A proposed zoning amendment introduced by Riverhead Council Member Bob Kern would allow retail stores and trade shops in a narrow stretch of the town’s Commercial/Residential Campus zoning district along Main Road in Riverhead, despite concerns raised by town planners that the change is inconsistent with the town’s comprehensive plan and could raise spot-zoning concerns.
The amendment, discussed at the May 7 Town Board work session, would add “retail stores or shops and trade shops on properties with frontage along either side of New York State Route 25 (Main Road) between Doctors Path and County Route 105 and their logical extensions” as permitted uses in the CRC zoning district.
Kern said in an interview Tuesday that the proposed code change is not intended to benefit any particular property owner or project.
“It’s not specifically for any site,” Kern said.
The stretch of Main Road where the change would apply has 14 separate tax lots fronting the state road. Only three of them are undeveloped. Of the three undeveloped parcels, one is a 225-acre parcel in agricultural use that fronts Main Road in two places and stretches north. Seven other parcels are developed with commercial uses and four are in single-family residential use, according to the town’s tax code classifications for uses on the parcels.
Kern said he has been looking throughout town for land that has remained unused or underused for long periods of time and considering whether zoning changes could help increase Riverhead’s tax base.
“I’ve been looking at land where nothing has happened for a very long time,” Kern said. “I’m scouring everything I can in terms of our tax base. What are we using and not using? What is buildable? What is not buildable?”
Kern pointed to other areas of town, including town-owned land on Middle Country Road east of the Stony Brook University business incubator at EPCAL, as examples of properties he believes should be examined for potential economic use.
But the proposed amendment before the board applies only to a specific stretch of Route 25 between Doctors Path and County Route 105.
Senior planners Greg Bergman and Matt Charters both questioned the proposal during the May 7 work session. Charters said the CRC district is intended as a transitional office and residential zone, not a retail or contractor-use district.
The CRC district currently permits offices, banks, restaurants, funeral homes, single-family residences, two-family residences with preservation credits, townhouses, garden apartments, schools, museums, places of worship, parks and indoor recreation facilities, among other uses.
Charters said the town’s 2024 comprehensive plan update recommended changes to the CRC district focused on housing, including allowing additional residential types and greater residential density with transfer of development rights. It did not recommend adding retail stores or trade shops to the district.
Bergman made the same point.
“The comp plan really spoke to more increasing residential density, not necessarily adding different commercial uses within the zone district,” Bergman said.
Kern pushed back against relying too heavily on the comprehensive plan.
“The comp plan is not God,” Kern said.
Kern, who was a member of the comp plan steering committee, argued that the town should take a practical look at whether existing permitted uses are realistic for properties on heavily traveled roads.
“Who wants to live on Main Road?” Kern said during the work session.
Bergman and Charters also raised concerns about the narrow geographic scope of the amendment.
Charters warned against creating “such a narrow window” where a use is permitted in one stretch of one zoning district but not in other CRC-zoned areas.
He also read from state guidance on spot zoning, saying the question is whether a rezoning is done to benefit individual property owners rather than to advance a comprehensive plan for the general welfare.
Bergman noted that one property in the affected area had recently been the subject of a Zoning Board of Appeals application for a use variance to allow a contractor storage building. The applicant withdrew the application before the ZBA issued a decision, after failing to demonstrate entitlement to the variance, Bergman said.
The proposed zoning amendment would make similar uses permitted in the district.
“This code amendment would effectively make that a permitted use within that zoning district,” Bergman said.
He urged Town Board members to review the ZBA record before moving forward.
“When a property owner has a standard to meet when making an application, I don’t think it’s necessarily then the responsibility of the Town Board to go and change the code in order to allow that use to them,” Bergman said.
Kern said Tuesday the proposed amendment was not drafted for that property or any other specific parcel.
The proposed amendment did not originate with the planning department or the town’s code revision committee.
“This code was not generated by the office,” Bergman said during the work session.
The amendment also contains a phrase — “and their logical extensions” — that is not defined in Riverhead Town Code. Kern said Tuesday he did not know where the language came from or what it meant.
Similar language appears in one other section of the Riverhead zoning code. Section 301-64(A)(3), added in 2004 to the Rural Corridor Business zoning district after the town’s 2003 comprehensive plan update, permits “retail stores or shops on properties with frontage along either side of New York State Route 25 between South Jamesport and Washington Avenues and their logical extensions.”
Jamesport resident Barbara Blass, who chaired the Riverhead Planning Board when the 2003 comprehensive plan was prepared and later served on the Town Board when zoning amendments implementing the plan were adopted, said Tuesday she did not recall any discussion of what the phrase “logical extensions” was intended to mean.
It is not clear whether the similar provision in the Rural Corridor zoning district has ever been applied to a property located on a “logical extension” of South Jamesport or Washington avenues.
Supervisor Jerry Halpin said he was not prepared to move the amendment forward without further review.
“I haven’t had a lot of time to look at this,” Halpin said. “I would want it to go back through our code revision [committee].”
The other three board members were noncommittal Thursday, limiting their comments to procedural or clarifying questions.
Editor’s note: This article has been amended to correct the location of town-owned land on Middle Country Road Council Member Bob Kern said he is interested in seeing developed. After publication, Kern said he misspoke during the May 12 interview; he meant to say east of the incubator site, not west.
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