely in support” of allowing the property to be farmed, but wasn’t sure about the legality of removing the easement.

Planning Board member Ken Zilnicki, a farmer, said the situation is complicated. The farmer “bought it with the easement in place… He was told that you cannot farm” that part of the land, he said.

Even if it was legal for the board to change the easement, Zilnicki said, the board would have to change easements for other farms in the same situation. 

“It’s not that we want to hurt any farmer — we don’t — but in this situation, I don’t think it’s a good idea to allow this when other properties in the Town of Riverhead have the exact same situation,” Zilnicki said.

Carpenter said he doesn’t believe this property is in the same situation as other properties within the town. He implored the board to research the matter further, ending the conversation.

Also during its May 1 meeting, the Planning Board: 

• Scheduled a public hearing for a site plan application seeking to construct a 3,100 square foot clubhouse, 1,040 property manager’s residence and three 7,200 square foot trade shop buildings at Sandy Pond Links golf course at 1521 Roanoke Avenue. The hearing for the project, which includes parking, landscaping and lighting improvements, was scheduled for June 5 at 6 p.m..
• Scheduled a public hearing for the site plan application of Guddha LLC, which seeks to construct a 1,359 square foot office building with onsite parking on a vacant 13,617 square foot lot at 365 Harrison Avenue. The site sits on the northwest corner of the Route 58 and Harrison Avenue intersection, next to Taco Bell. The hearing is schedule for June 5 at 6 p.m..
• Granted approval to an amended site plan for renovation and other improvements to the River Pointe apartment complex on East Main Street. The board action legalized interior overhangs on the property that were not constructed in conformance with the previous approvals. 
• Granted approval to farmstands at 2241 Roanoke Avenue and 1254 Northville Turnpike.