New five-story, 45-unit apartment building on West Main Street, gains preliminary site plan approval

The five-story, 45-unit apartment building proposed for West Main Street was granted preliminary site plan approval last night by the Riverhead Planning Board, which last night also issued a determination that the development will have no significant environmental impact.

Board member Stan Carey cast the sole vote against the resolution approving Peconic Crossing’s preliminary site plan.

“I’m not opposed to the project,” Carey said. “With 26 conditions on here I don’t think this is ready for preliminary approval,” he said, referring to the numerous conditions imposed on the approval, many of which require changes to the drawings and plans that Carey considers significant.

One of those conditions is satisfying the chief of the Riverhead Fire Department regarding access by fire trucks through the ground-floor parking lot to the west side of the building. Conifer’s original plans did not provide that access, which drew the objection of Fire Chief Joseph Raynor. The latest plans provide access through removable bollards on the west side of the ground-level parking lot, but Confier vice-president Allen Handelman agreed to remove them from the plans if Raynor objects to them. The chief has not been consulted about the bollards, said Carey, who is a RFD volunteer firefighter and has been a liaison to the fire department on the application.

The resolution was approved by a 3-1 vote, with member Joseph Baier absent.

Last night’s approvals come a month after developer Conifer Realty was told by Riverhead planners that the town had never done the environmental review required by state law. At the Sept. 3 planning board meeting, planners told the developer it had to complete a long-form Environmental Assessment Form for the application, which was originally filed by a different developer in 2013, before the town’s review could continue.

The plan, which involves demolishing the existing Long Island Science Center building and constructing the apartment building on pilings above a ground-floor parking lot, was initially filed in 2013 by local architect Martin Sendlewski as “Blue River Estates” on behalf of developer Rafi Weiss. At that time, the planning board declared itself “lead agency” under the State Environmental Quality Review Act and determined the project to be a “type I” action, which is a kind of action that may or may not have significant environmental impacts. Under SEQRA, the lead agency is then required determine whether or not the project is likely to have a significant impact on the environment.

But the Riverhead Planning Board apparently never took the next step — despite holding a public hearing on the Blue River site plan application in 2014. It held another public hearing on a revised site plan submitted by Conifer in February, which was concluded in May.

Rochester-based developer Conifer has partnered with Community Development Corporation of Long Island on the project. The applicants have been approved for nearly $5.5 million in funding for the project, which also qualifies for low-income tax credits.

Rents will range from $952-$1,133 per month for one-bedroom apartments (maximum occupancy of two people) and $1,141-$1,528 for two-bedroom units (maximum occupancy: four people). Heat and hot water are included. Rents are tied to tenants’ incomes, with maximum rents based on affordability scales tied to median household incomes in Suffolk County.

The state grant, provided through special post-Sandy federal disaster relief assistance under the community development block grant program, requires the developer to give preference to residents displaced by Sandy. The developers have also told town officials they will grant preference to artists as well.

The building’s half-acre site is located along the Peconic River on West Main Street, between Griffing and Peconic avenues.

Planning board chairman Richard O’Dea expressed reservations about parking Peconic Crossing tenants’ cars. The building’s on-site, ground-level parking lot will have 34 stalls, which O’Dea says will not be enough to park all the cars that will be associated with the 45 dwelling units. He said downtown parking is already scarce.

Building and planning administrator Jefferson Murphree said that’s a condition that’s “inherent in a downtown environment.”

“One of the trademarks of a downtown is to limit parking,” Murphree said. “It’s a live-work and live-shop type of environment. It’s not like Route 58 or you’d have wide parking fields. You don’t want that in a downtown.”

Handelman pointed out that the 34 on-site parking spaces are “34 more parking spaces than required.” Foot traffic “increases the vitality of downtown Riverhead,” he said.

The proposed building is within the Riverhead parking district and property owners within the district are not required by town code to provide any on-site spaces. They pay special parking district taxes to support public parking areas.

“This complies with the code,” Murpree told the board. Any additional parking requirements require a code change, he said.