Officials remain at odds over Riverside development plan

Riverhead and Southampton officials remain at odds over a proposed development plan for Riverside that impacts both towns. In an interview this week, Southampton Town Board member Tommy John Schiavoni defended plans to build a mixed-use high-density development in the Southampton hamlet, which sits on the edge of downtown Riverhead and is served by Riverhead’s schools, library and fire department.

Mr. Schiavoni addressed some complaints leveled by  Riverhead officials, including that the project will flood the overburdened Riverhead Central School District with new students and preempt Riverhead’s own downtown revitalization plans.

Central to Riverhead’s complaints is the fact that the new sewer district planned for Riverside will not serve the county center and jail, which are  in Southampton Town but since the 1960s have  been serviced for a fee by Riverhead.

Riverhead’s own sewer system, which can process up to 1.2 million gallons of wastewater a day, is required to set aside 200,000 gallons of daily capacity for the county center — limiting Riverhead’s ability to extend its own downtown development efforts. The sewer district is currently processing about 900,000 gallons a day in total, according to the town’s website.

“I’m proud of the work that we have done in Riverside,” Mr. Schiavoni — who is running for a state Assembly seat — said during a Monday meet-the-candidates sit-down with Times Review Media Group’s editorial board. “The amount of grants that we’ve accrued, and the designs that we’re putting forward — this is an initiative that our community has asked for, and we’ve responded to. And we’re getting it done. Sewer districts are very difficult,” he said, adding that the new sewer district will be the first to be created on the East End in decades. Riverhead’s was built in 1937.

Last month, Riverhead Town filed a complaint in county court, the first step in a planned lawsuit that seeks to halt Southampton’s development plans so they can be revised to reflect changes  in demographics and conditions  that have occurred since the plan was created nearly a decade ago. The complaint contends that Southampton’s environmental impact study for the project is incomplete and insufficient.

The Riverside Revitalization Plan (RRP) was created in 2015 but is moving forward now because Southampton has secured roughly $45 million in funding for the project’s first phase, which includes creation of the Riverside  sewer district, which would be able to treat 400,000 gallons of wastewater daily. 

Southampton officials say their Riverhead counterparts didn’t come to them about servicing the county center’s wastewater needs until last fall, when plans for the new district were essentially complete. Southampton officials have said they would consider taking over the county center’s wastewater treatment needs in the next phase of the Riverside project.

Riverhead officials say they didn’t know about the sewer plan until last fall when they were copied on Southampton’s environmental impact statement for the project. They say they were not included as stakeholders in the plan.

“Why does Riverhead have to come to them when they’re doing the map and the project?” asked Dawn Thomas, Riverhead’s Community Development Agency administrator.

“We should just run over there and say, ‘In case you’re thinking of doing this, we think you should do [something else]?’ We don’t know your thinking,” she said. “We don’t know what your map and plan is. That’s your project. You’re supposed to reach out to the stakeholders and include them in the discussion.”

Ms. Thomas said that  Phillips Avenue Elementary School wasn’t even aware that a  new sewer plant was set to be built next door until she told school officials last fall.

Riverhead officials made a series of urgent — but ultimately unsuccessful — pleas at Southampton Town Board meetings last fall and earlier this year that the plan be reconsidered.  When Riverhead started legal action last month, communications between the neighboring towns collapsed.

In a statement released the day the complaint was filed, Riverhead Supervisor Tim Hubbard said his town was “forced” to go to court to “make sure that the Riverside RRP and  sewage treatment plan was the best that it could be — and to protect the hard work it has done to effectuate meaningful revitalization in downtown Riverhead.”

The initial RRP  called for as much as 3.2 million square feet of mixed-use development, including as many as 2,300 new affordable housing units.

The total number of housing units to be created in Riverside has since been slashed by roughly half — and could be scaled back further, according to an interview last month with Southampton Town Supervisor Maria Moore, who said that the total number of housing units for the first phase of the project would likely be less than 1,167.

That figure “is something that we’re reviewing again, now, because I don’t think the [Town] Board is comfortable even with that number,” Ms. Moore said. “We want to have smart growth. We don’t want to overwhelm a community.”

Mr. Schiavoni said the RRP is an environmental justice initiative to rebuild one of Suffolk County’s poorest municipalities.

“We’re trying to mitigate nitrogen in the estuary,” Mr. Schiavoni said “We’ve got three mobile home parks in phase one [of the project] and we’re going to be putting in service lines and connections” to the new sewer plant.

The mobile home parks and the Phillips Avenue school are currently using septic tanks. The parks are included in the new sewer district plan, but the school is not, even though the plant is slated to be built next door.

Mr. Schiavoni described the housing plan this week as  “a combination of different types of ownership and rentals,” though he said the Town Board had not yet decided on the precise makeup or number of units in the project’s first phase.

He said that the new sewer plant, which was originally slated to sit about 500 feet from the elementary school, will be moved “as far away” as possible while remaining on the same parcel of land beside the school.

Mr. Schiavoni said the new sewer system is “an entirely enclosed facility” and won’t adversely affect students or teachers.

He also said that Riverhead and its Industrial Development Agency are “starving” the Riverhead Central School District of funds by giving tax breaks to developers.

“The Town of Riverhead and their IDA [are] taking money from their schools, and for some reason this gets pointed our way. Meanwhile, for all the properties that have been taken off the tax rolls in the Riverhead Central School District, we pay PILOT payments, and this year they exceeded $2 million in the Riverhead school district.”

Ms. Thomas said in an interview Tuesday that of the more than 15,000 parcels of property in Riverhead Town, fewer than 20 are getting IDA tax breaks. She also said that Southampton’s PILOT payments do not cover the costs per student coming to the school district from Riverside.

Mr. Schiavoni said the Riverside project would provide Riverhead with more than just PILOT payments for the school district.

“We should also consider the significant amount of taxes — school taxes and library and fire district taxes that will be increased with the revitalization of this area … This is what the community asked for. We got $45 million in funding. It’s in place. We did this all in public meetings. We are moving forward on this, and it’s unfortunate and regretful that we are being sued.”