Community Meeting on Islip Pines Project Set for Thursday

Community residents between Blue Point and West Sayville, especially business owners, are being urged to attend a meeting Thursday night regarding a revamped Islip Pines proposal to be built along Sunrise Highway and Veterans Highway in the Bayport-Blue Point area.

According to an email from the Greater Sayville Chamber of Commerce the meeting will be held at the Sayville Library at 7 p.m. on May 23.

The project developers have revised the original plans, and according to an email exchange between the chamber and a Blue Point civic activist, the Islip Town Planning Department considers the proposal “an improvement.”

“We need to be pro-active if we want to have control over the final product that is presented to the town board,” writes Pat Mitchell, who serves as chairperson of the South Shore Civic Alliance.

Mitchell states in the email chain that he and Greater Sayville Chamber of Commerce President Bill Etts met with town planning officials last week regarding the project.

Last June Islip’s planning department recommended a study on how the Islip Pines project would impact local downtown business areas, such as Bayport and Sayville as well as Ronkonkoma and Holbrook, following a well-attended hearing on the project in March, 2012.

As reported by Patch in 2012, local chambers and civic organizations are extremely concerned about the retail aspect of the massive project.

A Patch reader poll last year revealed 37 percent of residents believe it would hurt the downtown areas and 23 percent believe it will bring added traffic congestion to the area, and another 17 percent state it would diminish the suburban feel of the area. The Holbrook development proposal involves 136 acres for mixed-use development. Serota Properties initially proposed 250 one and two-bedroom housing units, more than 400,000 square feet of retail space, a movie theater and a 1.3 million square feet of industrial space, which would include a hotel, on the land at the northeast corner of Veterans and Sunrise highways.

The project was first proposed in 2008, but stalled following the death of Nathan Serota in 2010. In making the proposal the developer noted that Serota Properties has paid more than $10 million in property taxes over the 28 years it has owned this property and if approved the project would bring $6 million per year in property taxes at current rates and provide permanent jobs for 2,600 people.

The developer has stated that the retail aspect is not intended to compete with local downtowns and listed out an Apple Store, Men’s Warehouse, Gap, Carrabba’s Italian Grill and Dick’s Sporting Goods as potential tenants for the space.