Riverside residents slam Riverhead’s opposition to revitalization plan

Community leaders in the Southampton hamlet of Riverside slammed Riverhead officials last week over the neighboring town’s legal challenge to a longterm plan to build mixed-use, high-density developments in the perennially blighted community near the downtown Riverhead traffic circle.

The plan calls for a new sewer district, market rate apartments, a 20-acre riverfront park, hundreds of units of new affordable housing and hundreds of thousands of square feet of new commercial development. Riverside is in Southampton but sits adjacent to the town line with Riverhead and is served by Riverhead’s schools, library and fire department — meaning the plan would have a deep impact on both towns.

In separate interviews, three current and former Riverside community leaders said their fellow residents are overwhelmingly in favor of the redevelopment project — and that many are furious at Riverhead’s efforts to halt the plan’s progress, especially since Riverhead has largely completed years of planning to build its own new downtown housing. A News-Review investigation suggests that the development plan has broad support in the community.

For their part, Riverhead officials this week said they are as anxious as their Southampton counterparts to see Riverside developed, but contend they’ve been left almost completely out of the planning process and that conditions in Riverside have changed dramatically in the decade since the plan was initiated. They want Southampton to undertake a new study, and Riverhead Community Development Agency administrator Dawn Thomas said this week that the town has offered to split the costs of that initiative with Southampton.

‘How dare you’

Angela Huneault, a Riverside resident of nearly 50 years, said her community is determined to see the project move forward.

“I grew up here. I raised my children here, and I’m not giving up until they get those shovels in the ground,” said Ms. Huneault, the current president of the non-profit Flanders, Riverside, Northampton Community Association (FRNCA).

“Riverhead did all their development. They did all they wanted to do, and now they tell us we can’t?,” she said in an interview. “How dare you?”

Ms. Huneault said dozens of Riverside supporters of the plan attended Southampton Town Board meetings for months last fall and this past winter, when Riverhead officials challenged the imminent revitalization.

“They went to all the meetings … to basically say [to Riverhead officials] ‘sit down and shut up. Leave us alone. We want this, and we’re not going to let you hold us back.’”

While some supporters of the Riverside redevelopment have moved away since the project was greenlit by the Southampton Town Board in 2015, Ms. Huneault said, many former residents are still involved in the planning discussions and intend to return from places as far away as California for milestone events.

“They can’t wait for the ribbon-cutting on the new sewer plant,” she said.

Ms. Huneault said the most prized piece of Riverside’s revitalization is a 20-acre waterfront park on the Peconic River, east of the McDonald’s on Flanders Road.

The Riverside Revitalization Action Plan (RRAP) was created in 2015 but is just now moving forward because Southampton has secured roughly $45 million in funding for the project’s first phase, which includes creation of a new Riverside sewer district that could treat up to 400,000 gallons of wastewater daily. 

The purpose of the plan was to incentivize through zoning changes the development of new housing and businesses in a community with a nearly 20% poverty rate and the lowest median income in Suffolk County. While the sewer treatment plant is a welcome project, officials in Riverhead said that conditions in the area have changed dramatically since the plan was finalized nearly a decade ago.

If completed, the project would more than double the amount of affordable housing available in Southampton Town, which currently counts 520 affordable units, according to the Southampton Town director of Housing & Community Development.

The plan calls for 50% of new housing in the development to be affordable workforce housing in perpetuity, and the other half set aside for market rate housing. Originally, the plan called for up to 2267 new housing units — meaning more than 1,100 new affordable units — but has since been reduced to 1,167 units in total, according to Southampton Town Supervisor Maria Moore. The reduced figure would result in less than 600 new affordable units.

Sean McLean, a Riverside resident who is on the boards of both FRNCA and Renaissance Downtowns, the plan’s master developer, said Riverhead has been complaining about crime, violence and drug abuse in Riverside for years.

“I don’t get it,” he told the News-Review. “On the one hand, they say Riverside is the source of all evil [in the area]. And yet, ‘don’t change it. Don’t do anything. We’re going to prevent you from doing all the great things you promised 10 years ago.’”

