Listen to this articleThe Huntington Town Board voted Tuesday to approve new zoning for a portion of Melville that aims to create a walkable town center.
The new Melville Town Center Overlay District, which passed by a three-to-one vote, will allow redevelopment of under-utilized and obsolete office buildings and empty parking lots into as many as 1,500 new multifamily housing units, neighborhood retail and pocket parks.
The new zoning is the result of a 16-year-old idea to transform Long Island’s corporate corridor into an employment-oriented town center. Formerly called the Melville Employment Center, the concept was first mentioned in the town’s 2008 Comprehensive Plan and fully laid out in a 2013 study commissioned by the town.
The town center area is south of the Long Island Expressway and north of Ruland Road, from Walt Whitman Road to Pinelawn Road and fronting along Maxess Road, Baylis Road, Corporate Center Drive and Melville Park Road.
While the proposed new zoning was dormant for nearly a decade, the plan to allow multifamily housing with a town center concept was revived and given new urgency over the last two years amid concerns of rising vacancies in some of Melville’s aging office buildings.
In a letter to residents posted on the town’s website earlier this year, Huntington Supervisor Ed Smyth explained the impetus for the new zoning district.
“The number of vacant office buildings will grow and create public safety and quality-of-life issues,” Smyth wrote. “As the rent-rolls of the existing buildings go down, so does the value of the property, triggering tax grievances to lower the assessed value.”
Smyth added that the goal of the new zoning is to “transform Melville into an economically viable region of Huntington, without diminishing the value of surrounding homes. This proposal will stimulate economic and social activity in Melville by attracting major investments of private money into the area.”
And while the new zoning allows for redevelopment of existing properties, each individual proposed project will still require a site-specific environmental review and be subject to approval by the town. The town will have the ability to pause the development of residential units after 400 units for impact assessment.
The new Melville zoning limits building heights to 50 feet and four stories of occupied space. It also requires developers of residential projects to pay a fee of $1,500 for each unit over 25 with most of the money, 75 percent, going towards a fund to support town center parks and the rest directed to the fire and ambulance district to cover increased costs.
Those in the Long Island commercial real estate and development community applauded the town for approving the Melville Town Center zoning.
“Supervisor Smyth and the town board recognize not only Long Island’s dire need for housing but the need to rethink the future of our region’s largest business corridor,” said Kyle Strober, executive director of the Association for a Better Long Island. “The town’s efforts will foster a ‘live work play’ community, which is essential if we are to attract and retain our next gen workforce, a key determining factor in whether businesses remain or retreat from any region.”