Riverhead Town Board votes to cancel controversial EPCAL project

On Tuesday, in an emergency executive session, Riverhead’s Town Board voted unanimously to cancel a 2018 contract to sell more than 1,600 acres at Enterprise Park to Calverton Aviation Technology — though the developer in contract with the town apparently plans to sue.  

The last minute session followed a meeting Monday night where Riverhead’s Industrial Development Agency denied the developer’s application for financial assistance in the form of tax breaks — paving the way for Tuesday’s town board action.  

It was a significant and unexpected victory for opponents of the plan. 

For more than a year, a colorful and growing cadre of Riverhead residents living in neighborhoods surrounding EPCAL have been pressuring town officials to abandon the plan, which called for CAT to purchase 1,644 acres from the town for $40 million. 

For much of that time, members of the IDA have deliberated in silence while enduring barbed criticism in meeting after meeting from furious opponents of the plan — who fear that CAT will turn the park into a cargo jetport.  

The standoff ended in dramatic fashion Monday night when the IDA issued a scathing analysis of CAT’s application that addressed virtually every community complaint about the project — and more. 

According to Riverhead officials, the 2018 purchase agreement with CAT gives the Town Board the authority to declare the original contract null and void based on the IDA’s denial.  Both Riverhead Town Supervisor Yvette Aguiar and council member Tim Hubbard, who is running to replace her as supervisor in the Nov. 7 election, have said they intend to do just that. After Monday’s meeting, Ms. Aguiar — whose term ends Dec. 31 — said she would call the emergency executive session to address the issue as soon as possible, which turned out to be Tuesday afternoon.  

IDA officials said that the developer failed to provide the agency with enough information to properly evaluate the project — including failing to produce specifically requested documents — or adequately demonstrate its ability to finance it, adding that the overall development vision CAT presented was simply too “vague.” 

“The business plan submitted by the company was vague and not specific enough to provide a basis to determine the viability of a financially successful project,” IDA vice chairperson Lori Ann Pipczynski said, reading from a lengthy statement that took more than 10 minutes to deliver. “Despite our having held a public information meeting devoted to the topic, the proposed project remains largely undefined. 

“The company has provided only general, broad categories of possible uses. The company has advised the agency that for its specific uses, ‘We’ll follow what the market bears.’ As the [IDA’s] mission involves economic development, in order to approve a project for financial assistance, we must be able to analyze the costs and benefits. Doing so requires us to evaluate the employment effects, environmental impacts and a host of other economic factors.

“Unless the agency is advised as to what specifically is being proposed the agency is unable to further process, much less approve, the application,”  the IDA statement concluded.

In a statement released Tuesday afternoon, prior to to board’s decisive action, a CAT spokesperson suggested the developer plans to sue the town. 

“It is indefensible that the Riverhead [Industrial]  Development Agency (RIDA) would hold a hearing without prior direct notice to Calverton Aviation & Technology LLC (CAT) and then announced that CAT was not qualified to complete the EPCAL project,” the statement reads.

It goes on to say that “CAT is confident that the Town of Riverhead will reject RIDA’s determination and continue to honor its contractual obligations to CAT.” 

Additionally, the statement reads, “For over five years CAT [and] the Triple Five Group have worked in good faith with the Town of Riverhead, and have spent millions of dollars of its own funds to work to develop EPCAL, a property that has sat undeveloped for more than 25 years.

“Given CAT’s obvious qualifications to develop this project and its enormous investment of time, money, and energy to comply with all of the Town’s requirements, CAT will — in light of RIDA’s pretextual, unjustifiable misconduct — take all the steps that are necessary and appropriate to protect and preserve its right to acquire and develop the project.”

Opponents of CAT’s plan — who packed the old Town Board meeting room on Howell Avenue Monday evening — were thrilled.

“I think that this is good governance,” John McAuliff, head of opposition group EPCAL Watch, said in an interview after the meeting. “We had some doubts about it. And we were not easy with this process, because it seemed so closed to public input. 

