Under Islip's Draft, a Big Retail Lot Could Sell Outdoors. A Small One Could Not.

The Islip Town Board's agenda for tonight, Tuesday, September 15, includes a resolution authorizing the town clerk to advertise a public hearing on a package of amendments to Chapter 68, the town zoning code. The sponsor's memo, dated August 21, presents it as a cleanup of sections that are unclear or no longer fit how property is actually used.

Most of its eight pages deal with housing: higher densities for senior citizen attached homes, a new semi-attached dwelling type, and a minimum plot area cut from 80,000 to 40,000 square feet for apartment and attached home developments in the Residence CA district. Several changes land directly on commercial property, though, and one creates a permission the Business 2 district does not offer today.

Outdoor display, by special permit

The draft adds outdoor storage and display, as an accessory to a permitted retail use, to the uses the Planning Board may allow in Business 2 by special permit after a public hearing. The conditions are specific.

What sits outside has to be merchandise tied to the store and offered for sale to the public. Refuse, shipping containers, equipment and raw materials are expressly barred. The lot has to be at least 45,000 square feet. The outdoor area is capped at 10 percent of the lot or 5,000 square feet, whichever is smaller, and it also has to be smaller than the store's own floor area.

The display stays inside an area drawn on a site plan the Planning Board approves, set back 50 feet from any street and from any residential use or zone, and 15 feet from other side and rear lot lines. It must be screened from streets and neighbors with fencing, landscaping or both, maintained to block the view all year. It cannot occupy required parking, loading areas, fire lanes, drive aisles or drainage. Nothing can be stacked higher than 10 feet, and the board may set a lower limit. From 9 p.m. to 7 a.m. the area is closed to customers and cannot be used for sales, loading, unloading or restocking.

Taken together, those terms fit a garden center, a home improvement store or a patio furniture dealer on a large lot set well back from the road. A storefront on a downtown block in Bay Shore or Sayville would fail on lot size before anyone measured a setback.

The other commercial changes

The draft strikes collateral loan brokers from the list of uses permitted in the Business 1 district.

In Industrial 1, a reserved line in the special permit section becomes a recycling center, allowed only on a site at least 500 feet from any residential use or zone. The old combined definition of transfer station and recycling center is split, so the transfer station term now covers solid waste alone.

The package also redefines the kinds of businesses that fill much of the town's strip center space. Indoor recreation becomes a commercial use conducted inside an enclosed building for leisure and entertainment rather than fitness or education, classified under the state building code as a Group A assembly occupancy, with trampoline parks, paintball, go-karts, rock climbing and shooting ranges among the examples. A new term, non degree granting school, covers facilities that teach specific skills or certifications on a schedule or by appointment, such as self-defense, dance, swimming, gymnastics and golf simulator instruction, classified as a Group B business occupancy. Schools connected to manufacturing or truck driving are excluded, and a facility with spectator seating falls back into indoor recreation. A health club becomes a facility whose predominant use is exercise and wellness.

In the Industrial Transition district, where buildings may already reach 60 feet or four stories, any part of a building above 35 feet would have to be set back from the front, side and rear lot lines by a distance equal to the building's height, or by the required setback if that is greater.

What happens next

Tonight's vote puts nothing into law. The public notice attached to the resolution leaves the hearing date blank. The sponsor classifies the package as a Type I action under the state environmental review law, and it goes to the Suffolk County Planning Commission for comment before the board can adopt it.

What it means for members

If you run a retail business in an Islip Business 2 district and want stock outside, measure your lot and the distance from your display area to the street now, because the draft requires 45,000 square feet and a 50 foot setback before any other condition applies. If you own a strip center, check how each fitness, dance, martial arts and entertainment tenant would be classified under the new definitions, since assembly and business occupancies carry different building code requirements and the difference surfaces at the next change of use.

If the numbers do not fit your property, the hearing is the place to ask for different ones, and the notice for it has not been published yet.