A Dix Hills Landlord Needs 323 Gallons a Day Before a Physical Therapist Can Move In

A Dix Hills shopping center has proposed tenants for two empty storefronts, a physical therapy office and a real estate office, and a lease is not enough to put them there. On Wednesday evening, September 16, the Huntington Planning Board is scheduled to vote on moving 323 gallons a day of wastewater capacity onto the property so the landlord can.

A second transfer on the same agenda, for a shopping center in Fort Salonga, is being requested with no tenant in hand at all. Read together, the two filings show a constraint most tenants never hear about until it holds up a deal: on properties like these, what a storefront can become depends on how much wastewater the site is allowed to discharge.

The Dix Hills center is already full

The property is 683-707 Old Country Road, on the block where Old Country Road meets Jericho Turnpike. It covers 7.6 acres, is zoned C-4 Neighborhood Business, and is owned by LG Other Associates LLC, which lists an address in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey. The site plan filed with the application shows a one-story center of 83,657 square feet whose tenants include an indoor trampoline park, an Italian market, a pizzeria with 150 seats and a bagel shop.

The town planning staff's briefing for Wednesday puts the problem in one line: the property is currently at maximum sanitary density. The owner wants to replace a former bank with a physical therapy office and a former retail store with a real estate office, and those tenants require more flow than the property has left. The request is for 1.08 credits, equal to 323 gallons a day. The briefing adds that the owner will install a new innovative and alternative onsite wastewater treatment system for the physical therapy office.

Where the gallons come from

The capacity is moved, not created. The Dix Hills credits come from the DeForest Williams Estates property, a sending site the Town Board approved in 2015 under Resolution 2015-311, for which the town issued a density flow rights certificate. That land was protected through a purchase by the Town of Huntington, Suffolk County and the North Shore Land Alliance.

The sending site has exactly 323 gallons left. The draft resolution notes that if this transfer goes through, its balance goes to zero.

If adopted, the resolution authorizes a density flow credit certificate for 323 gallons a day and lets the owner use it to raise the property's sanitary capacity under the regulations of the Suffolk County Department of Health Services. The draft resolution finds the application complies with the town's land conservation chapter, Chapter 172, and classifies the transfer as a Type II action under state environmental review, which requires no further study.

Fort Salonga is reserving room before a tenant appears

North Fort Plaza sits at 1015 and 1019 Fort Salonga Road, which is Route 25A, at Norwood Road. The 3.7-acre property is zoned partly C-6 General Business and partly R-40 Residence. Its owner, North Fort LLC, lists an address on Broadhollow Road in Melville.

When the Planning Board approved the center's site plan on February 19, 2025, the plan classified its vacant commercial space in thirds: one third food shop, one third medical office, one third retail. The staff briefing says more than half the space is now retail or dry office, and that the property is at or near its maximum sanitary density under that plan. The owner has asked for 0.96 credits, or 288 gallons a day, from a sending site at 96 Little Plains Road that is protected by a conservation easement.

The draft resolution is candid that no specific tenant needing the capacity exists yet. The owner wants the flexibility to accept future tenants with higher sanitary requirements. This transfer, too, would use up everything its sending site has left.

The same arithmetic twice

Both requests work out to roughly 300 gallons a day per credit. Both would empty the sending site they draw from. And both turn on tenant mix. In these filings, retail and dry office sit on one side of the line, while medical offices and food shops sit on the other, and on a property already at its limit that line decides who is allowed to sign.

What it means for members

If you are looking at shopping center space for a medical or therapy practice, a food business, or any use with more plumbing than a sales floor, ask the landlord in writing whether the property has the sanitary capacity for your use before you sign. If the answer involves credits, make the lease contingent on the transfer. A physical therapy office in Dix Hills needs a Planning Board vote before it can open.

If you own a center, know your flow budget before you market a vacancy, not after a tenant's architect finds the problem. The Fort Salonga owner is securing capacity ahead of demand, which shortens the gap between a letter of intent and an opening. And because each of these transfers exhausts its source, the credits closest to hand are a finite supply.