The owner of the old oyster factory site at the end of Shipyard Lane, who first proposed building a hotel, spa, restaurant and marina there in 2003, now wants to do extensive site work to “protect the shoreline,” its representatives told Southold Town Trustees at a packed public hearing last night at Town Hall.
But the Trustees — and the East Marion community — are having none of it.
“It will be tabled,” Trustees president John Bredemeyer said at the outset of the public hearing. “We all recognize that it is in fact a segmentation.”
Segmented review — piecemeal review and approval of a development — is prohibited by the State Environmental Quality Review Act.
Oki-Do Ltd. is seeking permits to replace bulkheading and jetties, build a rock revetment and dredge a channel between an on-site boat basin and Gardiners Bay, replace a dilapidated fixed dock in the basin with a new floating dock and undertake a wetlands restoration project on part of the site.
The shoreline work is but one aspect of the property owner’s overall plan to develop the 18.7-acre bayfront site and SEQRA requires coordinated review of the entire plan, Bredemeyer said.
Patricia Moore, attorney for owner Oki-Do Ltd., told the trustees last night that the work now proposed is “strictly limited to the preservation and protection of the property,” which sustained significant damage in Superstorm Sandy. She said it’s “separate and distinct from the site plan.”
Oki-Do has already obtained the necessary permits for the dredging, bulkheading and revetments from the N.Y. State Department of Environmental Conservation and the Army Corps of Engineers, David Kennedy of VHB Engineering said.
Oki-Do in 2006 submitted plans to build a “holistic health center” at the old oyster factory site. The proposal was declared a “Type I” action for purposes of coordinated review under SEQRA and the applicant prepared a draft environmental impact statement, which it submitted to the Southold Planning Board, the lead agency for review, in 2008. The planning board requested more information and revisions to the site plan.
Photo: Denise Civiletti
Attorney David Dubin, representing the Cleaves Point Condominium Association, called the current application “a textbook case of improper segmentation.”
“In June 2015, because the applicant failed to address the planning board’s concerns and because nine years had elapsed, the planning board directed the applicant to start the application anew.
Instead, they went to the DEC, the Army Corps and trustees with a broken-down application,” Dubin said.
“If they want to protect the property where have they been the last 16 years?” Dubin asked.
Area residents weighed in with concerns and objections ranging from soil contamination and water pollution to the transit of trucks carrying heavy equipment and materials on local roads.
“I am tremendously concerned about the toxic soup in that basin right now,” said Candy Harper, representing the Marion Manor Property Owners Association, the community to the east of the site.
“We don’t know what’s down there. We don’t know what we’re going to be disturbing and distributing across the site. We need an environmental study into the toxicity of the site before we can even think about doing this,” Harper said.
The East Marion Community Association, which has been opposed to the Oki-Do development from the start, objects to the current permit application, said representative Anne Murray. The group submitted a letter detailing its objections to the trustees.
The March 18 letter from EMCA president Robin Imandt questioned the issuance of a permit by the Army Corps of Engineers, which she said received and acknowledged the Southold Planning Board’s objection to the issuance of an Army Corps permit “until the applicant completed the pending SEQRA process.” The planning board told the Army Corps it was still awaiting the DEIS it had requested.
After that, the Army Corps wrote to the applicant advising that it “must demonstrate to this office that you have satisfied the Town of Southold’s request to complete the SEQRA process,” Imandt wrote. So EMCA was surprised to learn the Army Corps of Engineers went ahead and issued a permit on August 25, 2015.
“We’re glad to see that you’re adhering to the State Environmental Quality Review Act,” Murray told the trustees, “because if ever there was a property that needs to be environmentally reviewed, it’s this one.”
