Calverton indoor skydiving project gets $250,000 lift

A planned indoor skydiving facility, which could draw between 50,000 and 100,000 people a year to a recreational operation in Calverton, has gotten a $250,000 state grant to help cover construction costs.

The grant would aid in transforming Skydive Long Island -- closed until March 29 -- from a seasonal to a year-round operation. The funding is part of $89 million in job-creation grants for Long Island announced last week by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo.

In June, when the project was first proposed to the Riverhead Town Board, the developers said their four-story wind tunnel would cost up to $5 million. The business requested from the Riverhead Industrial Development Agency a tax abatement, which would start at 50 percent and decrease each year until it ends in 10 years.

The IDA has scheduled a public hearing for Jan. 6 on the abatement. The indoor skydiving facility is expected to create 20 to 40 jobs.

Ray Maynard, owner of Skydive Long Island, said the indoor facility was a natural outgrowth of the existing program, which boasts of having the biggest skydiving planes on Long Island and takes people up to 13,500 feet for tandem skydiving.

He said the town-owned Enterprise Park, where Skydive Long Island now operates, has shown it can be used for several recreational activities, such as the popular F-14 indoor soccer facility created inside a former Grumman aircraft hangar.

Riverhead Town owns about 2,400 acres of undeveloped land at EPCAL, and about 60 percent of it is set aside for preservation. The town is preparing a comprehensive environmental impact statement on about 600 acres, which officials hope will let them subdivide and start selling off the land by the end of next year.