Full Transcript

Thank you. Thank you. Good evening, everybody. This is the advertised time and place for the April 3, 2025 Planning Board meeting. Please stand and join us in the Pledge of Allegiance. Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Good evening, everybody. Good evening, everybody. I'd like to welcome you. I'd like to welcome Mr. DeLuca and his class of architectural students. Mr. DeLuca told me that anybody that can stay awake for the entire meeting will get extra points.

Okay, to start out, we have a public hearing. Heather, are you going to help us along? It's for Cox Place of Worship. We ask that when you come up, you have to give your name and address because it's a public hearing, and you have to talk from the microphone. Okay? Thank you. Okay, so I'll just briefly introduce the application. This is for the Cox Place of Worship site plan. It's a site plan application seeking approval to convert an existing single-family dwelling into a place of worship and add a 3600-plot churchyard along with site improvements, including a one-way access road, parking and paving, a new sanitary system, on-site drainage, lighting, landscaping, and an ADA-compliant path and ramp on a 4.98 improved parcel located at a site of worship. Okay. Thank you. So, we have a 4.98-acre improved parcel located at 5284 Route 25A in Waiting River within the RB80 zoning use district. More particularly identified as Suffolk County Tax Fund number 600-76-2-4. And I can confirm that we received all of the mailings and the affidavit of posting. So, I believe the applicant and the representatives are here. Okay. Thank you, Heather. Just want to remind people at home that are watching. It's a public hearing. So, you can call in. And participate through the Skype. Mr. Cuddy. Good evening. I'm Charles Cuddy. I have an office at 445 Griffin Avenue, Riverhead, New York. And I represent the applicants. Just want to put the plans . Oh, you want to put this plan? Good. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. [transcription gap] Heather is putting our plan on the table. So, it can be seen. As was noted, this is approximately five acre site. At 25A in Waiting River. It's have a place of worship. And a graveyard that's attached to it. The interesting thing to start with. This is not visible from the road. So, if you come to this site. What you see from the road is what's still there. And going to be there. And that is on the left hand side. There's a garage. And on the right hand side, there's a house. The house will be the place of worship. But no one will see the grave site at all from the road. Also, talking about visibility. The entire site is buffered by trees on both sides. And the principals who are here. With me. Daniel Cox and James Fox. Have indicated they would be planting seven to eight foot high evergreens around the entire site. So, the neighbors on both sides will be buffered from seeing the graveyard. As Heather indicated. The site's been really analyzed very carefully by the planning department. As to the drainage. The grading. The sanitary systems. The parking. The lighting. And has had a full environment. And has determined after that assessment that there's a negative declaration pursuant to CEQA. And so, there is very little about this that hasn't been explored. And hasn't been looked at by the board. And by the planners. And at this point, I think there is little to say except that one question had been asked of us about the maintenance of the site. And the maintenance of the site is going to be taken care of through burial fees. And a part of it is going to be taken care of through burial fees. And a part of that money will be set aside for reserve. Again, we're all here. Mr. Cox is here. Mr. Fox is here. If there are questions, we'll be happy to answer them. And I know the public may want to chime in. Thank you, Mr. Cuddy. Any speakers from the public that would like to speak? You're welcome to come up now. Sid Bale. 33 Longbow. Wading River, New York. President of Wading River Civic. On this matter, I heard it discussed. I was here the evening that you discussed it in March. And as I said to some of the folks who were here at that meeting, that was a very informative discussion. And I appreciate the questions and the interactions of that night. I do have a few questions. Mr. Cuddy took care of one. I'll ask him right away. But the landscaping, I had something about the size of the plantings, et cetera. Even though the, he mentioned that the house and the barn or garage will be visible, the apparently, it's my understanding that the house is going to be reworked and redesigned. And I'm not sure if that's true. Mr. Cuddy. Yes. I'll head over to you next. I was just wondering whether there are any architectural renderings or drawings of that. And the materials that you had on the website weren't showing it. Okay. I see Joe's holding up something there. So it does exist. Okay. Another question is, is this going to be a phase development? Is there going to be the whole project all at once? We talked about five acres, the front two acres, and then the grave sites behind it. Is it going to be all completed at the same time? And when the construction begins on the project, what are we talking about, six months, a year, or more? Now, talk about the burial site. The burial sites, et cetera. At least I'm talking about the burial sites. The, who would the, who would be the owners of the burial sites? Who would the house of worship, the mosque, be the owner of them? Or what? It's not quite clear in my mind. Will, there was a great explanation. For people such as myself about Islamic burial practices. And it was very informative. I was wondering whether there is any intent to work with local funeral homes. Do they have a role to play in any of this? The size of the congregation, that is my understanding of the house. Is it going to be reworked? Is there going to be work done on it so it can be used? You know, what will the house look like? Will it be basically the same outward appearance? I don't think so. I think it will probably have to be changed. And another thing, question that I have is about the size of the congregation, those people who utilize the house. How many, what's the scale of usage envisioned? Another question I have about the renovation of the house. Is there going to be provision for some sort of permanent residence within the house? And, et cetera. I also, I'm not clear on the number of parking stalls that are going to be made available. Okay. And I'd like to get an idea of how many they are. One of the things that came out of the discussion in March was the concern about weekends. And if there was or burials on the weekend, and then it was pointed out that this isn't going to be an issue because of the provision that people are buried within a 24-hour period, et cetera. But what is anticipated to be the busiest day or days of the week, you know, in this new facility? And we're probably talking about the front two acres, obviously. Okay. All right. Thank you. I can answer one of those questions right now. The amount of people that will be in there will be determined by the fire marshal. Okay. Whatever he sets the limit, just like any other public building. Right. I was just wondering on that. Yeah. Thank you. Okay. We'll get to seven or eight of these questions with Mr. Cuddy. Okay. Thank you, sir. I think two of us can answer the questions. Okay. I'll try and answer some. Okay. I think we have a question from the audience. Okay. I'm going to ask a question. Okay. I'm going to ask a question. Okay. I'll just answer some. The building ... We're going to have to get the young man to give us his name and address. Okay. Daniel Cox, 5284 New York 25A, Weeting River, New York. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Just so you can understand, or answer Mr. Bail's question, this is basically a chapel. It's not a place where there's going to be a congregation, people to assemble ... on a regular basis. The chapel is there so people can worship when they come to the funeral, essentially. That also is controlled by the fire marshal, but we understand that they can't be more than 20 people inside at one time. So it's really minimal type thing. As to the parking, I think it shows on the plan that there are 14 parking spaces. So we do not anticipate large funerals, and I think that Mr. Cox explained that system pretty thoroughly, but he can maybe answer some of the other things. All right, let me go through some of the questions, Eddie. Is it a phased project, or are you going to go in and open up right away? It's going to be one. One. We're expecting to do all the work at the same time for the renovations on the structure itself. We've had different drawings drawn up, but they're just like samples at this point. We're open to any opinions. We've had cedar-shaped shingles. We've also had a stucco look. I mean, we're open to anything. So you're going to have interior and exterior alterations? Yes. The interior is whatever's on the plans. The exterior we haven't yet submitted to the building department. Just to clarify, no addition. You're working within the existing footprint of the house, right? Correct, yes. Thank you, Adam. Who is the owner of the property, and who is the owner of the cemetery? Is it the church? If we do get the blessing to move forward, which obviously we're hoping to, this would go into a non-for-profit 501c3, so it would be donated to them. And then I think Mr. Cuddy touched on this. We have to do a perpetual care fund, which would be a completely separate entity that goes into a trust, so it's safe and it's forever, and that's a 501c13. Okay. How much time is the project going to take to get up and running or open?

