82GT
10-17-2007, 02:19 PM
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0DEEDB1531F930A35750C0A9649C8B 63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=1
Drag Strip Is Heading Toward Its Final Run
G. NICOLO ANASTASI
Published: March 3, 2002
CARS have been tearing down the two-lane blacktop at Long Island Dragway here for close to 50 years. But because of recent efforts by the Town of Southampton to amend the zoning of the drag strip, the 2002 season will probably be its last.
The town is moving ahead with plans to create a Senior Citizen Planned Development District on 52 of the drag strip's 66 acres. The remaining 14 acres are in the protected pine barrens' core area, where no development is permitted.
The drag strip's current zoning is residential, but it operates as a nonconforming use because it was there before the residential zoning went into effect. If planned development district is approved, all nonconforming uses will be outlawed. Plans call for building as many as 230 housing units, probably duplexes, for people 55 and older.
The zoning proposal has received the blessing of the Suffolk County Planning Commission. The town board has held public hearings on the proposal, and the next step will be for it to review written comments. After that, a vote will be scheduled.
The town board is expected to pass the proposal. Skip Heaney, the Town of Southampton supervisor, said, ''I'm a little reluctant to say, but if I put my Carnac hat on, I believe the majority will support it.''
A drag strip, Mr. Heaney added, is ''an idea whose time has come and gone.''
But until the zoning proposal is passed, the owners of the drag strip, which opened in 1952, plan to go ahead with a 2002 season. Practice runs are currently under way on Saturdays and Sundays, and the competition will begin in earnest once the weather warms up.
''We'll be open for this season,'' said Joanne Chemeri, whose family brought the track in 1991 for $2 million. Since then, they have been fighting with the town to keep the strip open in the face of complaints about noise and allowing cars to use the strip past the town's 6 p.m. cutoff.
In an effort to appease the town, the owners have forced 90 percent of the cars to run with mufflers and have built a 20-foot-high, 200-foot-long wall to deflect noise. To reduce noise further, they even contemplated reversing the direction that cars run down the track -- they now run from south to north -- but were thwarted by a lawsuit brought by area residents.
Last season, Ms. Chemeri said the track received about 10 tickets from the town, accusing it of noise violations. Ms. Chemeri said the town seems to enforce the noise ordinance only when it receives a complaint. ''We could get a ticket every day we were open,'' she said.
Mr. Heaney said, ''The enforcement has hardly been arbitrary -- it has been anything but.'' The town has to receive three or more complaints, from three different people, in one day before it will send out an officer with a decibel meter to take a reading, he said. A reading of 65 decibels or higher constitutes a violation. According to the League for the Hard of Hearing, normal conversation reaches 60 decibels, and power lawn mowers, 65 to 95 decibels.
Harrison Edwards, a Freeport lawyer who represents the Chemeri family, said that the track had been convicted of 15 noise violations in the last 10 years.
Ms. Chemeri contends that the noise ordinance should not apply to the track because it was there before the area was zoned for residential use. ''Our argument is that the use should be grandfathered in, and the code applied to residential areas should not apply,'' she said.
Now, with the zoning proposal hanging over their heads, the track's owners have signed a contract to sell the parcel, worth an estimated $7 million, to Engel Burman Senior Housing of Lynbrook. Ms. Chemeri said that the owners had received other proposals but that the Engel Burman plan was the first one she thought the town would accept.
If the dragway falls, it will be the second track that has succumbed to town pressure in the last four years. In 1998, the famous Bridgehampton Race Circuit closed, bowing to noise complaints and town restrictions. The 500-acre site is now a golf course sprinkled with five-acre house lots.
Though it appears the 2002 season will be Long Island Dragway's last, racing enthusiasts are hoping a proposed 200-acre motor-sports park in Calverton will fill the void. The park would be built at the 2,900-acre former Grumman final assembly and test site.
A group of enthusiasts, known as Calverton Motorsports, is preparing to go before the Riverhead Town Board with the proposal. Preliminary plans call for an oval racetrack, a winding road course and a drag strip.
This will be the latest of several similar proposals for the former Grumman site, all of which have come to naught. But the Calverton Motorsports proposal has cleared its first hurdle: it was approved by the Riverhead Development Corporation, an advisory group established by the town to review development proposals for the site.
Marty Himes, 62, a veteran stock-car racer and the curator of the private Himes racing museum in Bay Shore, has chronicled the history of racing on Long Island and the demise of 40 tracks since the 1920's. ''We're holding out hope for the Calverton area,'' Mr. Himes said. ''The people that don't want it don't know what it would bring to the area.'' He pointed to the money generated by racetracks like Daytona in Florida and Darlington in South Carolina.
Ed Densieski, a member of the Riverhead Town Council who races modified stock cars at the Riverhead Raceway, is an advocate of the Calverton Motorsports proposal. If its tracks are positioned and designed properly, he said, the noise they generate will not be objectionable.
