Kings Park condominium plan would feature hundreds of units, but an OK could take years

A Jericho developer has proposed a $189.5 million Kings Park condominium community that, if built, would be one of the largest residential projects in Smithtown since the 1960s subdivisions.

Beechwood Homes’ application for Country Pointe Estates at Kings Park envisions 391 two- and three-bedroom units with boccie and pickleball, a sports bar and other amenities on 71 acres of what is now mostly wooded land north of Old Northport Road and east of Old Indian Head Road. 

The proposal outlined in filings submitted to Smithtown and Suffolk County planners comes as Gov. Kathy Hochul announced a goal of adding 800,000 new homes statewide in the next decade. It follows years of warnings by Smithtown officials that the town — whose housing stock consists almost exclusively of single-family homes, many three bedrooms or larger and more than half a century old — needs to diversify its housing offerings to attract younger residents and keep older ones.

It would also create 40 workforce housing units selling for less than market rate, boosting a 2017 town program that has so far created only 18 units.

But approval could take years. The proposal would require a zone change from single-family to town house residential, variances and probably an environmental impact statement, along with construction of a sewage treatment plant and 1,302 parking spaces. 

The journey began with a false start at the March 1 County Planning Commission meeting, triggered because of the site’s proximity to county land and roads. County planners delivered a report recommending disapproval of the zone change, but the proposal did not get a hearing. A county spokeswoman said that was “due to an incomplete referral.” Smithtown planner Peter Hans said the town clerk’s office had sent the application over before staffers had done their environmental review.

The county report found the proposal “constitutes an over-intensification of the use of the premise” and would undermine town zoning. It also found the site, a little less than a mile from downtown Kings Park, was “remotely situated” and without the neighborhood amenities desirable for multiuse purposes. 

In an email, Beechwood principal Steven Dubb called the recommendation “premature,” lacking key information from what he said would be a rigorous and wide-ranging study of his project’s possible impact to the surrounding area.

In a phone interview, he said he hoped to serve a broad and growing demographic: “These are people who have lived in single-family homes for decades, their kids have moved out, they no longer want to deal with maintenance, mowing the lawn and snow removal. They don’t need all that space and they don’t want to pay exorbitant real estate taxes, but they love Long Island and they don’t want to leave it,” Dubb said.

Similar units at another Beechwood project in Smithtown, Country Pointe Woods, sell for $750,000 to $899,000, he said in an email, with $5 million estimated yearly tax receipts for the proposed project. 

Dubb said he was in contract to buy land from the three owners of separate parcels at the site. They include KPE II, a company that once envisioned building single-family homes on its land; Pebble Hill Building Corp.; and Raleigh Capital Limited Partnership. That company shares an address with Raleigh’s Poultry Farm, which has sold eggs and farm goods since 1960.

The development site includes the farm, and an environmental assessment form filled out by the developer indicates jobs from farm operations would be eliminated.

Members of the family that owns the farm did not comment.