“But … [the IDA] obviously heard it, in what they said. And we have a situation now where it really comes straight back to the political decision makers on the Town Board.”

The IDA analysis also cut to the heart of the community’s opposition to the plan, specifically faulting CAT for providing the agency with conflicting visions of its development plans. 

“The company’s expert advised the agency and the public that ‘we’ll be using both runways eventually for cargo and also for testing at the site,’ ” Ms. Pipczynski said. “However, after almost a year of contradictory statements, on August 7, 2023, Justin Ghermezian, the principal owner of the company, apologized for these statements and said, ‘What is not being designed, considered or proposed is a cargo jetport or a commercial aviation jetport.’ 

“Yet a few minutes later, the company’s counsel stated that the eastern runway has been and continues to be an active runway and would be available for such in the future,” she continued “And the western runway would also be available for its historic aviation uses and/or other contemplated supportive uses … The agency is unable to properly evaluate the project on an economic, environmental or societal level with the information provided.”

One runway is 10,000 feet long and the other is 7,000 feet. 

Fears of a cargo jetport being built at EPCAL were sparked during an IDA meeting last fall when a CAT engineer described what residents interpreted as an admission that the site would ultimately operate as an air cargo hub.

At that hearing, CAT engineer Chris Robinson told the IDA, “I think the [vision] here is the aeronautic aspect — bringing packages which get brought into a logistics building, transferred onto tractor-trailer trucks … currently, that end of the logistics business is not handled on Long Island. This would be an incredible opportunity to bring that here.”

At the conclusion of Monday’s IDA statement, the crowd — which had entered the meeting full of suspicion, with some openly mocking IDA board members — erupted in cheers. 

Ms. Aguiar, a vocal opponent of CAT’s plan, quickly glided over to a podium to express her support.

“I just want to say thank you,” she said to the IDA board. “You did your job well.”

Mr. McAuliff stressed that, for opponents of CAT’s project, the fight isn’t over. 

“I expect that [developers] the Ghermezians are going to come in with another version. This does not take them out of the game, until the [town] board declares they’re out of the game.”

Still, he said he was pleasantly surprised by how well the IDA analysis of CAT’s project aligned with the community’s concerns.

“I was surprised at how straightforward it was,” he said. “Frankly, I was afraid that they would … kick the can down the road. For the decision-making that was done here, this was absolutely, totally responsible and correct.”

The unpaid IDA board is made up of local professionals with experience in complicated financial and development projects and employs a forensic accountant who examines financial proposals for the agency. 

To review CAT’s application, the agency also hired an independent accounting firm whose conclusions were consistent with the IDA’s analysis, Ms. Pipczynski said.

At Tuesday’s Town Board emergency session, the board heard from residents who were pleased with the outcome but unhappy with the path that led to it.

Mr. McAuliff castigated the board for not stopping the project sooner.

“To believe [the developer], when people — amateurs — in the town are telling you, ‘open your eyes, open your ears, dig into the history of these people, and you’ll know that this is not somebody that we want to do business with.’ 

“It’s not that this was new information, a month ago, or a year ago, or three years ago,” he said. “This is information that we have been saying over and over and over again.

“I’m glad of the conclusion,” he continued. “But I think for the sake of the town, and the governance of the town, and how we go forward, that we cannot forget the process that got us here. I also think that we now have a really important opportunity to involve the community at every level, and evaluate how that land can best be used for the economic development and the social development and the environmental well-being of the town.”

Following the Town Board’s unanimous vote, a CAT spokesperson issued a second statement — again threatening litigation — which in part, read, “It is literally tragic that the Town of Riverhead has diverted the enormous economic future of Calverton and sent it to the courthouse for what will likely be years to come – and whose eventual outcome for the [t]own will be problematic.  The facts, the law, and the record will demonstrate that CAT Triple Five has the legal right to develop this property …”