When the Peconic Land Trust sold a 14.2-acre piece of farmland on New Suffolk Avenue to oyster farmer Will Peckham of West Robins Oyster Company three years ago, it seemed to many like the culmination of a successful land preservation project — between donations from the community, a sale of development rights on most of the property to Southold Town and a willing young farmer ready to use the land to produce food for the community.
Pictured Above: Will Peckham of West Robins Oyster Company at Monday’s hearing.
The property includes a 2.2 acre area not included in the development rights purchase where structures can be built, and Mr. Peckham is now planning to build a 1,300-square-foot farmhouse, a 3,000-square-foot pole barn and a 1,500-square-foot agricultural production building on that portion of the property, as well as a 288-square-foot farm stand to enable the public to buy directly from him and other vegetable and herb farmers working portions of the farmland.
The farm is located at 4180 New Suffolk Avenue, on the corner of Marratooka Road.
But neighbors, many of whom live alongside Deep Hole Creek, which is adjacent to the farm and where Mr. Peckham keeps a small boat, packed every seat in the Southold Town Meeting Hall Monday evening for a public hearing before the Southold Town Planning Board.
Many who spoke were opposed to the plan, and comments in opposition seemed to receive a great deal of applause. But other, quieter voices in favor also spoke.
“This is a commercial operation. I’m very supportive of farming, but this crosses over into what I’d say is industrial,” said neighbor Pete Haack, who added that he believes the farm is a “venture from the Hamptons.”
Neighbor Doug Hirsch said he was “heavily involved with the Peconic Land Trust’s effort to preserve the property,” donating money and moving his driveway “to make the whole project possible.”
But he said he was worried by a grant application Mr. Peckham had sent to New York State saying he plans to produce four million oysters a year and have a “facility for other oyster farmers to drop off their product.”
“It’s Braun’s in the middle of a residential neighborhood,” he said, referring to a large fish distributer and retail market in Cutchogue. “He’s just building a barn? He’s building a warehouse for commercial processing.”
He added that he believes Mr. Peckham’s financier, Dirt Capital, is “a private equity company” that actually owns the land.
Tami Loeffler of Mattituck said she has been a farmer and she has also worked at Braun’s, and she gave money to the preservation effort. Her property is also directly adjacent to the farm.
“When I grew up out here we had fishing boats and farms, and now we just have second homeowners,” she said, adding that she would rather see Mr. Peckham taking his work boat out each morning than another pleasure craft. “People have been putting letters in mailboxes and talking about this with selfish motives — they don’t want their private Disneyland disturbed.”
She added that a large greenhouse already across the street from this farm already has large trucks going in and out every day.
“There’s a lot of hypocrisy here,” she said.
Her comments were met with heckles from the crowd, spurring Planning Board chairman Jim Rich, who prefaced the meeting with a statement saying the Planning Board can’t intervene with New York’s Right to Farm Law, to ask them to stop.
“I resent the hissing and whatever went on. It’s really low,” he said.
“I don’t appreciate the comments about Disneyland,” said Tricia Mealy, who lives on Deep Hole Drive. “I use the creek all the time. I’m an avid boater. I’m concerned about safety. A lot of children and grandchildren swim on and kayak in that creek. This is taking away from people who want to enjoy their recreation.”
Deep Hole Drive resident Phil Cameron said this “is not a NIMBY issue. Just like there’s no place for chicken farms in residential neighborhoods, there’s no place for seafood processing in a residential area.”
Barbara Pantino of Southold said she believes the farm would rely on illegal immigrant labor.
“It’s not helping our community as far as employment for people who live here,” she said. “They need to scale it down and then the community will accept it.”
Neighbor Chris Austin, who attended a Sept. 1 informational meeting Mr. Peckham held at the Mattituck-Laurel Library, said Mr. Peckham had “said additional boaters and oysterman would be unloading at the dock. The operational scale and scope are unknown here.”
Other commenters questioned whether Mr. Peckham had received permission for a commercial dock and whether he would bring his 40-plus-foot oyster barge into the creek.
Mr. Peckham waited until well over an hour into the hearing to address some of the concerns raised by the neighbors. He said that, prior to the hearing, upon seeing the crowd, he’d checked his blood pressure at a machine in the lobby and it said that, at 34 years old, his systolic blood pressure was 170 and he had “stage two hypertension.”
He said his oyster farm is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, and he currently sells “just south of one million oysters a year out of the back of my Toyota Tundra pickup truck.”
His oyster farm, as its name implies, is off the west coast of Robins Island in the Peconic Bay, about two miles from the land-based operations on New Suffolk Avenue. He said none of his oysters will be grown in Deep Hole Creek, which is “too polluted to grow shellfish for human consumption.”
“Agriculture occurs on a lot of different scales,” he said. “Growing shellfish is agricultural production. People might not want to hear it, but aquaculture is agriculture.”
He added that he and other farmers working the site are “growing vegetables already, and 40 families are being fed off this property” through a CSA, using low tillage methods to not disturb the soil.