You know, we've estimated between like eight months and a year. Okay. Will it be a permanent resident on the property? No, absolutely not. Okay. And I know, I believe you stated that if a person passes, the next day they have the funeral, is that correct? Sometimes, it's same day. Really? Okay. Yeah. So, there's no way to determine what a busy day is because it happens very quickly. Exactly. Okay. Yeah. One second Judge, wait a minute, go head. Yeah. Get all Sid's points taken. Okay. Go head, Judge. I just was wondering about visitations, people wanting to visit graves. Of course. I'm sure people are going to visit loved ones. I mean... [transcription gap] I'm sure people are going to visit loved ones. I mean, for me personally, like, you know, my grandfather that's across the street at Calverton National, I could visit him on Memorial Day, you know. So I don't know how many, everybody's different, you know. I think maybe just going a little step further, if someone were in the area, would the church itself be open to someone just coming by to see a loved one, or would they have to make an appointment to say, we'd like to come by, we'd like to, how would that fit in? That's a good question, and that's actually a question that the health department brought up as well, because we're working with them. So we're planning on a Friday service, just like any place of worship, and there's usually going to be a church. There's usually going to be a groundskeeper. There's usually going to be a groundskeeper on site. We haven't decided yet if we'll do that through the not-for-profit or if we'll hire them. It really depends on where this goes, and, you know, we'll take it from there. But we're hoping that somebody will always be on site. We're setting up cameras for obvious reasons. We don't want any kind of, like, vandalism or anything like that. So the property, I'm expecting someone from either the board of the not-for-profit or else a groundskeeper to always be there. You know? Yeah, that's it for the most part. When you say always be there, you're saying that it'll just be during business hours, not nobody's going to be staying in the residences? Correct, 100%. No one's allowed to. No, there's no residents at all. Daniel, one question. Yes. You're planting trees all around the burial site. Is it a buffer area or just trees? I mean, is there 10 foot, 15 foot? That you're leaving along the property? Or is it just trees? We, I don't have the plan in front of me. We did about 374 trees. I think we kind of went above and beyond on just appeasing all the neighbors. I guess Heather. Yeah, Heather, if you could pull that up, I could definitely run through it. Heather, just was there a designated, you know, buffer area? I don't think it was a designated buffer area, but they proposed, they didn't have evergreens along the property lines. They didn't designate like a deck. Okay. And actually don't have the landscaping plan in the set. I know that we did. There was a specific thing because it was a state road. So we had to do like state trees. It may have been like maples at the front. Right, right. So the photos that I had provided last time.

