FRNCA to hear Family Community Life Center plans

Members of the Flanders, Riverside Northampton Community Association will be hearing plans tonight about the First Baptist Church’s Family Community Life Center, a multi-use project that’s proposed for Northville Turnpike in Riverhead.

The project has gained the support of Suffolk County executive Steve Bellone and several other community leaders, not to mention about 1,700 people who signed a petition recently presented to the town board. The center is proposed to hold an Olympic-size indoor swimming pool, a 25-seat theater and media center, 24-hour adult and child day care services, an indoor walking track, gymnasium, fitness center, classroom space and 132 affordable apartment units intended as “workforce housing” for the area.

Riverhead Town Board members held a public hearing recently on an overlay district that the town is considering, which would allow the uses proposed in the project. Written comment on the proposed overlay zone is open until Nov. 14. Should the town approve the overlay zone, First Baptist would then have to apply for a change of zone on the parcel.

In addition to the zone change, the project also will need more than 100 development rights credits to be able to built 132 units of housing, which would come from land purchased as open space.

Rev. Charles Coverdale, First Baptist’s pastor, has said the church land is already off the tax rolls, so the town or school district won’t lose tax revenue. However Ann Cotten-DeGrasse, school board president of the Riverhead Central School District, has said that increased density on the property could have a negative impact on the school district, which is already struggling in the face of a tax cap and other state mandates.

The portion of the school district on the south side of the Peconic River, meanwhile, is already expected to see their school tax bills increase next year – by 7.7 percent, to be exact – due to a change in the state equalization rate.

FRNCA is scheduled to meet at 7 p.m. at the Crohan Community Center on Flanders Road.