Smithtown relaxes height limit of storage warehouses

Developers of mini-storage warehouses can now build up to 35 feet in most of Smithtown, but will not be allowed to build in downtown business districts. 

Smithtown’s Town Council approved the zoning changes at a meeting last Thursday.

Town planner Peter Hans in February said the law was intended to keep storage facilities in industrial districts and out of downtowns, where the town’s planners and elected officials would rather see retail or office space. 

Draft legislation drew criticism from both storage industry representatives who said customers wanted easy access to their facilities and from some residents who feared relaxing the height restrictions, previously set at 24 feet, could lead to a proliferation of hulking warehouses.

“I don’t see it,” said Hans in an interview last week, especially given the impact the coronavirus is expected to have on the regional and national economy. Any warehouses that do get built are unlikely to dwarf single-family homes and businesses, which are also allowed to build to 35 feet, he said. 

A planning department staffer said earlier this year that the rule change could lead to changes in plans for a $2 million facility to be built on vacant land near the Volkswagen dealership on Middle Country Road between Seagram Road and Southern Boulevard. That facility’s height was initially set at 24 feet. 

The town council, which suspended the open meetings law as part of its efforts to limit transmission of the coronavirus in the town, also last week approved a site plan application for 58 additional parking spaces at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center near Commack Road and Henry Street in Commack.

“There’s a real parking shortage there and for people going through what they’re going through already — the last thing they want to go through is finding parking,” Hans said of the facility’s cancer treatment patients. 

Parking expansion at the facility, which sits across from the Commack South Shopping Center, is unlikely to affect residents, Hans said.

By Nicholas Spangler

nicholas.spangler@newsday.comspanglernewsday

Nicholas Spangler is a general assignment reporter and has worked at Newsday since 2010.