Subdivision for Fort Salonga Owl Hill gets Smithtown planning board nod

A developer’s plan to subdivide and build houses at the historic Fort Salonga Owl Hill estate has won a key recommendation from the Smithtown Planning Board. 

Owl Hill Estates and Preserve -- whose principals include Rich Rauff and Michael J. Ryan, president of Amityville-based sports facility builder LandTek -- would build up to 17 homes on the 27.63-acre site off Sunken Meadow Road near Sunken Meadow State Park. The development would leave untouched a 6,500-square-foot mansion near the center of the site. 

The Smithtown Planning Board last week recommended that the Zoning Board of Appeals approve the company’s application for a variance to town zoning code that would permit regrading of steep slopes along the site’s Sunken Meadow Road edge. Owl Hill developers would build a cul-de-sac north from Sunken Meadow Road through that area to serve a cluster of 15 homes. The board of appeals vote on the variance will likely come later this year, but the developers will still need subdivision approval from the planning board.

If Owl Hill wins approval, it would be one of the largest subdivisions in Smithtown in recent years, along with Coffey Estates, an 18-lot subdivision in Nesconset, which won planning board approval last week.

Revised Owl Hill plans presented to the Planning Board would grow the mansion’s acreage after subdivision from 4.9 to 5.7 acres and preserve its stately driveway. The plans call for a 50-foot conservation easement buffering neighboring properties to the northwest that would slightly reduce the average size of most lots on the site. Clustering most of those lots would allow for preservation of about nine acres elsewhere on the site. 

The mansion was formerly owned by the family of Michael Yardney, an inventor who developed a catapult for jets in World War II and founded a company that made batteries for equipment used by astronauts on the moon. The Owl Hill developers bought the site from Yardney’s estate in 2020 for $6.2 million, according to property records. 

At hearings in the past year, neighbors have questioned the number of homes planned for the site and the subdivision lot sizes, which would average a little more than a half-acre each. Zoning regulations call for one-acre lots in the area.

In an interview, Vincent Trimarco Sr., a land use lawyer representing the Owl Hill developers, said clustering homes on smaller-than-typical lots was necessary to preserve green space that will be turned over to the town and kept “forever wild.” The lot occupied by the mansion cannot be further subdivided, he said. 

Suffolk County Legis. Robert Trotta (R-Fort Salonga) last spring sponsored a bill ordering appraisal of the site for possible purchase and preservation, but Trimarco said “there isn’t an offer so far that would be acceptable to the developer.” 

Trotta, in an interview this week, said he still hoped to preserve a site he viewed as important because of its proximity to Sunken Meadow State Park and an environmentally sensitive pond east of Fort Salonga Road.

“I want to try to save as much land as I can in western Suffolk,” he said. “We don’t need to build houses on every piece of property.”