84 Lumber will reopen on West Main Street, gets green light from ZBA

The shuttered 84 Lumber will reopen on West Main Street.

The Riverhead Zoning Board of Appeals last night granted the company’s appeal allowing it to reopen a lumber yard and retail center at the site, which has been closed since 2012.

The N.Y. State Department of Environmental Conservation granted the company permission to reopen a lumber yard about eight months ago, according to its attorney, Charles Cuddy of Riverhead. The lumber yard lies within the highly regulated Wild, Scenic and Recreational Rivers Act corridor, which means new uses are subject to very strict limits on uses and development density.

84 Lumber opened at the Riverhead site in the early 1980s, Cuddy told the board last night. Its decision to close a few years ago was due to the flagging economy, he said.

The site was the scene of a fire this week that has been deemed “suspicious” by investigators. Its cause has not yet been determined.

In other action of note at last night’s meeting, the five-member board granted the appeal of Luminati Aerospace for permission to construct a 45,000-square-foot addition to an existing metal and concrete industrial building having a front yard distance from an open space parcel of 8.5 feet instead of the required 75 feet and providing for floor area ratio of .0934 instead of the maximum allowed of .09.

The building cannot be scaled back due to the wing span width of the aircraft that will be built inside, the applicant’s attorney, Kimberly Judd, told the board. The planes will have a span width of 180 to 200 feet.

“We all looked at this pretty throughly and we think it’s exciting,” ZBA member Leroy Barnes said.

The vote to grant the appeal was unanimous.

Hotel Indigo was granted its appeal in connection with proposed retail shops adjacent to its West Main Street location. “Indigo Village,” will consist of three buildings with a total of six retail stores smaller than 10,000 square feet each.