EPCAL follies: the last act

Riverhead Town is in over its head at EPCAL, as various town administrations have demonstrated again and again. The proof is in the pudding. The town has presided over one bad idea and botched project after another at the former Grumman site.

The false starts and bad deals at EPCAL are for two disparate reasons, connected by one theme: short-sightedness.

First, the town has looked upon the 2,900-acre gift from the U.S. government as a cash cow, land to be auctioned off to the highest bidder. Second, the town has let its fear of an airport there color everything it's done -- and not done -- with the site.

So, before the town even got title to the property, it sold off the so-called industrial core of the site -- the existing buildings and much of the infrastructure -- for just $17 million to one "developer" who turned out to be not very interested in development at all. Jan Burman was more of a middleman. He flipped the property to others so quickly -- at a handsome profit -- he didn't even bother to wait for his subdivision map to be approved.

Then the town created a bizarre patchwork of zoning for the property outside the "industrial core." This anything-but-an-airport zoning scheme is what's made the rest of the site virtually undevelopable. It calls for things like theme parks, sports stadiums, hotels and golf course condominiums. All this on a site that has no road access capable of moving thousands of cars at once, something necessary for a sports stadium or theme park. Duh.

Remember the colossal traffic jam for the air show in September 2003? There was bumper-to-bumper traffic for miles, stretching west on Route 25 from the park entrance all the way to William Floyd Parkway in Ridge, and then miles south to the Expressway. The only way to bring tens of thousands of people to a theme park at EPCAL is a direct-access road to the site from the LIE -- which requires cutting a new road through preserved Pine Barrens. Yeah, right. Maybe with climate change, hell will eventually freeze over. But that road ain't gettin' built.

The town's inability to properly develop the Calverton lack-of-enterprise park is so complete that the open fields next to the runways where Grumman used to test its F-14 Tomcat fighter jets have overgrown and are now foraging habitat for protected species. In other words, the town's paralysis over the years since it's controlled the site has been so thorough, it managed to effectively turn the former naval weapons reserve plant -- officially a "brownfields" site in need of environmental remediation -- into a nature preserve.

Congratulations, Riverhead.

Dick Amper and the environmental folks would be giving the town a conservation award for its stewardship of the site and creation of new "critical habitat" were it not for the town's insistence on selling off the rest of its holdings at EPCAL to a developer who plans to build "eight themed resorts," including a 350-foot-tall indoor ski mountain, smack in the middle of the "grasslands."

State Sen. Ken LaValle, fed up with town's shenanigans at EPCAL, is calling for regional management of the site. The town, he says, should come to grips with the fact that developing EPCAL properly is beyond its capability. He's right. The senator wants to broker a deal where the town will retain "the right to say yes or no" to development proposals at the site, but where stewardship and oversight will rest in a regional entity that has the resources to do the job correctly.

That means tax base and meaningful jobs from development compatible with the site's ecosystems and its supporting infrastructure. It can be done. Look at what's going on in and around county-run Gabreski Airport, where the county is using the Empire Zone designation (transferred out of EPCAL in 2004, by the way) to develop the Hamptons Business and Technology Park -- also in the Pine Barrens region.

Why, then, in Riverhead, do we insist on trading meaningful economic development for minimum-wage amusement park and hospitality jobs?

Ms. Civiletti invites you to join a discussion of this topic at civiletti.blogspot.com. Her e-mail address is denise@timesreview.com.

Save EPCAL for industry

Indoor snow mountain mega-theme park or NASCAR race track? Which one?
How about neither?
The whole EPCAL site should be reserved for industrial development. The town should put in improvements, such as roads, and subdivide it so that it’s selling industrial lots and not 700-plus acre tracts. There’s no need to unload the land there all at once. They’re not making any more land, you know. Why have a fire sale? The land is money in the bank for the next generation.
When the town sells huge chunks of undeveloped land at EPCAL to private developers, it puts the fate of its economic development zone into the hands of private businesses that only have their own financial interests at heart. Look what happened with the sale of the so-called industrial core to a private developer. He flipped title to the buildings to eager purchasers before the ink on his deed from the town was dry, before he even had an approved subdivision. He did little to improve the site. And so it remains, dubbed “the Wild West,” a truly unappealing excuse for an industrial park.
The town should revisit the reuse plan developed for the site in 1997. It’s obsolete and unworkable and so is the zoning adopted to implement it. Call me a conspiracy theorist, but I think it was devised in a back room specifically to make sure nothing ever happened there. It’s been one of the most effective preservation plans ever adopted.
Eliminate the recreational zoning at EPCAL and develop the former Grumman site as the cohesive, high tech, light industrial center it should be. That’s what will fulfill the purpose behind the transfer of the property to the town: to reclaim the jobs and property taxes we lost when Grumman left. No theme park or hotel or race track or any of the other silly uses will do that.
The planned recreational district, if you look at the events of the past decade, is the source of most of the EPCAL fiascos that have made Riverhead the laughingstock of Long Island — and beyond. Over the years we’ve seen every cockamamie scheme for the site imaginable. The film studio plans. The failed Field Day rock concert, which resulted in Riverhead becoming a synonym for stupidity around the world. The air show “fundraiser” that had traffic backed up on Route 25 and William Floyd Parkway from EPCAL to Exit 68 on the LIE. The phony amusement park proposed by a group of NYC accountants who submitted a hokey business plan consisting of a three-ring binder filled with pictures of rides downloaded from the Internet and a phony letter of financial backing from a German investment company where one of the principals had formerly been employed? The Indian casino, courtesy of the Shinnecock tribe. And the water ski park on a man-made lake — where excavators, in their zeal to remove valuable sand, accidently struck ground water. Oops. The plan by Ken Wilpon to build a hotel/convention center and hundreds of homes there — which fizzled just after the last election. And along the way, proposals for sand mines disguised as golf courses, and even a zoo.
You could fill a book with the things that never happened at EPCAL. I’m sure I’m forgetting a few, including at least one or two car racing complexes.
So when word came of a Scotsman proposing to build a 350-foot-tall indoor ski mountain at EPCAL, I shook my head, laughed and thought, “Yeah, sure, what’s next?” A lot of people had the same reaction. We’ve learned to take this stuff with a grain of salt. For good reason.
Will Riverhead Resorts ever really happen? If history is any guide, the answer is no. On the other hand, indoor ski trails are in operation and under construction all around the globe. They’re not as far out as you might think. But then, this is Riverhead. And Riverhead is just ... different.
Already there’s some confusion about exactly what Riverhead Resorts is planning — for real. Supervisor Phil Cardinale says the ski mountain isn’t critical to Riverhead Resports’ plan; it will go forward with its complex of multiple themed resorts with or without the artificial mountain. But the developer told L.I. Business News last week that the mountain is critical to its plan — as an “anchor” attraction. So which is it? In an interview with News-Review editor John Stefans this week, the developer’s rep tried to backpeddle, claiming he wasn’t correctly quoted in the other newspaper. The quote was “taken out of context” he told us.
But — whatever. The notion of eight theme parks at EPCAL — with or without a manmade mountain — is, to my mind, one of the more preposterous things I’ve heard proposed for the site. And that’s no small feat. How are all the people going to get there? The site has no suitable access. You think traffic on surrounding roads is bad now? Just wait. On a recent Sunday afternoon, traffic on Edwards Avenue was bumper to bumper from Route 25 to Calverton Links — nearly to the LIE! And that was just the pumpkin picking crowd.