2018 marked a lot of firsts for Riverhead Town Supervisor Laura Jens-Smith, beginning with the very first day of the new year, when she was sworn in as the town’s first female supervisor in a ceremony at Pulaski Street School. (more…)
Tag: Riverhead Town Board
In an effort to ease North Fork traffic concerns, a weight-limit restriction could be coming to Peconic Bay Boulevard and a seasonal bus loop may be created to transport pumpkin pickers between Mattituck and Riverhead.
The body of missing former Riverhead police officer and town councilman Timothy Buckley was found Thursday not far from where he disappeared in South Carolina, according to a report on myrtlebeachonline.com.
His death is being investigated as a homicide, according to the newspaper. READ
Note to all East End residents seeking treatment for cancer, glaucoma, HIV, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, epilepsy, cachexia, wasting syndrome, Crohn’s disease, post-traumatic stress disorder, neuropathy, fibromyalgia, arthritis, lupus and diabetes: Riverhead Town wants you to score your pot elsewhere.
A six-mile stretch of Main Road could be listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The corridor includes Aquebogue’s Old Steeple Church, built in 1862 and designed by a farmer with no architectural experience, as well as Aquebogue Cemetery, which dates back to 1755 and contains the graves of numerous Revolutionary War soldiers. (Credit: Andrew Lepre)
Four of the five Riverhead Town Board members have signed a letter asking the town’s Landmarks Preservation Commission and the state Office of Parks and Recreation to withdraw the town’s application for a proposed National Register Historic District along Main Road in Aquebogue, Jamesport and Laurel, according to Councilman George Gabrielsen. (more…)
COSTCO COURTESY DRAWING
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.
BARBARAELLEN KOCH FILE PHOTO | The FAA toured property off Route 25 in Calverton Thursday for a potential new air traffic control complex.
The Federal Aviation Administration toured a 50-acre section of the Enterprise Park at Calverton Thursday afternoon to consider whether it could become a site of a Next-Gen Integrated Air Traffic Control Complex, which would consolidate the function of two existing FAA regional facilities on Long Island and would employ more than 800 people.
Town officials were pretty much tight-lipped about the meeting, however.
“It’s obvious there was a meeting and it was a good meeting, and that’s about all I can say,” Supervisor Sean Walter said.
Councilwoman Jodi Giglio initiated the move on the Town Board to try to lure the FAA to EPCAL, a former Grumman Corporation F-14 testing facility. Then, in February, Ms. Giglio issued a press statement announcing that the FAA had agreed to a site visit at EPCAL, though Mr. Dunleavy said the FAA wants to keep things quiet as they tour sites.
“The FAA said they don’t want any publicity on this,” Councilman John Dunleavy said Thursday.
Reached Friday, Ms. Giglio said only, “It was a productive meeting. I really think they see the gem that EPCAL is.”
The proposed Next-Gen Integrated Air Traffic Control Complex would consolidate the functions of the FAA’s Air Route Traffic Control Center at Long Island MacArthur Airport in Islip Town and the Terminal Radar Approach Control facility in Westbury, according to federal officials.
The Next-Gen facility would track planes by incorporating state-of-the-art satellite air traffic equipment, replacing older, radar-based equipment now used at the Islip and Westbury facilities, officials have said.
The FAA issued a request for information to landowners saying they intended to locate the new facility on between 34 and 49 acres within 150 miles of New York City, and in New York State, and that they are planning to build a total of 250,000 square feet of buildings, towers and employee parking.
The issue became the subject of debate among Town Board members last month, as Mr. Walter said he felt the town should back Islip/McArthur Airport as the site of the new facility, because it would be bad for all of Long Island if that airport, which has struggled financially of late, were to close.
Ms. Giglio and a majority of Town Board members said they believed the town should try to lure the facility to EPCAL.
Councilman Tim Bishop (D-Southampton) also encouraged the move.
The facility at Islip now, and the one being proposed, is not an air traffic control tower for any specific airport, and would handle air traffic from the Northeast region.
Officials have said it does not need to be located at an active airport.
The 50 acres being offered is owned by Riverhead Town and located near the Stony Brook Business Incubator at EPCAL off Route 25.
I’ve never been a big fan of booing. Maybe that’s because it’s such an unnatural reaction.
Screaming, crying, laughing, that’s all real stuff. You do it both on your own and in a group. When have you ever seen someone sitting by himself, booing?
Booing is something you do from a distance, in a mob, and when you don’t really care too much. If you truly hated that slumping athlete, you wouldn’t pay a small fortune to see him play. And if someone was really troubling you, I can’t imagine you’d use just one prolonged syllable to let them know how you feel.
