Town Board Approves Zoning Change for Downtown on Main Apartments

A plan to build more than 50 apartments on Smithtown Main Street has moved one step closer to becoming a reality. 

Smithtown Town Board voted unanimously to lift building restrictions on the former Nassau-Suffolk lumberyard for a mixed-use development in exchange for the developer's agreement raze the existing building by next spring at their Tuesday afternoon meeting. 

North Fork Management & Maintenance, LLC has submitted plans to build mixed-used retail and apartment complex at the site of the former Nassau-Suffolk lumberyard on West Main Street. 

The proposed plans, which have been recently revised being blasted by Smithtown Planning Department at a June 25 hearing, call for four separate buildings on the lot, three residential and one mixed use retail and apartment complex.

Three buildings each three-stories high, roughly 5,0000 square-feet in size would contain 12 rental units. A fourth building of roughly 11,149-square-feet would face West Main Street containing a mixed retail-apartment use with 20 apartments on the second and third floors of the building. 

In order to move forward with construction, Northfork Management needed the town board to lift a restrictive covenant on the property requiring the backend to only be used as a lumber yard, put in place after a zoning change in 1987. 

Supervisor Patrick Vecchio said the condition was granted on one condition: the existing condemned buildings are demolished by April 1, 2014. 

The former lumberyard became the subject of a grand jury report after demolition began without a town permit, despite a stop work order. 

According to the 42-page report, the Grand Jury found that the demolition at the property, listed as “Commercial Parcel A,” was done in “a dangerous and unacceptable manner” and done with "an utter disregard for the well-being of local citizens, in particular those residents living next to Commercial Parcel A."

Yet, Smithtown Board of Ethics has found the town officials did not violate any ethics during the demolition of the former lumber yard on Main Street.

The Town of Smithtown's Board of Site Plan Review - the town board - must still approve the design of Downtown on Main before it moves forward.