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Recap: Board supports water park, Woolworth plans

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Riverhead Town Board members plan to approve the site plan for Island Water Park’s proposed water skiing park in Calverton at their next regular meeting on March 5.

The board discussed the plan at its public work session Thursday morning in Town Hall.

Island Water Park bought 50 acres from the town in 2003 at the Enterprise Park at Calverton, a former Grumman fighter pilot test site.

The company originally planned to build two artificial, lined lakes for water skiing with motor boats, but it ran into issues with the state Department of Environmental Conservation after hitting groundwater and now plans to run overhead cables that will tow water skiers, instead of boats.

The skiing would take place directly on the groundwater table.

The proposal, which goes back more than 10 years, has approval from the DEC, the Suffolk County Planning Commission and the state Pine Barrens Commission and only needs town site plan approval.

But, since the plan the Pine Barrens Commission approved doesn’t conform to the town’s parking regulations, Island Water Park will need to go back to the Pine Barrens Commission for a re-approval that conforms with the site plan approval.

The town approval will be conditioned on Island Water Park getting Pine Barrens approval, officials say.

Town Board members also voiced support at Thursday’s work session for a gym in about 20,000 square feet of space in the former Woolworth building in downtown Riverhead. That proposal needs a special permit, and officials say they plan to hold a March 19 hearing on it.

The rest of the Woolworth building will have about 20 apartments on the second floor and about 4,000 square feet of stores on the ground floor, fronting Main Street, according to architect Marty Sendlewski, who was representing the building’s owner, Michael Butler.

Mr. Butler’s company, Woolworth Revitalization LLC, purchased the building from Apollo Real Estate Advisors last week for $2.2 million.

To read more about what happened at the work session, click here.

 

February 21, 2013 – Agenda by rnews_review