Booing is a primitive distraction that accomplishes nothing — the caveman grunt of modern day reactions.
That’s why on some small level I can see why the Riverhead Town Board banned booing at its meetings, even if I don’t necessarily agree with them.
If you want to object to something a government body is doing, get up before the board and say something — offer a counterpoint or a solution.
We’re in the midst of a full year of politics in Riverhead and the surrounding towns. We’ve already had a special election for the North Fork seat in the county Legislature. And now that Dan Losquadro was elected Brookhaven Highway Superintendent last week, a May vote for the 2nd District seat in the state Assembly is on the horizon.
It’s also been an early town election season in Riverhead, where two challengers have already emerged to oppose a town supervisor they see as vulnerable, and a well-known candidate announced his intention to run for a Council seat before we even Auld Lang Syned in the new year.
It’s safe to say 2013 is going to be a loud year full of eruptions and disruptions at Riverhead Town Hall. Which brings me to what I don’t like about the resolution passed last week: the timing of it all.
The bill will enable the Town Board to admonish anyone they see commit a “disruptive demonstration” in a year where disruptive demonstrations at town meetings will be as common as constructive ones.
This resolution was not passed because booing had gotten out of hand at Riverhead Town Board meetings, but rather because a group of politicians is afraid it soon will. Personally, I’m never in favor of bills that do more to protect elected officials than the people they represent.
What makes this bill even more silly is its vague language: A “disruptive demonstration” is a broad, objective term that could include everything from a quiet belch to a screeching fog horn.
It’s going to be confusing, too, when Councilman Jim Wooten’s supporters start “woooooing” at meetings, as a sign of affection.
The biggest question of all, though, is what the punishment will be for those found in violation of the new code. Do they have to leave the meeting? Or should they just pop their dunce caps on and retreat to the corner of the room?
It’s certainly an interesting resolution Riverhead has passed, but one that can be just as easily booed as it can be applauded.
BARBARAELLEN KOCH FILE PHOTO | Save Main Road had hoped to overturn the special permit issues by the Riverhead Town Board that would allow Jul-Bet Enterprises to build in Jamesport.
A lawsuit seeking to overturn two special permit approvals the Riverhead Town Board gave to Jul-Bet Enterprises last year for a commercial development in Jamesport was dismissed in state supreme court last week.
In addition, that application is now on for discussion at Thursday’s Riverhead Town Planning Board meeting, which starts at 3 p.m., and the Planning Board is scheduled to vote on a resolution Thursday to set a Feb. 7 public hearing on the Jul-Bet Enterprises proposal, which is called Village at Jamesport.
Save Main Road, an unincorporated Jamesport civic organization that claims to have 250 members, filed the lawsuit in August seeking to overturn the Town Board’s April 3 special permit approvals that allowed Jul-Bet Enterprises to have two bistros and two professional offices in its proposed Village at Jamesport development.
That project calls for 10 buildings totaling 42,000 square feet on about 10 acres on the north side of Route 25 in Jamesport, across from the Elbow Room restaurant.
The Save the Main Road lawsuit sough to overturn the decision on the grounds that the application doesn’t represent the property’s owners, and that the town’s review of the project is “segmented” in violation of state law because it doesn’t take into account the entire property, which is close to 50 acres and only the 10 acres by the road is zoned commercially.
The property owner was listed as Jul-Bet Enterprises when the application was first filed about eight years ago, but in 2007 ownership was transferred to Jamesport Development LLC, whose ownership comprised 50 percent of Jul-Bet Enterprises and 25 percent each of RBR Equities and SW Consulting.
Charles Cuddy, the attorney on the Village at Jamesport application, said that Jul-Bet Enterprises principal Julius Klein has the backing of the property owners to seek to develop the site.
“He’s a 50 percent owner and he’s an applicant and he’s certainly entitled to make that application,” Mr. Cuddy told the Planning Board last year. “The application was made with the consent of his other partners. There should be no question that he is an owner, is going to be an owner, and is going to get this project finished.”
Larry Simms, one of the leaders of Save Main Road, said Justice Hector LaSalle’s ruling dismissing the case was made on Jan. 4 and by Monday he had yet to see the decision.
“The way the system works is that the attorney receiving the favorable decision is responsible for serving the opposing counsel,” Mr. Simms said. “Today is Jan. 14, the decision was made on Jan. 4. We still have not seen the substance of the decision.”
The decision was listed on E-Track, an electronic system that notifies people of actions in court cases by email. However, neither E-track nor the state’s Unified Court System contained an actual decision from the judge as of Monday.
The News-Review left a message with the judge’s chambers requesting a copy of the decision.
Town officials could not immediately be reached for comment.