Babylon hit with a pair of lawsuits over planned Suffolk Technology Park in Wyandanch

The Town of Babylon has been hit with two lawsuits that challenge a proposed industrial park in Wyandanch that has already cleared most of the approval hurdles in the town.

The legal action targets the Suffolk Technology Park, a 100-acre development that would run from Little East Neck Road east to North 28th Street and from south of Circle Drive to Long Island Avenue. The park, proposed by San Francisco-based Bristol Group, would contain nine one-story buildings housing up to 40 companies on undeveloped land leased from Pinelawn Memorial Park.

The project has spurred tension between the communities of Wyandanch, where the park would be located, and Wheatley Heights, which is adjacent to the site.

Bristol promises the park will result in about 2,000 permanent jobs and an infusion of $5.6 million annually in tax revenue, with $3.6 million going to the Wyandanch school district. Bristol also has offered more than $2 million in givebacks to both communities, including $1 million in scholarship money.

The type of lawsuit filed in both instances, known as an Article 78, is a legal action used to challenge state and local government decisions. The two suits, filed late last week by separate groups of residents, took different pathways to the same destination: that the town board’s approval process for the park was flawed.

One lawsuit's focus: traffic

One suit centered on the negative impacts it said the park would have on neighbors, focusing on the town’s approval of State Environmental Quality Review Act findings for the project.

The suit, brought by the Concerned Taxpayers of Wheatley Heights/Dix Hills Inc., a local civic group, as well as neighbors of the site, stated that the town “lacked information needed for it to take a hard look at certain potentially significant adverse impacts” and that the approval should therefore be declared null and void.

One of those impacts is traffic, and the lawsuit challenged a traffic study done for the project that found no adverse impacts from the park.

The lawsuit stated that existing conditions on nearby streets such as Little East Neck Road are “horrendous,” and attorney Frederick Eisenbud, of Ronkonkoma, who represents the residents, had a traffic expert evaluate the study.

While Bristol has promised traffic mitigation efforts, according to the expert, Lawrence M. Levine, the study itself “predicts serious traffic deterioration prior to mitigation” with no specifics on when it would be done.

According to the environmental report, preparation and construction on the site, including “blasting operations,” are expected to last more than five years.

“My clients are upset that the town board would place a 100-acre industrial complex in a residential neighborhood with roads that can’t possibly support more traffic, and impose so many impacts on the people who live there,” Eisenbud told Newsday. “This is probably a very well-designed project, but it’s just in the wrong place.”

Second suit's focus: cemetery

The second lawsuit targeted a different aspect of the industrial park: its impact on Greenlawn Cemetery, a historic Black and Indigenous cemetery that abuts the site of the proposed project.

Residents have accused owner Pinelawn of neglecting the cemetery, which has several Black Civil War veterans buried there, along with hundreds of others who were reburied there in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of the Historical Conservation Society of Wheatley Heights and Wyandanch Inc. and Ernestine Jackson Thompson, listed in the suit as a “lineal descendant of deceased persons” buried in Greenlawn. The society was formed last year by a group of Wheatley Heights residents united in their opposition to the park.

The group is led by Love Foy, who last year filed an Article 78 lawsuit against the town board. That suit was later thrown out for being “premature,” because at the time the town had not yet made a final determination on the environmental review or the rezoning.

Two weeks ago, Foy also wrote state Attorney General Letitia James asking that the state conduct “a proper archaeology study” of the property.

“This is historically significant land and we do not want the memory and dignity of the African-Americans, Native Americans, and anyone else buried on this land to be disrespected in perpetuity,” Foy wrote. 

Among the charges leveled in the lawsuit was that a 2024 archaeological study accepted by the town as part of the SEQRA process was flawed. 

J. Stewart Moore, the Central Islip attorney for the residents, said there is concern that more Black and Indigenous people may be buried in the area slated to be developed.

The town also incorrectly referred to Greenlawn Cemetery as “undeveloped cemetery property” in its approval of the rezoning, the lawsuit stated.

The redevelopment plan, and the town board’s approval of it, “minimizes the significance of the African American and/or Indigenous ancestry decedents lives through the failure to disclose or acknowledge their existence in the cemetery,” the lawsuit petition stated.

“Drive up and down Pinelawn Road and look at how all those cemeteries are being maintained,” Moore told Newsday. Greenlawn is “a dumping ground," he said. 

The parties being sued have yet to file a response to the suits. Reached for comment, town spokesperson Ryan Bonner told Newsday in an email that “as a matter of policy, the Town of Babylon does not comment on pending litigation.”

Bram Weber, the Melville attorney representing Bristol, emailed Newsday that the company is “confident in the thoroughness of the environmental review and the Town review process which was conducted in compliance with SEQRA.”

Katherine Heaviside, a spokesperson for Pinelawn, sent Newsday a statement that read: “Until Pinelawn is served and has a chance to review this matter, we cannot comment on the merits of the case.”

The town in June approved new zoning for the project, the last of the town board approvals needed. Bristol submitted revised plans for the park to the town last month, and those are still under review, Bonner said.

The project must have site plan approval from the town planning board, and the leasing of the land has to be approved by the state’s cemetery board.