62 LONGISLANDPRESS.COM • NOVEMBER 2017 62 LONGISLANDPRESS.COM • SEPTEMBER 2017 62 LONGISLANDPRESS.CO M • SEPTEMBER 201-----------TUTU111
BUSINESS
By WARREN STRUGATCH
In 1917, John Lewis Childs, a
former New York politician with
a green thumb and a head for
business, began cultivating flowers,
bulbs and seeds on 335 acres in
St James. He called his property,
reasonably, Flowerfield.
Carved out of undeveloped space
on Smithtown’s eastern edge, this
horticultural outpost flourished
at the intersection of the region’s
historic east-west corridor, Route
25A, and its main local northsouth
connector, the winding
horse-and-buggy path known as
Long Hill Road, now Stony Brook
Road.
A century later, the crossroads –
now cornering the largest light
industry-zoned track remaining
in Smithtown – is at the center
of a heated battle dividing neighbors
over economic development,
responsibilities for infrastructure
improvement and the proper role of
government planners.
Access to mass transit helped Flowerfield
grow. The horticulture magnate
exploited the Long Island Railroad’s
pre-existing right of way through his
property, demanding – and getting
– his own station with a second-floor
greenhouse included. The Flowerfield
depot stood until 1958, providing
backyard shipping to Manhattan.
Childs died on a train to New York
in 1921. Several years later his widow
sold his beloved seed business to
a rival. His realty holdings went in
the Depression. A helicopter manufacturer
in Massapequa known as
the Gyrodyne Company of America
acquired the tract in ’51.
Gyrodyne stopped manufacturing
in the 1970s and became a Real
Estate Investment Trust. It then
converted a portion of the tract
into a small-scale light-industrial
park, preserving its open spaces
while attracting a mix-and-match
collection of local businesses. They
included a popular catering hall, a
successful delicatessen and, most
incongruously, a string of art studios
– the Ateliers at Flowerfields.
Even with these structures, Flowerfields
could rent out as the set for
a movie taking place in the 1920s
or ’30s. Its time-capsule seclusion,
however, is on borrowed time.
On Aug. 2, the Suffolk County
Planning Commission approved,
on 48 hours’ notice, a subdivision
application that – if green-lighted
by Smithtown – will transform
Flowerfield’s remaining 62 acres
into a sprawling commercial park.
Plans call for the construction of a
150 room hotel, a 124,000-squarefoot
medical office and a 220-room
assisted living facility. The project
will likely stimulate developers’
appetites for neighboring parcels,
in the process transmogrifying
one of Long Island’s last remaining
colonial-era communities.
Resistance, however, is growing.
Government officials, civic leaders
and community activists seemed
gobsmacked by the county planners’
August end run around
them all. The commishes not only
effectively pressed the mute button
on local homeowners and their
elected representatives, but decided,
for reasons only they know, to
waive the usual traffic studies and
environmental assessments. As for
dealing with the inevitable surge in
traffic, the board suggested Stony
Brook Road could carry it.
The planners apparently never even
asked Gyrodyne the buyer’s name.
The loudest civic opposition so far
has come from the Brookhaven
side, where residents stand to pay
the cost in infrastructure maintenance
while leaving economic
benefits on Smithtown’s side of the
table. Civic leaders in Brookhaven’s
Three Village area are particularly
galled.
The project’s most damning flaw,
however, is housing – the absolute
abject lack of it. For a region crying
for workforce housing, the idea
of creating a major project without
building a single new home
– incredibly, on a tract with LIRR
tracks running through – is incomprehensible.
On Nov. 15, the Smithtown Planning
Board considers Gyrodyne’s
subdivision application. Brookhaven
Town Supervisor Edward
Romaine told me he’ll break with
custom and speak at the session.
He’s also preparing a lawsuit.
I’ve spoken as well with some of
my Three Village neighbors, most
of whom wonder why the county
planners moved so fast with so little
discussion. They ask why traffic and
environmental impact studies were
omitted. Many want housing development
and mass transit options a
part of any construction.
In other words, they want a 21st
century development.
Bucolic Flowerfield won’t be a time
capsule forever. That doesn’t mean
it has to become Long Island’s
latest example of ill-conceived,
ill-planned and unsustainable
development.
LI Eye
At Flowerfield, dissension takes root
Homeowners resist Gydrodynes plans for construction at historic site
Gyrodyne Company of America made anti-submarine helicopters for the U.S. Navy.