Riverhead Town Board expected to grant ‘Costco’ permits
The Riverhead Town Board is expected to grant a land-clearing permit today to the developers of a Route 58 shopping center that will feature a Costco wholesale store.
The 271,000-square-foot shopping center, called The Shops at Riverhead, would be the third-large shopping center to have begun construction in the past few months on the west end of Route 58. The applicant has said the project will be a “balanced cut and fill,” meaning that it will neither import nor export soil or sand for the project.
The Shops at Riverhead will be built on a 40-acre property that once housed Hazeltine, a defense manufacturer, and is owned by Heritage-Riverhead Retail Developers, which is a Connecticut company.
The developers haven’t identified any other tenants beside Costco, but they did convince the Town Board to change the zoning at the site to allow gas pumps at the Costco store back in early 2010.
The developers of this project agreed in 2012 to move the stores further away from homes in the nearby Foxwood Village development.
Across the street from it, another development called Saber Riverhead has already begun ground clearing for a 122,000-square-foot shopping center just east of Riverhead Raceway. It is slated to include Dick’s Sporting Goods, Christmas Tree Shops store, Buffalo Wild Wings and
a Starbucks store, according to the applicant, Martin Berger.
That project received site plan approval from the town Planning Board in November and permission for an importation/grading permit from the Town Board on Feb. 5. That permit allows for the importation of 200 cubic yards of soils in connection with the project.
The Town Board on March 5 granted an excavation permit to Headriver LLC — which is building a 170,000-square-foot Walmart just west of Applebee’s — that authorizes the importation of 4,615 cubic yard of soil and the exportation of 4,075 cubic yards of soil.
The Riverhead Town Board meeting starts at 2 p.m. Check back at riverheadnewsreview.com for live coverage of the meeting.
