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Politics & Government

Town Hopes to Apply Lessons Learned at Fort Devens to EPCAL

Town Board makes a field trip to former military base and concludes there are many lessons to follow.

Frustrated by Riverhead’s failure to spur meaningful economic growth at its Enterprise Park at Calverton, Supervisor Sean Walter took three fellow town board members on a field trip Thursday to a former military base in Massachusetts where economic development is taking hold, far surpassing the pace of development and job creation at EPCAL.

Walter sees it as a model that Riverhead might be wise to follow. And so in a in a mini-bus borrowed from the town’s senior citizens program and driven by Councilman Jim Wooten, a contingent from Riverhead, with local press in tow, traveled to Fort Devens, a shuttered Army base 35 miles west of Boston whose 4,400 acres are owned and controlled by MassDevelopment, a quasi-governmental agency of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

The comparisons and dissimilarities between EPCAL and Fort Devens – now simply called Devens – are telling. Closed as a military facility in 1996, the same year Grumman left Calverton and Riverhead took over EPCAL, Devens has already enticed 75 companies to locate facilities there, including Bristol-Meyers Squibb, US Gypsum, American Superconductor, Johnson Mathey and Evergreen Solar.

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 In contrast, only 472 of EPCAL’s 2,900 acres at EPCAL have been sold for redevelopment, and that dates back to 2001, when Long Island developer Jan Burman purchased the industrial core of the former aircraft assembly compound – buildings and all – for $17 million.

Even Northrup Grumman, the company that abandoned Calverton, has built a major facility at Devens, something that stuck in the craw of Councilwoman Jodi Giglio, who was along on the tour.

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“Why couldn't we have have brought them back to EPCAL?” she said.

As a result of investments at Devens, 3,500 new jobs have been created, many of them well-paying, according to Mika Brewer, the executive in charge of sales and marketing at Devens, who led a presentation for the Riverhead visitors. And that number, he pointed out, already exceeds the 2,900 civilian jobs lost when Fort Devens shut down.

A key advantage for Devens, Brewer said – and which Walter said he would love to have – is direct involvement at the highest levels of state government, which allows Devens to cut the through the red tape involved with multiple layers of government, and the turf issues that can hobble the approval process and dissuade developers from making proposals.

For EPCAL, Walter observed, impediments include Suffolk County’s Health Department and the Department of Environment Conservation which, Councilman John Dunleavy added, keeps changing the rules of the game.

“All they do is keep putting up roadblocks, which delays everything,” Walter said.

At Devens, Brewer said, there are no such roadblocks. In fact, he explained, there is a mandate to give site plan approval and issue building permits within 75 days after an application has been submitted.  In actuality, he said, most proposals are given a green light – or a red light – within 45 days.

“This gives us the predictability developers wants,” Brewer said, “They walk in and they know what’s going to happen because of the umbrella permit the state provides.”

Another advantage state involvement gives Devens, Brewer said, is bonding authorization for $200 million, $150 million of which has already been drawn down to attract companies to Devens.

Buoyed by the trip, Walter said he plans to ask – and to ask quickly – that Governor Andrew Coumo establish a super agency at the state level to do for EPCAL what MassDevelopment does for Devens.

“If the governor is serious about economic and development, then this has to come from his office, Walter said.

Walter also said he also plans to ask his town board to hire the same land-use consulting firm – Vanasse Hangen Brustlin, Inc., known VHB - that worked with Devens when it was first starting out.

VHB, following its appearance two months ago at a town board work session, has, in fact, already been asked to come back to the town with a proposal that details the scope of the work they would expect to do and the cost involved at every phase.

Among other things, the proposal will explain how VHB will proceed in drafting a new re-use plan for EPCAL to replace the plan drawn up in 1998 and which, Walter said, no longer reflects current market and business conditions.

“We now have 1,000 acres at EPCAL zoned for recreation, and so we get proposals for such things as indoor ski mountains,” Walter said, referring to the recent to follow through on its billion-dollar plan to build six themed resort parks at EPCAL.

“Our current zoning makes no sense,” Walter said.

According to Ken Schwrtz, a senior VHB who attended Thursday’s presentations, his firm’s proposal should land on Walter’s desk early next week.

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