Riverhead Logistics Center

A crowd of 92 people attended the Greater Calverton Civic Association meeting Friday night to learn about "Warehouse Breeds" at Riley Avenue Elementary School, where community members presented information about how traditional warehouses have evolved into distribution and fulfillment centers to accommodate online retailing.

The public is invited to an informational meeting about warehouses and logistics centers tonight at 6:30 p.m. at Riley Avenue Elementary School in Calverton, hosted by the Greater Calverton Civic Association.

Guest column: Make no mistake. This is no ordinary warehouse. This is a mega-warehouse, the kind that stretches for acres and dwarfs everything in its surroundings. Some may see it as a sign of progress and economic growth. I see it as a harbinger of doom for local residents.

Riverhead is assessing potential impacts of the proposed Riverhead Logistics Center, a 15-acre 'high-cube' warehouse, as if it’s a traditional storage facility, as opposed to a potential e-commerce fulfillment center — a dreadful mistake that could have irreversible consequences.

The idea is to have an interactive forum where residents can ask questions about the proposed new uses, which Riverhead Planning Board Vie Chairperson Ed Densieski points out were not studied in the town’s existing comprehensive plan.

Riverhead planners are using traffic data for a traditional warehouse to analyze NorthPoint's projected traffic impacts on local roads. Residents object, arguing the standard underestimates traffic for fulfillment centers, but the town's traffic consultants defend their analysis.

“The industrial area in Calverton seems to be a hot spot for people wanting to come and build warehouses. And it's almost like the floodgates opened up and we got inundated…" Town staff backed him up, but his fellow Town Board members were not so sure.

The proliferation of massive warehousing and logistics buildings proposed in Calverton alone can forever change our town's landscape. With development, there are no do-overs.

The Riverhead Planning Board last week voted to adopt the final scoping statement for the 641,000-square-foot Riverhead Logistics Center on Middle Road in Calverton.

Developer North Point will be required to analyze potential cumulative impacts of its proposed massive logistics center on local roads, air quality, water supply and wastewater management, under a final DEIS scoping statement on the Planning Board’s agenda Thursday.