121-key hotel planned for North Fork’s Mattituck

A developer has plans for a hotel on Mattituck’s main strip, but not everyone in the North Fork community is in favor. In fact, a recent civic association meeting featured unanimous dissent.

Ward Capital Management has proposed a 121-key, 98,000-square-foot boutique hotel at 9025 Main Road, Newsday reported. The land is owned by Cardinale Management, which purchased the property for an undisclosed price in 2014, according to the Suffolk Times.

A building on the site previously belonged to Capital One, which closed its offices there in 2011. Ward plans to transform the 12-acre site into a two-story hotel with 418 parking spaces, a pool and amenities. The full project would be 200,000 square feet.

Town officials are reviewing the developer’s applications, which were filed in December. But residents are already sounding off against the project.

Last month, Ward principal D’Wayne Prieto spoke during a Mattituck-Laurel Civic Association meeting attended by more than 150 people. If any of them supported the project, they were not brave enough to say so, according to the publication.

Instead, resident after resident found a bone to pick with the hotel proposal. Most of the complaints were the usual fears about damage to property values, increases in traffic and environmental impact. Even a local motel proprietor griped.

One person complained about having to share local beaches with hotel visitors. Prieto responded that the hotel’s amenities would keep guests largely on the site.

The North Fork’s economy is built on agriculture and tourism, and many of the area’s restaurants and other businesses would not exist but for visitors and second-home owners. But the benefit of hotels to full-time residents appeared to be lost on them; one lamented that the hotel would be “putting the safety of the people that live here at risk for the benefit of the tourists.”

Following the meeting, Prieto told the publication that some changes were being considered, including reducing the number of parking spaces and widening the street to ease traffic flow and spare wetlands disruption. Hotel guests do not arrive in waves, he noted, so traffic impact should be minimal.

It was not immediately clear what approval the project needs from Southold Town. The town supervisor, Scott Russell, did not respond to an inquiry from The Real Deal before press time.

Ward Capital has fried bigger fish, or at least attempted to. The firm previously tried to develop one of the biggest hotels in decades in Westchester County’s New Rochelle. The development didn’t materialize, however, and the property is in Chapter 11 bankruptcy, according to the East End Beacon. Prieto blamed a partnership dispute.

Hospitality companies have invested heavily in Long Island’s North Fork in recent years, buying and sprucing up dated hotels and planning new ones. Greenport, perhaps the most tourist-dependent village on the peninsula, responded by suspending nearly all development.

— Holden Walter-Warner