Avalon Bay developer seeks help from LI planning council

A developer seeking to build nearly 500 units of housing in Huntington Station appealed to the Long Island Regional Planning Council Tuesday for support, expressing frustration that the process has been upended by "misinformation."

Avalon Bay's vice president of development, Matthew Whalen, found solid support for the project - 490 units in two- and three-story buildings on 26 acres of land near mass transit - from the council.

The council is a volunteer advisory panel of town supervisors, village mayors, and civic and business leaders that serves as a regional forum on key issues affecting Long Island.

Several council members said the $100-million proposed Avalon Bay development in Huntington Station is just what Long Island needs, bringing financial investment and jobs to a struggling community.

"We need a huge win in Huntington Station," said Paul Tonna, vice chairman of the planning council and a former Republican Suffolk County legislator who represented Huntington Station for 12 years, until 2005. "We have somebody willing to invest $100 million in Huntington Station, to make sure we have local labor. . . . We have it abutting a train station, a railroad track where right now currently there are day laborers in tents. . . . People on Long Island are crazy to have people disagree about this project," he said.

Whalen told the council the process has dragged on for 2 1/2 years and in that time "let people spread misinformation and distort the facts."

Whalen asked the council to designate the Huntington Station project one of "regional significance," a designation the council has given to a handful of development projects in recent years. Whalen hoped such support would influence Huntington Town board members to approve the project when it votes Tuesday.

The council could not actually vote to name the project regionally significant because it was one person short of a quorum. But Tonna and six other council members present Tuesday - an eighth, board chairman John Cameron recused himself because his engineering firm has worked on other Avalon Bay projects - voted to send Huntington Town Supervisor Frank Petrone a letter stating their support for the project.

Petrone, through his spokesman A.J. Carter, reserved comment about all matters pertaining to the project and zoning until next Tuesday's meeting.

Tonna, who said he grew up in Huntington Station but now lives in South Huntington, strongly condemned criticism of the project. He even challenged Huntington Town Councilman Mark Mayoka, who attended the planning council's meeting, to walk the community with him to find out what "real people" think. Mayoka agreed to the idea.

Mayoka said he hadn't taken a position on the project, but said residents want the issue of crime in the community addressed first and are "afraid of this project."