The Southold Town Planning Board determined that the revised plans from Strong’s Marine for a proposed yacht storage facility on Mattituck Inlet are “incomplete for review,” according to a Sept. 6 letter.
The Planning Board’s letter said more information is required “before the Board can commence its full review of the submitted materials.”
Two items related to the revised proposal that had been on the agenda for the board’s Sept. 16 meeting — one to accept the final findings statement and one to vote up or down on approving the project — were both adjourned without resolution.
“We are going to adjourn this again as they have submitted a revised application and we will keep adjourning this until the revised application is complete,” Planning Board chair James Rich III said at the meeting.
The board has requested that Strong’s Marine owner Jeff Strong and his lawyer, Charles Cuddy, provide copies of the following documents: building elevations, including height and roof pitch; a floor plan of the proposed building; and a tree removal and landscape plan, including details and dimensions of the proposed retaining wall.
“The completeness of the Full Environmental Assessment Form cannot be determined until the items listed above have been provided,” said the Sept. 6 letter signed by senior planner Brian Cummings.
In 2018, Mr. Strong proposed the construction of two heated buildings — comprising a total of 101,000 square feet — for indoor boat storage at the company’s Mill Road facility in Mattituck. The 32.96-acre parcel is zoned Marine II and R-80, which allows marine uses and low-density residential development.
From the start, the project has encountered fierce opposition from scores of area residents and local civic organizations. Conservationist group Save Mattituck Inlet was formed in December 2020 specifically to oppose the Strong’s expansion bid.
On July 19 Mr. Strong submitted a scaled back proposal reducing the project to a single 65,100-square-foot building, along with many other substantial changes.
“Our engineers and architects are working to pull those three items requested together and I don’t know the timeline because I’m at their mercy but they understand that we’d like to get that submitted sooner rather than later,” Mr. Strong said Monday. “We want to keep this as a shipyard and if this building is approved, it will ensure that it will remain as a shipyard. If this building is not approved, we’re going to be forced to go a different route and seek a different development plan that would be very different than a shipyard.”