And then we did things like Heather brought up, which was a good point. Some things were like deer resistant. Which were mainly evergreens. I think there's a lot of hollies in there. Right. Maybe blue spruce. But I think there's 374 total. So it's definitely enclosed for the most part. Anything else you guys? Anybody else from the public like to speak? Okay.

Yeah, I'm James Connolly, 5258 Route 25A, Calverton. So we live adjacent to the property. For background, I live there with my wife and my two kids, 12 and 9. So we've just heard about this basically a couple weeks ago. So we haven't even had time to digest what's going on. So this hearing is helpful. I had some concerns. A few concerns. And unfortunately, some of the things I've heard have made me even more concerned. So my first overall concern is that, you know, when we purchased our property, we decided to move there with our family. Like we were not expecting this kind of development, you know, where we were going to live. Especially when we made, you know, the investment to live there and things of that nature. So this is kind of surprising. And of all the uses of a property, you know, we didn't expect them to, we didn't expect like a mosque to be built next door to us. So that was our original concern. Like, oh, it's okay. And then I had, you know, hearing what's been said tonight, I have concerns about who's going to be there. It's a small footprint, you know, 20 people. You know, I've heard can be there. So it's one thing if that's like a small community of people worshiping. Now it seems it's something totally different. It's almost like a business, a burial type business. So there's going to be numerous people. People are going to be coming in and out. We don't even know who they are, when they'll be there. Apparently someone passes away and within 24 hours there'll be a new group of people next door. Now we're close enough. We can see the house right through the trees. I can see it from my living room. So there's no big buffer there. It's, you know, the place of worship is right there. So, you know, what kind of traffic is going to be there? Again, the concern is, you know, it's going to be a bunch of people we don't know coming in and out.

