Holbrook residents organizing against Amazon's planned $1B, 140-acre warehouse

Residents are organizing to oppose a planned 4.2-million-square-foot Amazon facility in Holbrook even before developers have finalized their application with Islip Town.

The $1 billion complex would be Amazon's largest on Long Island. Newsday reported in July that Amazon planned to build the fulfillment warehouse on 140-acres at the intersection of Beacon Drive and Sunrise Highway, which is now just woodland. Amazon estimates it will employ 1,000 workers.

The group determined to stop the project met for the first time at Sachem Public Library on Wednesday. Between 50 and 60 residents showed up to volunteer, telling Newsday they opposed the project because of its size, traffic impact and concerns over noise.

"We’re creating a coalition of volunteers ... so that we can voice our concerns to those people who are in power to make the decisions that, we hope, will eventually oppose this warehouse," said AnnMarie Governale, one of the yet-to-be-named group’s organizers. "It has no place in our community."

The volunteer effort kicked off following a contentious community meeting at the Holbrook Fire Department in August, which was attended by more than 120 people. Almost everyone there opposed the project, Newsday previously reported.

A major sticking point for opponents is the project’s size. It would be 21 times bigger than Amazon’s largest existing Long Island facility, a delivery station in Syosset that’s roughly 200,000 square feet.

But the Holbrook project is very early on in the approval process and is subject to change. Amazon submitted its first application to Islip Town in July, but is revising that pitch after the town requested a zoning-related tweak. The company has not submitted the revised proposal.

Amazon spokesman Austin Stowe said the company was "committed to being a great neighbor" throughout the process. He emphasized that the company had altered other projects in response to resident feedback.

"Across the country, community input has helped shape how we design and operate our facilities and we welcome that same collaboration here," he told Newsday in an email. "We look forward to engaging with residents, sharing more about the project, and hearing their feedback."

It’s unclear whether tweaks to the development will be sufficient to sway the emerging opposition campaign, however.

Jim Kiernan, who showed up on Wednesday to volunteer for the opposition, called the warehouse "too massive of a project" and said the area was being turned into an "industrial park."

"I have to be honest — I wouldn’t want anything there. I like the natural look. I want to keep as many things natural as we can because we’re losing too much of our pines and losing too much of our wetlands. That’s what Long Island is and should be," he told Newsday.

The opposition campaign is working to analyze different aspects of the project — from traffic to environmental concerns — and also petition residents and organize attendance at public meetings, according to Governale.

The goal is to pressure town leaders to reject the proposal, according to multiple people who attended the meeting on Wednesday.

It’s not clear when the Amazon application will be resubmitted or when the Islip Town Planning Board will begin the consideration process. If the proposal works its way through the planning board, Islip’s five-member Town Board would have the final say on whether it goes ahead.

By Sam Kmack

sam.kmack@newsday.com

Sam Kmack covers the Town of Islip for Newsday. He is a graduate of the University of Southern California and previously worked as a city watchdog reporter in the Phoenix metro area, as well as an investigative journalist at the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting.