An Aquebogue cannabis cultivator operating on preserved Suffolk County farmland is looking to expand his operation with the construction of two buildings for indoor, climate-controlled cultivation.
The Suffolk County Farmland Committee approved the plan in March 2025, conditioned on approvals by the Town of Riverhead and the Office of Cannabis Management.
Kevin Alfonso, the operator of Island Grow at 1017 Main Road, met with Town of Riverhead planning department staff members Tuesday morning in a pre-submission conference — a preliminary meeting held before an applicant submits a formal application to the town. Alfonso attended the meeting with his consultant, Eric Olsen of MTK Advising. Supervisor Jerry Halpin also sat in on the meeting.
The site is active farmland preserved by Suffolk County with the purchase of development rights in 1997, county documents show. It is currently owned by John Sipala, who grows nursery stock on a portion of the approximately 60-acre property, Suffolk County Farmland Committee staff wrote in a report for the committee last March. Sipala leases the northern portion of the property to Alfonso.
The property is located in the town’s RB-80 zoning use district.
Alfonso, a state-licensed cannabis cultivator, has been growing cannabis on the property for the past three seasons, he said in an interview at Riverhead Town Hall this morning. He’s been utilizing existing plastic covered greenhouses on site.
The expansion plan the farmland committee approved on March 20, 2025 called for construction of two Morton Building facility structures with concrete foundations and related utilities and site improvements, along with the retention of five existing plastic-covered greenhouses used in agricultural production, according to committee records. The committee’s approval, with conditions, was unanimous, 15-0, the minutes show.
The two proposed buildings, described by the applicant as prefabricated steel barns with steel siding and roofing, are 22,000 square feet and 9,000 square feet, respectively. Each would have an 18-foot eave height and a 22-foot peak height, according to the farmland committee staff report.
Alfonso told county committee members last year and town planning staff Tuesday that he intends to construct a third, larger building on the site.
Riverhead Senior Planner Matt Charters told Alfonso the project could be built in phases, but the site plan application must show everything he’s planning —the two buildings he intends to construct immediately and the third building to be built as phase two later on.
Alfonso told county staff last year the 9,000-square-foot building would be used for hang-drying outdoor crops, “minimal processing/packaging,” and soil recycling. In the staff report, the applicant described “minimal processing/packaging” as drying/curing and packing wholesale product into airtight 10-pound bags — not chemical processing or heavy-machinery processing.
According to the county staff report, the 22,000 square-foot building, which will be located north of the smaller building, will have: seven climate-controlled flower rooms —for the final phase of flowering crops, including crops besides cannabis, such as decorative flowers; three drying and curing rooms; an electrical room; an irrigation room where the pH-controlled nutritional feed is prepared; a mother room to house heirloom crops and cannabis strains, where cloning takes place; a vegetation room, where young clones are nurtured and grown; and a security foyer, designed as a barrier to pests and pathogens, as well as decontamination of staff before they enter other areas of the building.
The county approval requires the applicant to return to the farmland committee for possible re-review if the town requires changes or the applicant changes the plan.
The pre-submission conference with town planning staff is a preliminary step that precedes a formal site plan application. Once the application is filed, Charters said, town planners will prepare a staff report and discuss the application with the Planning Board, which will hold a public hearing before acting on the application.
Correction: This article has been amended to correct the name of Marisa Danowski in a photo caption.
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