President Donald Trump arrived in Westhampton Friday afternoon en route to a fundraising luncheon in Southampton. READ
Tag: Westhampton
PAUL SQUIRE PHOTO | Allied Building Supply is looking to move to land in an industrial subdivision owned by 1998 Peconic LLC, just south of the Cinco de Mayo restaurant on Route 25.
Allied Building Products, whose representatives last month told the Riverhead Industrial Development Agency that the New Jersey company was torn between Calverton and Westhampton as the site for its first East End location, appears to have chosen Calverton.
Paul Elliott, part owner of 1998 Peconic LLC, said in an interview this week that Allied has signed a lease with that company. The lease is conditioned on the company’s receiving IDA tax incentives.
The incentives for which Allied and 1998 Peconic would qualify include sales tax abatements on the cost of building supplies, mortgage tax abatements and a property tax abatement on the value of improvements to the property that starts at 50 percent and decreases five percent per year over 10 years. The value of the land would not be subject to the abatement.
IDA members told Allied representatives July 8 that the board could not grant any abatement without a signed lease for the Calverton property. The next IDA meeting is Monday, Aug. 5, at 5 p.m.
Mr. Elliot, of Soundview Realty Group, owns 1998 Peconic LLC with Jim Miller of Miller Environmental Group Inc. 1998 Peconic has proposed building a 16,700-square-foot industrial facility on property on the east side of Edwards Avenue, north of Miller Environmental and south of Cinco de Mayo restaurant.
The Riverhead Planning Board is also scheduled to vote on a resolution Thursday night to approve the proposed commercial building, showroom and sales office that will be constructed for Allied Building Products, according to the Planning Board agenda. The building would be on a new road called Miller Way.
David Doran, Allied’s regional manager for New York, told the IDA on July 8 the company was considering either the Edwards Avenue site or a site in Westhampton near Gabreski Airport.
“Right now, we just want to see what our options are,” he said at the time.
The company will ultimately need 30,000 square feet but has an option to expand at the Edwards Avenue site, he said.
Allied Building Products is a family-owned building supply company that was started in Jersey City in 1950 and now has more than 180 locations across the country and over 3,100 employees, according to its website.
Allied would have six or seven employees at the Calverton site in the first year and “ramp it up quickly after that,” said Mr. Doran said. The company pays a “living wage” of more than $20 per hour, he told the IDA board last month.
He had also told the IDA that tax abatements were being offered at the Westhampton site as well, although it was unclear who was offering them. The Suffolk County IDA said it was not working with Allied Building Products, and Southampton Town doesn’t have an IDA.
Mr. Doran could not be reached for comment this week.
BARBARAELLEN KOCH FILE PHOTO | The inside of the trailer for homeless sex offenders place outside the Suffolk County Jail in Riverside.
The Suffolk County Legislature unanimously approved a law Tuesday evening that will redistribute the 38 homeless sex offenders currently housed in construction trailers in Riverside and Westhampton to shelters across the entire county.
The new plan will spread the sex offenders out, one per shelter, at county-run facilities, where they will be monitored more closely by county police.
Suffolk County Police Chief James Burke and Parents for Megan’s Law director Laura Ahearn, who crafted the plan with County Executive Steve Bellone, first pitched it to the Legislature’s public safety Committee in Hauppauge last Thursday morning.
Ms. Ahearn was back before the entire Legislature Tuesday, urging members to approve the plan.
“For seven years we have talked about this,” she said. “This community protection plan is the solution. It’s not perfect and you can poke holes in it, but it’s the best in the nation.”
Homeless sex offenders had been housed at the same two trailers since 2007, even though the original plan was for them to rotate throughout the county. The Riverside trailer was located next to the Suffolk County Jail.
Under the new plan, sex offenders will no longer reside at the trailers and officials promised they will not be shipped to shelters that serve families.
Chief Burke also said last week that the department’s intelligence database will be updated to include information on the activities of the more than 1,000 sex offenders throughout the county, which can be cross-referenced and easily searched by officers in the field.
Officers will check in with the homeless sex offenders each night to ensure that they are staying where they are assigned, he said.
“They’re gonna know that we know where they are,” he said at the committee meeting.
Chief Burke said the department expects costs of the new program to be significantly less than the $4 million the county is currently spending to house the sex offenders on the East End, since the department will be utilizing police personnel who are already in the field.
Ms. Ahearn also unveiled her group’s new eight-point plan, which includes hiring two teams of retired police officers to verify addresses of [non-homeless] sex offenders and verify the work addresses of Level 3 sex offenders. Offenders at lower levels are not required to report their work addresses to police.
She said 60 percent of Level 3 offenders don’t currently report their work addresses, even though they are required to by law.
Enforceability in the five East End towns, which all have their own police departments, would depend on local police chiefs signing on to the county’s plan, said Chief Burke. He said the county’s resources and intelligence will be made available to any other police department that signs on to the plan.
Prior to Tuesday’s vote, Flanders Riverside Northampton Civic Association president Brad Bender said the time had come to rid the East End of the burden of housing all the county’s sex offenders.
“You have an opportunity to take responsibility,” he said, addressing the entire Legislature. “It is easy to do nothing, but these are your residents. Like a leper colony, you’ve chosen to ship them to us.”
Southampton Town Supervisor Anna Throne-Holst said her only major concern with the plan, which she supported, is a loophole that could allow the county to revert back to the trailer plan.
“They should be decommissioned to make sure there is never a way that we will fall back on this again,” she said.
Legislator John Kennedy (R-Smithtown), who said legislators only received the plan at 12:30 p.m.Tuesday, was among a small group of legislators to voice concern with how quickly the bill was brought to a vote. But once role was called, the faction all voted yes.
“I don’t like the way this was handled, but I am going to support this so it passes unanimously,” he said.