Sheep Pasture Road Sand Pits to Get Makeover

Two local youth organizations have paired up to take advantage of a series of county resolutions that have put a former industrial property into the hands of the community.

Legis. Vivian Viloria-Fisher, D-Setauket, announced last Monday that the sand pits off of Sheep Pasture Road near the border of East Setauket and Port Jefferson Station will soon be the site of a new community center and ball fields for the Boys & Girls Club of Suffolk County and the Northern Brookhaven Little League, which is more commonly known as the Little League of the Three Villages.

The county legislature approved a resolution last August for those two organizations to share use of the 36.8-acre property, one of several related resolutions dating back to county's 1986 acquisition of the property. It was transferred to the county due to the previous owner's failure to pay taxes, but since then, the county has said people illegally used the property for dumping and all-terrain vehicle riding, with Viloria-Fisher calling it "a scar in our community for decades because it was so badly abused."

At last week's meeting of the Civic Association of the Setaukets and Stony Brook, Devon Daniel, executive director of the Boys & Girls Club, and Michael Hartnagle, former president of the Little League of the Three Villages, presented plans for the use of the property. The county has authorized the Boys & Girls Club to use 21.8 acres and the Little League to use 15 acres for ten years at no cost to Suffolk taxpayers. The two organizations have collectively planned 10 new ballfields – including several artificial turf fields – and a 33,000-square-foot, LEED-certified community center with conference rooms, gyms, and other program space.

Daniel said they have spent the past eight months seeking private funding for the $17 million project, which they hope to start building in 2012 and complete within 18 to 24 months pending county approval of the final plans. He estimates the new facilities would create 33 full-time jobs. The project would see a traffic light installed at the intersection of Sheep Pasture Road and Lynx Lane, but would not include nighttime lighting for the fields.

According to Daniel, possible additional uses for the facilities when not in use by either the Boys & Girls Club or the Little League include leasing opportunities to daycare and senior citizen programs. Concession stand proceeds would go right back into the maintenance of the facilities as per county requirements.

"A building of that size, we need to keep using it in order to generate money," Daniel said.

Use of the facilities by outside groups would follow the same county fees already in use across Suffolk.

"The beautiful thing is that you don’t have to be a member of the Boys & Girls Club to use the facility because of the land being owned by the county," Daniel said. "It’s really a win-win not just for the youth but for the entire community."

The property in question would also connect to the existing Setauket-Port Jefferson Station Multi-Use Path, commonly known as the Greenway Trail, which itself is .