Mr. Himes agreed. ''It's definitely possible,'' he said. ''We just have to get the right people.''
Drag Strip Is Heading Toward Its Final Run
G. NICOLO ANASTASI
Published: March 3, 2002
CARS have been tearing down the two-lane blacktop at Long Island Dragway here for close to 50 years. But because of recent efforts by the Town of Southampton to amend the zoning of the drag strip, the 2002 season will probably be its last.
The town is moving ahead with plans to create a Senior Citizen Planned Development District on 52 of the drag strip's 66 acres. The remaining 14 acres are in the protected pine barrens' core area, where no development is permitted.
The drag strip's current zoning is residential, but it operates as a nonconforming use because it was there before the residential zoning went into effect. If planned development district is approved, all nonconforming uses will be outlawed. Plans call for building as many as 230 housing units, probably duplexes, for people 55 and older.
The zoning proposal has received the blessing of the Suffolk County Planning Commission. The town board has held public hearings on the proposal, and the next step will be for it to review written comments. After that, a vote will be scheduled.
The town board is expected to pass the proposal. Skip Heaney, the Town of Southampton supervisor, said, ''I'm a little reluctant to say, but if I put my Carnac hat on, I believe the majority will support it.''
A drag strip, Mr. Heaney added, is ''an idea whose time has come and gone.''
But until the zoning proposal is passed, the owners of the drag strip, which opened in 1952, plan to go ahead with a 2002 season. Practice runs are currently under way on Saturdays and Sundays, and the competition will begin in earnest once the weather warms up.
''We'll be open for this season,'' said Joanne Chemeri, whose family brought the track in 1991 for $2 million. Since then, they have been fighting with the town to keep the strip open in the face of complaints about noise and allowing cars to use the strip past the town's 6 p.m. cutoff.
In an effort to appease the town, the owners have forced 90 percent of the cars to run with mufflers and have built a 20-foot-high, 200-foot-long wall to deflect noise. To reduce noise further, they even contemplated reversing the direction that cars run down the track -- they now run from south to north -- but were thwarted by a lawsuit brought by area residents.
Last season, Ms. Chemeri said the track received about 10 tickets from the town, accusing it of noise violations. Ms. Chemeri said the town seems to enforce the noise ordinance only when it receives a complaint. ''We could get a ticket every day we were open,'' she said.
Mr. Heaney said, ''The enforcement has hardly been arbitrary -- it has been anything but.'' The town has to receive three or more complaints, from three different people, in one day before it will send out an officer with a decibel meter to take a reading, he said. A reading of 65 decibels or higher constitutes a violation. According to the League for the Hard of Hearing, normal conversation reaches 60 decibels, and power lawn mowers, 65 to 95 decibels.
Harrison Edwards, a Freeport lawyer who represents the Chemeri family, said that the track had been convicted of 15 noise violations in the last 10 years.
Ms. Chemeri contends that the noise ordinance should not apply to the track because it was there before the area was zoned for residential use. ''Our argument is that the use should be grandfathered in, and the code applied to residential areas should not apply,'' she said.
Now, with the zoning proposal hanging over their heads, the track's owners have signed a contract to sell the parcel, worth an estimated $7 million, to Engel Burman Senior Housing of Lynbrook. Ms. Chemeri said that the owners had received other proposals but that the Engel Burman plan was the first one she thought the town would accept.
If the dragway falls, it will be the second track that has succumbed to town pressure in the last four years. In 1998, the famous Bridgehampton Race Circuit closed, bowing to noise complaints and town restrictions. The 500-acre site is now a golf course sprinkled with five-acre house lots.
Though it appears the 2002 season will be Long Island Dragway's last, racing enthusiasts are hoping a proposed 200-acre motor-sports park in Calverton will fill the void. The park would be built at the 2,900-acre former Grumman final assembly and test site.
A group of enthusiasts, known as Calverton Motorsports, is preparing to go before the Riverhead Town Board with the proposal. Preliminary plans call for an oval racetrack, a winding road course and a drag strip.
This will be the latest of several similar proposals for the former Grumman site, all of which have come to naught. But the Calverton Motorsports proposal has cleared its first hurdle: it was approved by the Riverhead Development Corporation, an advisory group established by the town to review development proposals for the site.
Marty Himes, 62, a veteran stock-car racer and the curator of the private Himes racing museum in Bay Shore, has chronicled the history of racing on Long Island and the demise of 40 tracks since the 1920's. ''We're holding out hope for the Calverton area,'' Mr. Himes said. ''The people that don't want it don't know what it would bring to the area.'' He pointed to the money generated by racetracks like Daytona in Florida and Darlington in South Carolina.
Ed Densieski, a member of the Riverhead Town Council who races modified stock cars at the Riverhead Raceway, is an advocate of the Calverton Motorsports proposal. If its tracks are positioned and designed properly, he said, the noise they generate will not be objectionable.
Mr. Himes agreed. ''It's definitely possible,'' he said. ''We just have to get the right people.''