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Supervisor: Town to sell about 600 acres at EPCAL for about $45M

A bird's eye view of the Enterprise Park at Calverton site. (Credit: Andrew Lepre, file)

More than six years in the making, the Riverhead Town Board has now reached an agreement to sell about 600 acres at the Enterprise Park at Calverton, Supervisor Sean Walter announced at the Town Board work session Thursday morning.

The sale would be to a company called Suffolk County Industrial Development LLC, headed by Tod Buckvar.

Mr. Walter said the Town is offering $72,000 per acre, which amounts to about $45.6 million. While the acreage is listed at 633.8 acres, a new survey must be completed before the sale closes, Mr. Walter said.

As part of the deal, Mr. Walter said the company has agreed to making a nonrefundable $1 million downpayment and he’s hopeful the subdivision at EPCAL will be completed by early next year.

The company is proposing to build an industrial office park at the site, the supervisor said, and the closing of the sale will be “staged” over an 18-month period, he said.

The Town Board had been negotiating in private with two companies seeking to purchase all of the land the town offered for sale at EPCAL.

The sale will be subject to the prospective buyer undergoing a “qualified and eligible sponsor” hearing, which seeks to determine if the buyer has the financial ability to carry out whatever plan is being proposed. That is required whenever a town seeks to sale land within a state-designated “urban renewal” area such as EPCAL.

Mr. Walter said the due diligence period, including the qualified and eligible sponsor hearing, will coincide with the completion of the subdivision and the environmental studies.

Mr. Buckvar — a commercial real estate developer and broker — and Suffolk County Industrial LLC are also involved in a project to redevelop the old Entenmann’s bakery in Bay Shore as an industrial park, Mr. Walter said.

The town is nearing completion of a series of environmental and economic studies at EPCAL, as well as the completion of a 50-lot subdivision industrial subdivision there, which must be completed before the town can sell individual lots.

The town also needs permits from the state Department of Environmental Conservation to develop within the boundaries of the state’s Wild, Scenic and Recreational Rivers Act, and to be able to build within an endangered species habitat.

Additional information will be made available soon.

Photo caption: An aerial view of the EPCAL property in 2014. (Credit: Andrew Lepre, file)

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