State-mandated environmental review of the proposed development of Riverhead Town-owned land at the Calverton Enterprise Park has officially gotten under way.
The Riverhead Town Board voted unanimously today during a special board meeting to “accept” the Draft Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement for the proposed redevelopment of the EPCAL site, a 558-page study with 2,044 pages of appendices delivered to Town Hall last Friday.
The vote to accept the document and deem it complete constitutes authorization for its circulation to involved agencies and its release for public access.
Planning administrator Jeff Murphree read the document to make sure it fulfilled State Environmental Quality Review Act requirements and addressed the issues outlined for analysis in the scoping statement adopted by the town in May 2013. In a memo authored today, Murphree recommended to the board that it accept the document for the purpose of commencing public review.
The town board voted to set a public hearing on the DSGEIS for Wednesday, Sept. 3 at 7:05 p.m. (Note the first meeting in September is on a Wednesday, because of the Labor Day holiday. The board voted today to change the meeting time from 2 p.m. to 7 p.m.)
The document is available for public review at the Riverhead Town Clerk’s Office at Riverhead Town Hall. A copy will also be available at Riverhead Free Library. The town will post a copy to its website, Murphree said.
RiverheadLOCAL has posted the full document, along will all appendices here. The DSGEIS is also embedded below.
The board also voted today to call a simultaneous public hearing (Sept. 3 at 7:05 p.m. on a draft updated urban renewal plan for the 2,324 acres still owned by the town at EPCAL. The board also voted to refer the draft updated urban renewal plan to the Riverhead Planning Board for review, a separate public hearing and its certification that the plan complies with the provisions of the state urban renewal law. The planning board has 10 weeks from today to give the town board its report on the updated urban renewal plan.
Councilwoman Jodi Giglio voted against those resolutions because she said she had not gotten a copy of the draft updated urban renewal plan with sufficient advance time to read through it.
Supervisor Sean Walter was clearly elated by the arrival of the documents, prepared by VHB Engineering, and the commencement of the public portion of the SEQRA review process for the EPCAL subdivision and development plan. He voted yes on all resolutions with an enthusiastic, “Absolutely!” — except once, when he prefaced his yes vote with a “Woo hoo!”
Walter has been a staunch advocate of subdividing the town-owned land at the former Grumman site ever since he and members of the board visited the 4,400-acre Devens commercial-industrial planned community inside the 9,300-acre Fort Devens Military Reservation in Massachusetts in January 2011. The Devens reuse plan was prepared by VHB Engineering, the firm Riverhead subsequently hired to handle updating its plan for EPCAL and handling the subdivision.
The existing reuse plan for the site was written by Hamilton, Rabinovitz & Alschuler, a Manhattan real estate and economic development consulting firm in the mid-1990s, even before Northrup Grumman left Calverton in February 1996, taking 3,000 jobs and $1 million a year in property tax pilot payments with it.
The HR&A plan called for retaining the existing industrial buildings in a 365-acre area, with development potential for an additional 2 million square feet; keeping the runways intact to attract aviation-related businesses; seeking developers to build a hotel-conference center and theme park on 415 acres, an 18-hole golf course on 160 acres, and a 910-acre sports park, family entertainment center and some retail development. Another 940 acres of the site, including more than 400 acres within the Pine Barrens core, would be left undeveloped. A sewage treatment plant and “improved highway access” would be needed to support this development, according to the plan.
The HR&A reuse plan was finalized in 1996. The Navy then completed a generic environmental impact statement for the site’s redevelopment as outlined in the plan.
The original urban renwal plan for the site was completed in 1998. The current update does not include parcels already sold by the town: the 490-acre “industrial core,” the 42 acres sold to Island Water Park, and the 50 acres conveyed to the state for the Stony Brook incubator.
In June 2013, the State Legislature passed a law creating a special revitalization district for EPCAL, also something Walter pushed for since visiting Devens. It creates an expedited review process for all projects that conform to the overall development plan. the bill was signed into law by the governor last October.
The law required the town to prepare and adopt an updated urban renwal plan for the 2,324 acres the town still owns in order for future development applications to be eligible for expedited review pursuant to the law, according to deputy town attorney Ann Marie Prudenti.
If a proposed development is consistent with the development plan and updated urban renewal plan adopted by the town, the law mandates approval of the development application within 90 days. Development applications will be deemed approved in 90 days if no action is taken.
DSGEIS – Proposed Redevelopment of EPCAL Property by rlocal
The survival of local journalism depends on your support.
We are a small family-owned operation. You rely on us to stay informed, and we depend on you to make our work possible. Just a few dollars can help us continue to bring this important service to our community.
Support RiverheadLOCAL today.
