kings park psychiatric center

Ghostly hospital becomes a live issue

By John Rather

March 27, 2005 - New York Times

 

A PENDING state sale of the former Kings Park Psychiatric Center to a developer with tentative plans for up to 1,800 townhouse and condominium units, perhaps including a small number of lower-priced ''workforce housing'' units, is facing mounting opposition in Smithtown.

The transfer of the 368-acre North Shore property, one of the largest undeveloped parcels remaining on the Island, would complete a state program carried out by the Empire State Development Corporation to sell three former psychiatric centers in Suffolk County to developers who agreed to clean up the properties at their own expense before building. Private owners have already taken over the other two sites, Central Islip and Pilgrim State.

But Patrick R. Vecchio, the Smithtown supervisor, is urging Governor Pataki to block the Kings Park sale to the Arker Companies of Woodmere. He asked Mr. Pataki to instead make the property into parkland -- adding to the 153-acre Nissequogue State Park that Mr. Pataki created on the shoreline of the former center in 1999 -- or find some other less-intensive use after talks with local officials. He also reiterated a demand that the state pay for the cleanup as a prelude to what he called intelligent development.

In a letter to Mr. Pataki, Mr. Vecchio said that the state policy of passing on the expense of cleaning up abandoned buildings, debris and contamination on the property, which is estimated at $50 million, would compel Arker to build intensively to cover costs. He said that would overburden schools and roads in Kings Park, a hamlet in Smithtown, and cause environmental damage.

'The community of Kings Park should not be forced to endure a continuing parade of speculative land use proposals and uncertainty about the future of the community,'' he said in the letter. Two earlier sales of the property fell through when developers withdrew in the face of similar opposition.

 

Arker has a contract to buy the property for a reported but unconfirmed $6.5 million, but would need approval from the town, which controls zoning, for its development. It has yet to file plans but said in an application to the state's Department of Environmental Conservation for a tax credit under the state's Brownfield Cleanup Program that it wanted to build up to 1,800 units of housing. Arker would carry out the project in a joint venture with Cherokee Northeast of East Rutherford, N.J., a major developer of so-called brownfields, which are former industrial or manufacturing sites, many of them polluted.

Mr. Vecchio is asking the D.E.C. to reject the request because, he said, the proposed development is inconsistent with the town's waterfront revitalization plan. He has raised the same objection with Charles Gargano, the chairman of the Empire State Redevelopment Corporation, which manages the sale of state-owned real estate.

Mr. Pataki has declined to intervene. A spokesman, Andrew Rush, said Mr. Vecchio's letter was forwarded to Empire, and Ron Jury, a spokesman for Empire, said the corporation was working on a response to Mr. Vecchio.

Mr. Vecchio's actions are strongly backed in Kings Park, where many of the hamlet's 16,000 residents fear a flood of new public school students if the state sells to Arker.

''We are past concerned,'' said Edward Hogan, the school board president of the 3,000-student Kings Park Central School District. ''Our community is 97 percent residential, we have no commercial tax base whatsoever, and this would be the absolute death of Kings Park.''

Mr. Hogan said community groups planned a march on April 2 from the high school to the psychiatric center's entrance to dramatize their opposition.

Charles Gardner, president of the Kings Park Chamber of Commerce and director of consumer affairs for Suffolk County, said the chamber would take part in the march. ''There is 100-percent negative reaction to this proposal,'' he said.

Mr. Hogan and Mr. Gardner said they favored a mixed-use development of the property including businesses or industry that would yield tax revenues for the school district.

 

Mr. Vecchio came under attack from a Smithtown councilwoman, Jane Conway, for what she called his belated attempt to stave off the sale of the property. ''Stepping in at the 11th hour is better than not stepping in at all, but he is somewhat late in coming to the table,'' said Ms. Conway, a Republican who is mounting a primary race against Mr. Vecchio, the supervisor for the past 27 years.

'Desmond Ryan, executive director of the Association for a Better Long Island, a developers' lobbying group in Hauppauge, said Mr. Vecchio has failed to provide leadership for orderly redevelopment of the site.

Take into consideration that the facility has been closed for almost 10 years now,'' he said. ''And now he writes a letter to the governor saying it's time to open up a dialogue between the town and the state. It's ridiculous. Vision, leadership and political courage are not qualities you will find in the supervisor's office in Smithtown.''

Mr. Vecchio said he had always played the leading role in working out the property's future. ''Desmond Ryan is a shill for the developers,'' he said.

Allan Arker, a partner in the Arker Companies, said plans for the property were still being drafted. He said the developers would meet with local officials, school officials and Kings Park residents. ''This has got to include an exchange of ideas with community leaders,'' he said.

He said the development would be confined to 90 of the property's 368 acres. This would be in accord with a pledge from Mr. Pataki that three quarters of the site would be preserved. Mr. Arker gave no specifics on the number of housing units that would be designated as so-called workforce housing. He said the company was studying the reuse of some of the brick buildings that once housed patients and hoped to close on the property by late spring.

 

The county executive, Steve Levy, said he favored a mixed-use development that included substantial numbers of attached one- and two-bedroom units priced for younger people. Mr. Levy said schools would not be overburdened because the tenants or owners would move up and out as they needed more living space to begin raising families.

But Mr. Levy said the county had limited influence over any development plan. ''The town controls the zoning, and the state controls the property,'' he said.
Jim Morgo, the county commissioner of economic development and an advocate for workforce housing, said attached homes produced more tax revenues than they cost in services. He said any development at Kings Park that failed to provide such housing would be flawed. ''It was public property and there should be some public good served,'' he said.

There appears to be little enthusiasm for affordable housing among Kings Park residents.

''Kings Park has served the needs of the State of New York and the region for over 100 years,'' Mr. Gardner of the Chamber of Commerce said of the psychiatric center, which housed almost 10,000 people at its peak in the 1950's. ''We don't feel like having the burden of everybody else's workforce housing descending on our school district.''

 

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