“We’re going to prioritize thoughtful development,” he said. “Our intent is strictly to keep this as a community asset and make sure we’re not doing any harm to the creek.”
“If we want to fit in, it’s not going to be appropriate for us to bring a 45-foot barge in here,” he said. “The boat I have on my dock is 25 feet, smaller than six or eight boats I pass on my way out of the creek.”
He added that he personally never told anyone there would be a “parade of [oyster] boats coming up the creek. That’s something that is being said to get the opposition going. My intent is to process oysters primarily for my operation. Southold mandates that the be at least ⅔ from my operation.”
He said that he was taken aback to hear a hedge fund lawyer (Mr. Hirsch) describe his livelihood as a “hedge fund oyster farm. That’s like the Uno Reverse Card.”
He said Dirt Capital is a lender that “works with young regenerative farmers… funded by impact investors who are willing to take less than market rate and lend to farmers over long time horizons.”
He gave an example of a farmer who wants to grow chestnut trees, which take 15 years to begin producing chestnuts.
“A bank might not lend on that, but Dirt Capital will,” he said, adding that he is currently a minority owner of the property due to Dirt Capital’s financing.
Bill Edwards, who lives near the farm, said he had been “looking at this parcel of land over 30-plus years and feared it would not be used for farming. This wasn’t the farming I expected to see happen there, but I think it’s an ingenious plan and I hope the Planning Board will look at it and understand it is a different type of farming. I’d like to see it succeed, but that requires the support of the town, the community, and, ultimately, consumers.”
Aaron Bokros of Mattituck said he remembers walking past the public hearing sign when the former owners, the Kohler family, were planning the seven lot subdivision, and hearing Mr. Kohler say he was open to preservation.
“I couldn’t be prouder of what Mr. Peckham has done,” he said. “As a neighbor and somebody who lives in the neighborhood, there are those of us who are very supportive of this project.”
Builder Paul Pawlowski, who owns property directly to the west of the farm, said he was involved with the preservation effort and the “whole reason it was done was to reduce the impact to the area,” adding that $1.5 million was raised to keep the subdivision from being built, $650,000 of from individual donors, including many residents in the neighborhood.
“There’s an emotional component for everyone there. This is creating agita for everyone. The Peconic Land Trust has a lot of explaining to do.”
He added that he heard during the preservation discussions that the 2.2 acre portion of the property with its development rights intact “was going to be for residential use only.”
“If I was applying for that, it would require a zone change,” he said. “
Mr. Peckham’s architect, Anthony Portillo, said agricultural buildings are not considered commercial buildings, and the town’s building department has already agreed that they are allowed on the property.
“It’s a lot of building in one little space,” said Denise Dellaquilla.” “I was also under the impression they would be able to build a home for their family and use the remaining agricultural land to build what they needed to build. It’s very disturbing for people around the creek to have commercial buildings so close to the water. We don’t understand why everything was shoved into that little 2.2 acres.”
Mr. Peckham’s attorney, Martha Reichert of Twomey, Latham, Shea, Kelley, Dubin & Quartararo, said that, while the town’s purchase of development rights agreement (PDR) allows agricultural buildings on the preserved land, town code does not.
“When the Peconic Land Trust sold the development rights to the town, the agreement was that, in the area fronting on Marratooka Road, certain agriculture structures would be permitted,” she said. “But there’s a disconnect between the PDR covenants and the town code.”
She added that she believes there’s also a disconnect in “how the public understands agricultural processing.”
She said Southold Town Code was amended in 2019 to allow on-site processing so that farmers could make value-added products from their crops.
“Once you harvest, you have to wash, pack, store and sort by size,” she said. “That will happen with agricultural products from the land and the ocean…. That is all permitted under town code.”
She added that the Peconic Land Trust, which is required by covenants to review any development on the property, has also signed off on the plan.
Teddy Tomao of Zaffarino Farm in Mattituck, who also works for the organic farming association NOFA New York, spoke passionately about the challenges facing young farmers.
“Looking around this room, there are four people under the age of 40, who own farms, and on the North Fork there may be seven,” he said. “We’re a strong farming community, and it’s really important to our roots. I didn’t see anything there [in the site plan] that seemed like it was truly huge. I run a two-acre farm and I could use similar size infrastructure, and even I need more — greenhouses and whatnot. In order to be able to survive out here, you need to be able to produce. It’s expensive to live out here. Farming is really hard. Figuring out ways to collaborate with other farms is really important. I’m in full support of this project.”
Mr. Peckham said he hopes “over time, this becomes something the community can be proud of.”
“Despite all this noise, I’m still extremely grateful the community decided to do this,” he said. “Holding onto farmland, however and whenever we can, is still the right thing to do.”
The Planning Board closed the hearing to oral testimony and will accept written comments for 30 days. Here are the Planning Board documents on the project.
Keep Independent News on the East End
The Beacon is able to provide all of our content online free of charge thanks to support from our readers. Be a vital part of keeping our community informed!
Advertisement
