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Southampton Full Gospel Church land is site of controversial Concern Housing development proposal. TOM GOGOLA
A controversial plan to build a housing complex on church land along County Road 39 in Southampton reached a milestone of sorts last week when the developer, Concern Housing, submitted its final environmental impact statement to the Town of Southampton for review.
Concern Housing’s Liberty Gardens proposal would see 50 units of housing constructed on 5 acres behind the Southampton Full Gospel Church, and split between affordable housing and housing for veterans — Concern Housing’s stock in trade at other affordable-housing complexes it operates, including Liberty Station in Port Jefferson Station.
“There’s been some back and forth,” said Concern Housing Executive Director Ralph Fasano of the FEIS. “At the request of the town and in response to the community,” he said, the project will now be scaled back by 10 units from the original 60 that was proposed.
“If it makes people happy and makes it more approvable,” he said, “we’re willing to do that. We are trying to do this economically, and we think we have figured out a way to make it work.”
Once the FEIS is finalized, he said, there would be another public hearing — those have tended to be quite contentious and well-attended — but noted that any further motion on the Concern Housing proposal would “likely be delayed until after the election” in November.
An October 2022 hearing at Town Hall featured dozens of veterans from other Concern Housing facilities who were bused in to express their support for the agency’s services on behalf of veterans — which include “wraparound” on-site support services for the vets.
The scaled-back plan now under consideration isn’t, however, moving one prominent and outspoken critic of the plan, Frances Genovese of Southampton, who said, “So what?” when apprised of the latest proposal from Concern Housing. “That doesn’t change anything. The reduction of 10 units means nothing.”
Genovese said her main objection — “There are many” — is that the project was “misrepresented to the public that it would be local workforce housing,” but would instead be filled with military veterans with psychiatric disabilities or addiction issues with drugs or alcohol.
Genovese also blasted the FEIS prepared by Concern Housing, describing it as “reprehensible” for failing to address, she said, “the front parcel” of the tract where the church is located and for inadequately addressing sewage issues associated with the proposal. She charged that the FEIS, required under the State Environmental Quality Review Act, had segmented the review to exclude the front parcel with the expectation that the town would “rubber-stamp it for approval.”
In November 2022, according to town documents, the Planning Board highlighted several concerns it had with the proposal following the submission of a draft environmental impact statement by Concern Housing in July. The board was concerned, it said, over “potential segmentation” of the final environmental report “by not including a future plan for the church parcel and the cumulative impacts of residential growth on County Road 39.”
Genovese and other community members opposed to the project are demanding a supplemental environmental impact statement to address those concerns.
Concern Housing’s most recent project is Liberty Station, located in Port Jefferson station, a 77-unit condominium community that’s split between affordable housing and housing for veterans. It opened in 2021.
The nonprofit has been in business for more than 50 years and is one of the largest housing agencies in the State of New York, with more than 250 locations around the state housing some 1,500 people. The organization is devoted to offering “a variety of housing options with individualized support services to support personal growth and independence,” according to its mission statement.
Fasano said he believes there is more local community support out there for the Liberty Gardens project than has come forward to date, and that Concern Housing enjoys widespread support for its facilities. The organization is also seeking a zoning change on the land to allow for the multi-family housing units.
“The opposition is not in great numbers,” he said, “but they are very vocal,” and he rejected misconceptions about other Concern Housing facilities, “being a shelter, being run down, filled with drugs and alcohol — it’s really just housing,” he said. “We’ve heard this everywhere we go: ‘We support veterans, but this is not a good place.’”
He added that the church had rejected other developers who wanted to bring affordable housing to the site. “Churches are choosy about what they want,” he said. “It’s a really good project and we really believe in it. We are going to persevere.”
Genovese vowed to do the same as she expressed her belief that Concern Housing had delayed bringing their FEIS before Southampton officials sooner, following an incident at their Medford complex last December when a 56-year-old resident stabbed two Suffolk County Police officers before being shot and killed by police.
“They were hoping that people would forget the reports of crime and the shooting in Medford,” Genovese charged. “The consensus out here is that they were trying to put some space between that event” before submitting the FEIS.
