The sports facility proposed for a 21-acre Main Road, Mattituck site will be a membership-only club that will offer something for all age groups, levels of fitness and ability — and pocketbooks, the developers told the Southold Town Planning Board on Monday.
“The goal is not to have some expensive sports facility,” Paul Pawlowski told board members during their work session Monday afternoon at the Town Hall Annex. “It’s to reach every demographic financially and physically. We’ll tier it in a way so that it is affordable for every age group to join this club,” he said. No fee schedule has yet been established, he said.
“Basically the concept is like a ‘Y’, where it’s a community center,” Pawlowski’s partner Joe Slovak told the board. Slovak said he’s been a school teacher for 20 years and comes to this project “from an educator’s perspective.” He said he envisions offering before-school and after-school programs for kids, as well as professionally run health, sports and education programs for all ages.
“Our mission is to serve our community’s health and education needs,” he said. ”There’s significant amount of the population who don’t want to compete at an elite level or even a competitive level,” Slovak said.
Sports East will be a place where families can come, where seniors can come and everyone can feel comfortable, he said. “Our demographic is literally from 2 years old to 100 years old.”
The indoor facilities will include a locker rooms, a pool, tennis courts, a basketball court, multipurpose areas, a fitness room and a second floor that will house yoga studios as well as a cafe for members, Pawlowski told the board. The second floor will look out over the first floor and provide a view of everything that’s going on below except the fitness room, which is located underneath the second floor, he said.
He said the facility would likely be open from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m.
Pawlowski said the outdoor recreational facilities — a soccer field, a multipurpose field and tennis courts will be on the area of the site closest to Main Road, with the building behind them — set back more than 300 feet from the road.
The area of the site closest to the residential neighborhood will have only indoor sports “so neighbors won’t have a sound issue,” he said.
“We’re not proposing any exterior lighting except safety purposes in the parking areas,” Pawlowski said. “The soccer field, all-purpose field and tennis courts will not be lit.”
Pawlowski said the site plan calls for leaving natural vegetation in place around the entire perimeter of the site, including along Main Road.
The site plan depicts setbacks that are more than double the required setbacks from every property line, the developer said as he reviewed the map with board members.
The building is 194 feet from the property line of the closest neighbor to the east, Pawlowski said.
“The building will look nothing different than a regular Morton horse barn,” according to Pawlowski. “Scenically, driving down Main Road, we’re keeping every tree that’s there now,” other than the areas that need to be cleared for entrances to the site, he said.
Sports East has filed an application for a special exception use from the Zoning Board of Appeals in addition to an application for site plan approval from the Planning Board. The ZBA asked the Planning Board for its preliminary comments. The two boards will coordinate environmental review of the proposal under the State Environmental Quality Review Act.
Planning board chairman Donald Wilcenski said the planning department will prepare a staff report for the board before its next meeting on Jan. 25.
