Town to Rezone EPCAL, Spend $450,000 on Consultants

Calling it “a new day for the Town of Riverhead,” Supervisor Sean Walter held a press conference Thursday afternoon to announce that the town will sign a $450,000 contract next week with a land-use and environmental consulting firm to work with Riverhead in helping to spur economic development and job creation at the 2,900-acre Enterprise Park at Calverton.

Walter said that the firm, Vanasse Hangen Brustlin, known as VHB, would complete a seven-tiered plan, all with the goal of making the former Grumman defense compound, which the town now owns, more attractive to businesses and developers.

“We’ve had the EPCAL property for 12 years, and we can’t seem to get out of our own way with developing it,” he said. “Everybody with a dollar and a dream comes to EPCAL, but nothing happens.”

Walter said that VHB’s initial work would involve writing new zoning for the property, based on market analysis of what would work best in alluring investment.

“Our current zoning makes no sense at all,” he said. “We’ve got 1,000 acres of recreational zoning there. We’ve had proposals for everything from polo ponies to ski mountains to carnivals to movie studios, and nothing has ever come to fruition.”

Flanked by his four fellow town board members, all of whom said they would vote to approve the contract at next Tuesday’s town board meeting, Walter said, “We cannot keep going down the same road. The definition of stupidity is to keep doing the same thing over and over again and expect a different outcome. That’s a ridiculous thing to continue to do.”

VHB is the same firm that worked with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in redeveloping Fort Devens, 25 miles west of Boston, which closed down as a military facility in 1996, the same year the Grumman Corporation left Calverton.

Earlier this month, Walter led a field trip to Fort Devens with three board members and representatives of the local press to determine whether any lessons learned there could be applied to EPCAL.

One of the things the visitors learned is that Fort Devens – now simply called Devens –has already been able to entice 75 companies to set up facilities, including Bristol-Meyers Squib, US Gypsum, American Superconductor and even Northrup Grumman.

Walter said that there some striking similarities between EPCAL and Fort Devens, but admitted there were also significant differences, including an existing infrastructure of roads, electricity, sewers and even housing that one would expect at a former major military base.

Another difference, he noted, was the involvement of the state, which owns Devons, that allows Devons managers to quickly cut through the bureaucratic red tape inherent in having multiple town, county, state and federal agencies involved in the permitting process.

Walter said he wasn’t interested in creating a similar state authority for EPCAL because it could work against Riverhead’s maintaining control ove the property. But, he said, something like a state-organized, coordinated “permitting entity” could allow the kind of predictability that developers demand.

At Devens, he pointed out, permits are issued in 75 days or less, something he would like to see happen at EPCAL.

“In order for businesses to survive and flourish at EPCAL, business owners need certainty of outcome,” Walter said. “They need to know that when they come to EPCAL they can build what it is they want to build. They need to know that, within a defined time period, they’re going to get their permits, which is impossible for us to promise now.”

Newly-elected state Assemblyman Dan Losquadro, R-Shoreham, who spoke at Thursday’s press conference, promised to work closely with Riverhead in writing legislation that could bring a single, cohesive permitting entity for EPCAL into being.

In addition to writing new zoning, Walter said VHB would be involved in drawing up a subdivision map and dividing the property into manageable parcels for sale.

The firm would also conduct a traffic study and, in addition, develop a generic environmental impact statement, required by the Department of Environmental Conservation before any new sales can take place at EPCAL.

Because of its complexity, the environmental study would be the most expensive part of the project, with a price tag of $160,000. Walter said that VHB should be able to complete all seven phases of its work within a year and a half, two at the most.

Addressing the $450,000 the town would spend, Walter said, “There are some who will say that the money we are going to spend is too much and that we shouldn’t be doing it. But to them, I say, ‘what is the cost of opportunity lost?’"

The money should be seen as an investment because, he said, “We have not done what needs to be done to move this property forward.”

Walter was asked why the town didn't issue a request for proposals - or RFP - to invite other consulting firms to bid on the assignment. He said that since what's involved entails professional services, the town is not obligated to go through a bidding process. Besides, he said, an RFP would add at least six months to the town's making a decision, and he said there's too much at stake with EPCAL to waste any time.