So that's just what's concerned me tonight hearing about that. Expansion of the mosque and burial ground. So what happens once it's approved? You know, I don't know how this works. I'm not that familiar with it. But once the board approves the rezoning, I guess it would be, or change to the use of the land, will they be able to just expand in the future? We're not changing the use of the land. We're only approving a site plan. Okay. They have a plan. They have the right to be in that zone. So there's no, you don't have to approve like a church being built there or something? We don't have to approve a church. And it's not a change of use or a change of land use. It's merely a site plan. We're dealing with the facts of the physical property, where things are situated, screening, and et cetera. Okay. We're not a policy making board. We don't say, you know, we don't pick one person over the other. It's. Okay. Okay. So the issue is you're just determining how the development is going to go. There's no, the properties, the R80, whatever, it's that zone for the house of worship and the burial ground. That's why. Well, I think the question is do they have the as of right to do the house of worship and the burial ground? Heather? Yes. Can you just answer that? So, and Eric can probably expand on this. The religious land use and institution person's protection act, we can't unreasonably restrict churches or houses of worship. So essentially they're permitted in every zone. Obviously they're not exempt from site plan because they are making site alterations. That's why they're before this board. And then the churchyard or the burial sites are accessory to the house of worship. Obviously if they were to come in in the future and try to do anything, they would have to do it. So if they were to do any expansion of any of the structures on site, they would have to come back to this board for approvals. Different site plan. Yes. Do you understand that, sir? I think so. So essentially my question is traffic. Is there some kind of traffic study that needs to be done? So we're going to know, are they going to be parking on the street? The project is not big enough or doesn't meet the level for a traffic study. Okay. And based on the square footage. And they're providing enough parking on site. And they also have the driveway that goes around the entire burial ground. Okay. Well, I have no. So you want to come up and look at the site plan, feel free. Okay. Yeah, I will. Thank you. Thank you. Anybody else? Anybody on Zoom? No Zoomers. No Zoomers. Gentlemen, what's your pleasure? I'll move we close the public hearing. I'll second. Okay. Thank you. [transcription gap] Moved and Seconded. Mr. Zelnicki. Yes. Mr. Hogan. Yes. Mr. Nachno. Aye. Mr. Barron. Yes. An aye vote, aye. The motion carries. All right. Going right into discussion items. River head Mazda would match artists. Okay. Just a very brief update on this. The full full recall's in the end of December. We did approve a preliminary site plan for river head Mazda. This is right behind where river head Ford and GMC are. I'm happy to say the applicant's been very clear about this. I'll pass this over to you. [transcription gap] has been very diligent about meeting all their conditions of approval. Their SWPPP has been approved and all the other conditions that have to be met as part of their preliminary approval. So before you today, we have a final site plan approval to really get the ball rolling on this thing and get a good project going in Riverhead. Great. Good job, Matt. Anything, gentlemen? I'm good. You guys good? End of discussion items. Okay, at this point we're going to have public comment on resolutions. If anybody has a comment, feel free to come up now.

Okay, no takers. Let's move right into resolutions, gentlemen. I'll move resolution 2025-028, Lizard & Associates with a minor subdivision granting approval for a two-lot minor subdivision. Second. Moved and seconded. Mr. Zelnicki? Yes. Mr. Hogan? Yes. Mr. De Niro? Aye. Mr. Baer? Yes. And I vote aye. The motion carries. I'll move resolution number 22. 2029. Granting final approval for the site plan of Riverhead Mazda. Second. Moved and seconded. It's for the extension. Time extension. Moved and seconded. Mr. Zelnicki? No, no, no. That's the last one. Oh, I'm sorry. Mazda. My bad. 029 Riverhead Mazda. Mr. Zelnicki? Yes. Mr. Hogan? Yes. Mr. De Niro? Aye. Mr. Baer? Yes. And I vote aye. The motion carries. I'll move resolution number 2025-030. Vincent Franchini, minor subdivision extension. Resolution granting two 90-day extensions for a minor subdivision approval for a minor subdivision extension. Thank you. Second. So moved. Moved and seconded. Mr. Zelnicki? Yes. Mr. Hogan? Yes. Mr. De Niro? Aye. Mr. Baer? Yes. And I vote aye. The motion carries. Okay. At this time, we can have a discussion. Comments on all matters. I just want to thank you gentlemen, Matt, and all the board. All right. Get that project going, man. All right. Good. Good luck. Thanks, Tommy. Okay. I'll move the minutes of March 6, 2025. Before we vote on the minutes, I just want to make sure that the board received the updated minutes from the stenographer. And the discussion on Summerwind was, they struck it from the record and added a footnote. So that's what we're adopting. Okay. [transcription gap] Sorry. Go ahead. Can we move it? I'll move the minutes of March 6, 2025. Moved and seconded. Mr. Zelnicki? Yes. Mr. Hogan? Yes. Mr. De Niro? Aye. Mr. Baer? Yes. And I vote yes. The motion carries. No secret actions tonight. Any other business? No business. You guys have been put in for overtime after this quick meeting. No. No correspondence. Our next meeting date is going to be Thursday, April 17th at 3 p.m. right here. We hope you all can make it. Motion to oppose? So moved. Second. Moved and seconded. All in favor? Aye. All opposed? Motion carries. Have a great weekend, everybody. Thanks for coming, guys.

Thank you.

Thank you.