The Southold Town Planning Board is holding off on its final decision to accept or deny the Strong’s Marine proposed yacht storage facility site plan until they have fully reviewed the revised plans they received last month.
At the latest meeting on Tuesday, four out of the five planning board members voted in favor of adjourning its determination until the next scheduled public hearing on Monday, Sept. 9, so the staff has more time to review the revised application. The fifth member Donald Wilcenski recused himself due to conflict of interest.
Chairman James Rich said the next step is to determine whether the application is complete at the next work session. Once agreed the application is complete, the planning board will have to reengage in the State Environmental Quality Review Act — or SEQRA — process, which will most likely be in the form of a Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement. A potential series of public hearings to give the community an opportunity to speak on the project could follow.
The announcement was made at the start of the public hearing, to which members of the community group Save Mattituck Inlet in the audience stood up and left in response. The conservationist group was formed in December 2020 specifically to oppose the Strong’s expansion bid and the “irreversible damage” the project will have to the inlet’s environment.
“We are not opposed to the development of yacht storage in principle, but in this case, this is the wrong location,” said the group’s co-chairs, Jeff Pundyk and Anne Sherwood Pundyk, in a letter to the editor. “The negative impact to the ecology, to public safety, to traffic, and to the local quality of life is just too high — even in the scaled back proposal.”
Strong’s initial 2018 expansion plan called for the construction of two heated buildings for indoor boat storage — 52,000 square feet and 49,000 square feet — at its 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.
These zoning districts already have 69,245 square feet of existing boatyard buildings, according to the Strong’s Storage Buildings findings statement. Jeff Strong, applicant and owner of Strong’s Marine, said in an email on Tuesday that the Suffolk County Planning Commission ruled the original application as “water dependent,” and encouraged the company to work with the town to scale back the project on the marine industrial property.
“We are appreciative of the planning board taking the time needed to thoroughly review our substantially revised application,” Mr. Strong said in his email. “These yachts can not be trailered offsite, as suggested by the town planning board, their consultant and some other people.”
The original proposed buildings would have housed more than 80 yachts averaging 60 feet in length, with some stretching to 86 feet. Additionally, the project would have required the removal of 134,000 cubic yards of sand from the site.
The latest revised proposal reduces the project from two buildings to one 65,100-square-foot unit that would accommodate 56 yachts. The new plan also reduces the amount of sand and other debris required to be removed from the site by 48%.
The reworked application includes a Full Environmental Assessment Form prepared by Mr. Strong, which includes a comparative summary of the revised plan along with the original proposal.
The new proposal scales back the amount of excavation to 70,000 cubic yards, which would require an estimated total of 4,666 one-way truck trips, reduced from 9,000.
The number of trees removed is also reduced under the new proposal — from 634 to 444 — while the scope of coastal oak-beech tree deforestation was reduced from 4.32 acres to 2.74 acres. The setback distance of the proposed building from the Mill Road Preserve was increased by 52 feet — from 135 feet to 178 feet.
The updated bid also includes a scaled-back onsite septic treatment system, rather than the original request for two 1,200-gallon septic tanks. The new proposal calls for one 500-gallon and one 700-gallon FujiClean innovative alternative septic systems. There is also an amendment in the number of propane tanks on site to heat the proposed building, from four 2,000-gallon tanks to two.