Website launched attacking Riverhead’s EPCAL plans

A local civic group leader has produced a website that takes aim at Riverhead Town’s efforts to sell the Calverton Enterprise Park and the resulting plans to sell the site to Luminati Aerospace.

Larry Simms, a South Jamesport homeowner and director of Save Main Road, created a website he calls EPCALfacts.org, which grew out of his concerns about the marketing and sales process of the Calverton site.

He hopes to inspire residents and taxpayers to take a hard look at what he deems “EPCAL fails” and urges them to spread the word to others and support Councilman Tim Hubbard, who Simms says is “working to fix it.”

The town has signed a letter of intent with Luminati Aerospace LLC, a company founded in 2015 by aeronautical engineer and inventor Daniel Preston, who says he has plans to bring the defense aerospace industry back to Long Island. Luminati has offered Riverhead $40 million for most of its remaining acreage inside the fence at the former Grumman site about 1,300 acres of vacant land the town has been working to subdivide since 2011. Town officials say only about 600 acres of the land is developable due to environmental constraints per state regulators at the N.Y. Department of Environmental Conservation. Another company had offered $45 million for those 600 acres last year, subject to the subdivision approval, but that deal evaporated, according to Riverhead Town Supervisor Sean Walter.

Concerns about Luminati, concerns about the terms of sale and concerns about the recently enacted zoning code provisions affecting the site that would allow the construction of up to 300 attached rental dwellings under certain circumstances have sparked an outcry among local civic organizations and led to the creation of a new coalition of civic groups called the Coalition Against EPCAL Housing. Save Main Road is a member of that coalition.

Though Save Main Road announced the launch of the website this weekend, the group said the site is the work product of Save Main Road director Simms, who is “solely responsible for the content.”

Simms said he’s been hearing for “nearly 20 years … how EPCAL is going to be great for the community and great for my taxes” without seeing any result.

“I just can’t sit idly and watch this opportunity — and our future – be further compromised and mismanaged,” Simms wrote on the website. “If everyone who feels the same tells Tim Hubbard, the councilman who’s proven most willing to do things differently, we can turn the tide.”

Hubbard bucked the town supervisor last month — and a presumed majority of the board — by demanding that the town hire a new law firm to thoroughly vett the prospective purchaser.

The first-term councilman told RiverheadLOCAL he was uncomfortable with not personally having seen any documentation of Luminati’s financial wherewithal or of its claims about contracts with defense contractors and others. “Everything has gone through Sean [Walter] up to this point,” Hubbard said in an interview last month. “I’m not going to vote on something if I haven’t seen everything myself and if I’m not satisfied that the buyer has been properly vetted.”

That declaration of independence encouraged Simms and he’s asking residents to write to Hubbard and ask him to take certain actions, specifically: terminate the town’s broker contract with Cushman and Wakefield; shop for a new broker; block all housing development at the site; limit the sale to the 600 acres deemed developable; revise the runway lease; and hire a new lawyer.

Simms has sharp criticism for the contract the town entered with the real estate brokerage Cushman and Wakefield as well as for the deals the firm brought to the table.

He also blasts the town for signing a contract that allows the firm to get its full commission even for the sale of property to an existing landowner in the EPCAL park, such as Luminati, which bought the Skydive Long Island site in 2015.

He is also adamant about hiring a new lawyer for the deal, arguing that the town’s present lawyer is a “generalist” who has never handled a deal of this nature.

David Pannetta and David Madigan of Cushman and Wakefield did not return calls and emails seeking comment. Attorney Frank Isler also could not be reached for comment.

Hubbard yesterday said will not support a contract of sale that doesn’t prevent housing at EPCAL and doesn’t exclude the “undevelopable” land. If the sale does include the land the DEC has told the town cannot be developed, the deed and covenants should ensure it won’t be developed — or, if it is, the town will be paid for it.

“Any contract lacking those items is going to lack my support and vote,” Hubbard said.

“Nobody wants this property sold more than me. I don’t want people to think I’m trying to put a nail in the coffin of this deal,” Hubbard said. “I want to make sure it’s appropriate and the best deal it can be for Riverhead.”

The supervisor had a different view of the Simms effort.

“Just like I don’t get my political advice from the celebrities in Hollywood, I don’t take my advice about lawyers and real estate brokers from Larry Simms because that would be an equivalent mistake,” Walter said.

“It’s an election year,” he said, “and what I have found in the four previous elections I’ve run is my opposition will stop at nothing to tear the town down in an effort to build themselves up.” Walter, who is running for re-election, said Simms is “part and parcel of the stop-housing coalition” which his opponent, Laura Jens-Smith supports.

“Again, I ask the residents of Riverhead not to be afraid of the success of the town,” he said.