Residents ask Huntington board to drop Avalon Bay plan

The Avalon Bay housing development proposed for Huntington Station dominated the town board's meeting Tuesday, even though the measure was not on the agenda, as dozens of residents alternately asked and demanded the board abandon the plan.

Residents opposed to the 490-unit development said during the public comment session that the board should focus first on ridding the area of crime and gangs.

"This is just not the right time and place," said Chris O'Donnell, a lifelong Huntington Station resident who said he recently put his home up for sale. "It's going to be too many people."

The board is slated to vote on the measure on Sept. 21. First proposed in 2008, the development would feature housing near mass transit for people of varying income and ages, with the aim of decreasing dependence on cars. The proposed site would be a half mile from the Huntington Long Island Rail Road station on a 26-acre wooded parcel.

Before the meeting, about two dozen people in support of Avalon Bay held a news conference in front of town hall to reiterate their support and announced they had 300 letters from Huntington Station residents in favor of the project.

"Town board members have to have the courage to rise above the clamor and do the right thing for Huntington Station and all of Huntington," said Richard Koubek, president of the Huntington Housing Coalition, said in his address to the board.

At a March 9 public hearing before the Huntington Town Board, speakers overwhelmingly supported the project, which is expected to cost $100 million. But in the following months, opposition to the project grew. The town board twice delayed a vote on a zoning change for the project.

Complicating matters is that the approval of Avalon Bay will simultaneously establish the Huntington Station Transit Oriented District, which some residents fear will lay groundwork for other such developments.

Under the proposal for the transit-oriented district, any parcel of land that is at least 10 acres could possibly be turned into a TOD, provided it is half mile from the Huntington Station Long Island Rail Road Station and gets prior approval from the town board.

The Suffolk County Planning Commission is reconsidering a directive it set that the acreage in Huntington's TOD be less than 10 acres, something that would have required approval by the town board of at least 4-1. If the commission reconsiders the directive, only a simple majority would be needed. Town Board member Mark Mayoka offered a resolution to place a moratorium on the Avalon Bay Huntington Station Transit Oriented District resolution for a year but no other board member seconded the motion and it failed.