On Tuesday evening, Aug. 20, the Riverhead Town Board will hold a public hearing that will shape the future of our communities in both Riverhead and Southold towns. The topic will be the proposed new zoning changes north of Sound Avenue to permit luxury resorts under the protective coloration of Agricultural Tourism.

The first target is farmland at 3994 Sound Ave., east of the Willow Ponds condominiums. Advocates have suggested that up to six parcels of RA80-zoned land north of Sound Avenue from Baiting Hollow to the Riverhead-Southold town line would be eligible for resort development, bringing as many as 1,000 rooms and the accompanying traffic to occupy and supply them.

The resort development would be the principal use, consisting of a building or buildings providing overnight accommodations for guests for a stay of no longer than two weeks. Permitted accessory uses within the development would include restaurants, conference rooms, indoor personal amenity services such as a salon or spa. “Limited outdoor amenities” for overnight guests “customarily associated with inns and resorts,” such as a pool and tennis courts would also be allowed in the development site. Access to the Long Island Sound for resort guests would be provided by a single walkway/ stairway with no greater than 10% disturbance of the bluff area.

Public reaction at board meetings and in letters submitted to the town clerk has been overwhelmingly negative. Willow Ponds Homeowners Association president Bill Wandling, accompanied by a dozen fellow residents, told the Town Board at its Dec. 19 meeting it is “a terrible idea.” The response from Supervisor Tim Hubbard and other Town Board members was patronizing and dismissive. There is an EPCAL-like tone in the official discourse that demeans critics.

Advocates claim to have a mission to protect the agricultural land north of Sound Avenue by encapsulating 70% of it within the resorts on the premise that folks from outside will pay to spend a holiday or host a conference while embedded in local farming. Skeptics who think this is just spin to ease approval of the resorts point to the history of the proposal.

An initial public hearing scheduled for February 2024 was abruptly canceled amid significant — and pointed — concerns raised by area farming advocates and Southold Town officials.“An absolute nightmare,” Southold Town Board member Greg Doroski said at the time. “I think there’s nothing they could do that would disturb that historic corridor more than this.” Residents of the Willow Ponds on the Sound condominium complex have been expressing for months their opposition to a proposed development next door, which has been advertised by Alfred Weissman Real Estate as a 105-acre site with more than 600 linear feet of coastline and a 70-acre organic farm.

But there was a big problem: zoning of the intended land restricts use to agriculture and lowto medium-density residential development. Mr. Weissman had two solutions. First, in the well-established tradition of local political influence, he made contributions to at least two members of the Town Board, Mr. Hubbard ($1,275) and Ken Rothwell ($1,000).

Second, he paid for outside technical assistance to influence what town planners and lawyers would recommend to the board. On Jan. 30, 2024, Riverhead Local revealed that on April 13, 2023, Eric Russo, the attorney for the resort developer, confirmed to community development director Dawn Thomas that Mr. Weissman was paying VJB Engineering to provide assistance to the town for “the preparation of the necessary [State Environmental Quality Review Act] analysis review/compliance for [transfers of development rights] and Special Permit Amendments for Agri-Tourism.”

Mr. Hubbard is at one moment enthusiastic about the proposal and at the next critical, reminiscent of his evolving stance on EPCAL. “At this point in time, it’s still a discussion,” the supervisor said at a July joint work session with the Southold Town Board. “And the farmers aren’t 100% on board with it for various reasons. The people don’t seem to be on board with it. And then you have to weigh the negatives versus the positives; right now I see a lot more negatives than positives.”

Despite what they heard from their Southold counterparts and from their own constituents, a few hours later the Town Board unanimously approved the rezoning resolution that is the subject of the Aug. 20 hearing. When there was an uproar about construction of a charter high school in the same area on the south side of Sound Avenue, the board lost enthusiasm for that project. Can the same thing happen to the resort zoning plan?

In addition to the dubious logic that this is the best way to save agricultural land, the old chestnuts about how every development project generates tax revenue and jobs will be brought forth. That may even be true in the short term, but it misses the point about what future we want for Riverhead and the North Fork. To see the impact of the inexorable path of profit-driven development, look west to the rapidly growing suburban towns and east to the resorts along the Sound in Greenport. Is that what we want for our future?

John McAuliff lives in Riverhead and is the coordinator of residents advocacy group EPCAL Watch.