He went on to say that the 2015 plan “was passed before Riverhead let all those apartments get built on Main Street — none of them were there when this zoning was passed.”

Mr. McLean also took issue with what he described as “misinformation” about the incoming Riverside sewer district. Riverhead officials have faulted Southampton for plans to place a new treatment plant on land adjacent to an elementary school.

“For them to spread misinformation and purposeful lies about the treatment plant and the dangers of a treatment plant in proximity to a school is irresponsible to the public,” he said. “There are multi-million-dollar condos and town homes all over Long Island that have treatment plants in their backyards — and it doesn’t affect property values. It doesn’t affect health. It doesn’t affect anybody.”

In an interview this week, Ms. Thomas said the proposed Riverside sewer district would dwarf the size of a condo complex sewer system. “To say a [treatment plant] associated with a condo complex is comparable — it’s not really apples to apples.”

The assertions made by Ms. Huneault and other community leaders were borne out in interviews throughout the Riverside community last week.

In door-to-door, News-Review polling inquiries with 50 randomly-chosen Riverside residents over two days, 28 said they support the plan, six opposed it and two were undecided. The remaining 14 had no opinion — either because they weren’t aware of the project, had just moved in or, in one case, were about to move out.

Nell Nichayonack was one of the undecided Riverside residents. “I’m all for more affordable housing and better infrastructure,” she said, “but I’m worried about what will happen to the people already here.”

Ken Pearson said the plan is “long overdue.”

Sharon West also supports the development, especially the new sewer district. “It’s much more efficient and much better for the water,” she said. “And it better manages waste.”

Resident Donna Sanna said she opposes the plan because, “Riverhead doesn’t need any more traffic.”

‘Time to rebuild’

In August, Riverhead filed a complaint in county court, the first step in a planned lawsuit that seeks to halt Southampton’s development plans. Riverhead officials fear the project will overwhelm years of planning and new development in downtown Riverhead and overburden the town’s school district, which serves the Riverside community. The complaint contends that Southampton’s environmental impact study for the project is incomplete and insufficient. 

“Ten years ago, the demographics in Riverhead and Riverside were not anything like what they are today,” Ms. Thomas said this week. “In fact, I would say that the Southampton Town board has recognized this because they’re reviewing the plan and they’ve already agreed to lower the density substantially. That’s great, but it still doesn’t mean that Riverhead Central School District can fit another student.”

Central to Riverhead’s complaints is the fact that the new Riverside sewer district 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 capacity daily for those facilities — 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.

Riverhead officials made a series of urgent — but ultimately unsuccessful — pleas at Southampton Town Board meetings last fall and earlier this year for the plan to be reconsidered. When Riverhead filed the complaint in county court, talks between the two towns broke down.

At a Southampton Town Board meeting last December, Ms. Thomas said that in the decade since the revitalization plan was developed, “many of the underlying assumptions and data contained in the RRAP have changed dramatically” — citing a “marked reduction in opportunities for home ownership … the increase in population due to COVID and migration, and the increased need for workforce.”

She also said in her remarks that if the RRAP goes forward as planned it could result in “the inadvertent exacerbation of the already extremely high segregation that exists in this area.”

Vince Taldone, a former FRNCA president and retired city planner who still works on Riverside grant projects, said it’s “time to rebuild.”

“We have abandoned buildings. We have people living in the woods or [who are] homeless. We have a really tragic situation there, and it’s time to rebuild. People are living in certain houses that are grossly overcrowded because there’s no place to live.”

Mr. Taldone said that nearly a decade ago, during the plan’s earliest stages, there was no opposition to building affordable housing in the community. He also flatly rejected accusations from Riverhead officials that development planners didn’t do sufficient outreach in the community.

“When we revealed the number of housing units that could happen on full build out … nobody batted an eye — because most of the people living there struggle to find housing. Their kids move away. So we didn’t have any opposition. I mean nobody, none.”

He said he is “beside myself with anger toward Riverhead. … Don’t attack us like we just sprung this on you.”