Residents Still Fighting Against Island Hills Development

Sayville, NY — The Island Hills golf course in Sayville closed its doors in 2015 but the fate of the 114-acre property is still a heated issue for many local residents. In 2017, Rechler Equity Partners submitted an application for a zoning change to the Town of Islip for the vacant site at 458 Lakeland Avenue in order to construct what they've named Greybarn Sayville. The luxury rental community will have 27 buildings, 1,365 rental apartments and retail space, according to the Greater Islip Association.

The group, which opposes the zoning change, will be hosting an informational meeting on February 29th, at 12 p.m. at the Sayville Public Library for opponents to discuss next steps in their grassroots efforts. Opponents have developed a website and Facebook group that currently has 2,000 members as well.

Susan Mantovani is one of the directors of the Greater Islip Association. She says this meeting is another step in a long process of organizing opposition.

"Right now we are waiting for the environmental studies to be completed. It’s been quiet so we are using this time to gear up again, catch everybody up to speed about what the proposed zone change is, what we’ve done so far, and what we still need to do.

Last year we had people stand up and speak at Town meetings, we protested at Town Hall and also in front of the golf course, did a lot of letter writing, formed our non-profit, and had a very successful fundraiser last March where we raised almost $19,000 to use towards our future fight."

Rechler Equity Partners states on their website for the project that once the environmental impact study is completed it will be presented to the public.

"It’s important to remember that the concept for this property is in the preliminary stages of a lengthy planning and review process. As part of this process, we have held numerous meetings and presentations with local residents, including small group meetings, and continue our contact with the community."

Concerns about the proposal range from environmental, to traffic-related, to the additional strain on local services. Mantovani summarizes the main objections residents have expressed to her during her time working with the opposition groups.

"Some people express how they’d like it to remain green space, others express how building this is completely out of scale for the area as it alone raises the population of Sayville by about 15% in a single area. It could easily add an additional 2200 cars to our roadways and the Merge. It will add more traffic to the existing side roads who battle with the speeding cars already. Chester Ave and Bohemia Parkway already deal with that.

There are consequences to overdevelopment like pollution, scenic degradation, increase in traffic on already stressed roads like the nearby Sunrise Highway merge in Oakdale, as well as how this will affect our emergency services then there is our police department as well."