Riverhead fire chief: Proposed apartment building plan lacks adequate access for firefighting apparatus

Plans to cut off access from Peconic Avenue to the driveway that runs behind a strip of commercial buildings on West Main Street has Riverhead Fire Chief Joseph Raynor seeing red.

Peconic Crossing, a five-story apartment building proposed at 11 West Main Street, the current site of the Long Island Science Center, would occupy the site from West Main Street to the Peconic River bulkhead, cutting off all vehicular access to the south side of the building.

“Unless somebody plans to give me a fire boat so I can fight a fire from the water, I have a big problem with that,” Raynor said in an interview last week.

Raynor said the fire department needs to be able to access the south side of the building with a ladder truck. He has made his opinion known to Riverhead Fire Marshal Craig Zitek, but Raynor’s issue with the proposed site plan didn’t make it into the fire marshal’s official comments on the application, submitted to the Riverhead Planning Department in March.

“The building is going to be sprinklered, so the code requires access on two sides and this will have access on two sides,” Zitek said in an interview. Fire trucks can access the building from the east and west sides, he said.

“As an ex-fire chief, I understand where he’s coming from,” the fire marshal said of the chief’s concerns. “But the code says what it says.”

“I understand the building is sprinklered, but when you have a fire on the third floor and people trapped on the fifth floor and I can’t reach them with a ladder, then what,” Raynor countered. The building won’t have fire escapes, he noted.

Fire trucks won’t be able to navigate the 90-degree turn in the narrow driveway west of the Maryhaven building to approach the new apartment building from the west, Raynor said.

“It’s too narrow. I certainly can’t get a ladder truck through there. I’m not even sure about an engine or pumper,” Raynor said.

That concern was the only one Raynor expressed to the fire marshal that found its way into the comments Zitek submitted to the planning department.

“There is concern that fire apparatus may not be able to make the turn behind Maryhaven, on the western side of the proposed site,” Zitek wrote in his memorandum to town planners.

Raynor said he met with the fire marshal and told him what his concerns were. “What I tell the fire marshals should be conveyed to the planning board,” a clearly frustrated Raynor told RiverheadLOCAL.

Raynor said he will be writing his own letter to the planning board on behalf of the fire department.

“He’s free to do that,” Zitek said. “That’s why the fire department gets its own set of plans. I understand his concerns, but I have to go by the code.”

The driveway in question comes off West Main Street along the Maryhaven building at 127 W. Main. It runs north to the river then bends at a 90-degree turn and runs east along the river, behind a strip of commercial buildings and the community garden. It ends there but vehicles using the driveway often traverse the parking lots behind the L.I. Science Center and Chase Bank to exit onto Peconic Avenue. Conversely, vehicles from Peconic Avenue often traverse the parking lots to access the driveway. Some motorists use the driveway as a cut-through between West Main Street to Peconic Avenue, avoiding two traffic signals along the way.

The driveway is actually privately owned, Riverhead Highway Superintendent George Woodson said. It’s owned by the owners of the properties fronting on West Main Street. The Town of Riverhead owns the site of the community garden, playground and comfort station. The rest are privately owned.

It’s not clear whether there is any recorded easement over those parcels, but there is no recorded easement giving anyone the right to pass over either of the parking lots on east of the driveway, according to the attorney for Peconic Crossing developer Kathleen Deegan Dickson.

Dickson told the planning board last month there is no recorded easement and “no evidence of an easement by proscription” allowing ingress and egress to Peconic Avenue through the parking lots.

Peconic Crossing traffic engineer Walter Dunn, of Dunn Engineering, which completed a traffic impact study for the project and conducted a traffic count on use of the narrow drive, told the board the path is used as a cut-through by vehicles looking to avoid traffic — and traffic lights — on Main Street.

“When people are taking a short-cut, they’re usually in a hurry and they speed,” Dunn said. Allowing vehicles to use that driveway as a shortcut is dangerous for pedestrians in the area, which besides the community garden and playground also has an entrance to Grangebel Park.