Riverhead officials pressed pause on plans to allow for the development of agritourism resorts along Sound Avenue after the town and the farming community were unable to come to an agreement on the balance of preservation and development.
“Attempts to land on what might be an appropriate balance between preserving the agricultural heritage of our area and allowing for development in the form of agritourism inns and resorts … remains a source of ongoing discussion and debate,” Town Supervisor Tim Hubbard said at a late-summer board meeting officially tabling the controversial initiative. “And quite frankly, it remains to be seen whether the perfect balance exists.”
The proposal as written would have allowed for “agritourism inns and resorts” on minimum 100-acre plots of unpreserved land north of Sound Avenue — provided that 70% of the acreage be preserved for agricultural use in perpetuity and a maximum of 30% used for the resort and amenities such as restaurants or spas.
The plan also included a requirement that the developed portions of the parcels not be visible from Sound Avenue — meaning those tourism uses would likely be built on the waterfront overlooking Long Island Sound.
Last fall at a Riverhead Town Board meeting, Deputy Town Attorney Annemarie Prudenti estimated there are roughly 7,000 acres of unpreserved land in Riverhead, and approximately seven properties that met the proposed requirements.
In February, the Town Board abruptly cancelled a public hearing on the required code changes to allow more time to work with the farming community to come to a compromise.
Some of the opposition to the rezoning stretched beyond Riverhead’s boarders.
Southold Town Councilman Greg Doroski called the proposal “an absolute nightmare,” at a February Southold Town Board work session. “I think there’s nothing they could do that would disturb that historic corridor more than this … as we look at our traffic problems, as we look at that bottleneck that’s created [at the intersection of Edwards and Sound avenues] — this is going to amplify it by 100.”
The decision to table the resorts initiative marked yet another instance of a controversial development plan on Sound Avenue being shot down due local opposition. In March the Riverhead Charter School dropped plans to build a new high school and campus on the corridor in Northville after an outcry from area residents who said the new campus would exacerbate traffic and diminish community character.