They came, they saw and if they didn’t conquer, at least they expressed their views. The “they” are the 400 Wading River residents who attended a public meeting on the future of their hamlet on Feb. 4. Their question at the end of the day was: were they heard?
The subject of the impassioned meeting was six development proposals that would produce more than 200,000 square feet of new commercial development along a 1.5 mile stretch of Route 25A in the quiet, rural hamlet. The development is the subject of a $45,000 “corridor study” by BFJ Planning for the Riverhead Town Board aimed at shaping a land use plan for Wading River’s end of the state road, known here mostly for the traffic it endures during North Fork farm visitation from spring through fall.
Participants said they wanted to preserve open space, community character and quality-of-life, while avoiding more strip malls, intolerable traffic and declining property values. What they saw, however, was a presentation by the consultants that preserved little or no open space, suggested even more traffic and threatened to increase area traffic even as it decreased retail development slightly.
Dominique Mendez, head of the Riverhead Neighborhood Preservation Coalition, said after the presentation, “The turnout was astonishing. I only hope the community’s vision and recommendations are reflected by the planning consultants and adopted into a land use plan by the Town Board. That’s the only thing that really matters.”
The “Save Wading River” campaign was organized by a broad spectrum of civic and environmental organizations. Their specific concerns about the plan they were shown were: that it would allow nearly 50 percent more development across four of the largest parcels and reduce open space compared to the current zoning, that it did not do anything meaningful to require multi-family residential units to be age restricted and thus could raise school taxes, and that its myopic focus on four properties disregarded the development potential along the rest of the corridor and still allowed too much retail development.
After the Community Meeting, the community groups supplied the planning consultants and town officials with a list of concerns and suggestions aimed at improving land use in the corridor. A similar, but larger study was conducted by the same consultant, last year, along the Brookhaven segment of Route 25A, including Wading River and Shoreham. It concluded that Wading River could accommodate no more than 23,000 square feet of new retail space, given existing stores, banks and restaurants. The town is considering clustering multi-family housing on 30 percent of some of the land in neighboring Shoreham, while preserving 70% as open space.
A few of the developers of the proposed projects appeared, talking about “private property rights.” Of course, the U.S. Constitution and state and local laws ensure those rights, and development is nearly certain on all of the Route 25A parcels. So, the only “private property rights” in danger of being trampled are those of area residents.
As a person who has worked to protect drinking water and preserve open space and farmland for more than a quarter-century, I've seen more than my share of over-development, but it’s especially painful when development beyond a community’s “carrying capacity” comes to your own neighborhood. That’s mostly what I’ve seen happen to communities that were over-run by too much development and consequently lost their sense of place and community character.
I hope that the elected officials who attended the remarkable outpouring of local sentiment against over-development or saw it on television or read about it in the media will take a lesson from places that were despoiled by over-development to the west. I hope that they will heed the passionately expressed wishes of those they represent and that the plan they adopt will be something of which we can all be proud of down the road and not simply the next, mindless stretch of ugly and soulless suburban sprawl.
Richard Amper is a longtime environmental activist, chairman of the board of directors of the Long Island Environmental Voters Forum and executive director of the Long Island Pine Barrens Society. He lives in Ridge.