Preservation of a 9.6-acre property adjacent to town-owned marina and beach in South Jamesport was endorsed by the Riverhead Town Board Tuesday afternoon.
The board unanimously approved a resolution Tuesday supporting Suffolk County’s proposed preservation of the Peconic Farms parcel on Peconic Bay Boulevard. The resolution contained a qualifier held out by board members as essential to their assent: “as Open Space without improvement or development.”
The vote followed days of public debate and mounting pressure from residents over the future of the property at 1161 Peconic Bay Blvd., which Suffolk County is considering acquiring through its Drinking Water Protection Program.
As a condition of the acquisition, the county is asking the town to partner in the project by assuming management responsibility for the site, including “passive recreation uses” at the property, such as a walking trail and a gravel parking area. That condition triggered opposition from town officials, who said they feared such uses, if allowed, would lead to use of the site by out-of-town residents to gain beach access for fishing, swimming and other activities, with negative impacts on the character of the surrounding residential community.
As he introduced the resolution, which had not been added to the published meeting agenda, Councilman Ken Rothwell acknowledged the board had received “an overabundance of emails and phone calls” about the proposal.
“We very much want to protect [the property] from development,” Rothwell said.
The site consists of wooded acreage adjoining the town marina property and an open field that had once been active farmland. A significant portion of the property is in the flood plain due to low elevations. The wooded area is largely undevelopable due to wetlands and the southern portion of the field floods. The property owner obtained Riverhead Planning Board approval last year of a four-lot residential subdivision. The subdivision approval created four building lots in the western portion of the site, with homes to be built on the north end of the lots, along Peconic Bay Boulevard.
During Thursday’s work session, in a meeting with Suffolk County Legis. Greg Doroski, board members expressed support for purchasing the property’s development rights so it could be used for agriculture.
Doroski on Thursday urged the town to continue discussions with the county, warning that the county’s alternatives may be limited. He explained that the county’s ranking system for open space purchases gave a lot of weight to intermunicipal partnerships and without the town’s agreement to partner with the county, the property in question would not rank high enough to justify the expenditure of Drinking Water Protection Fund monies by the county.
“My fear is that really we’re at the point now where the choice is either to preserve it as open space, or let it be developed,” Doroski told the board.
Source: RiverheadLOCAL
