Planting First Seeds For A Solar Farm

Multinational cosmetics giant Estee Lauder plans to construct a four-acre solar farm behind the company’s corporate building at Pinelawn and Corporate Center drives in Melville. Long Islander News photo/Connor Beach

By Connor Beach
cbeach@longislandergroup.com

The Huntington planning board members approved last week a company’s plans to construct a solar farm in Melville.

Manhattan-based multinational cosmetics giant Estee Lauder plans to construct an array of solar panels in the six-acre vacant lot behind the company’s corporate building on the corner of Pinelawn Drive and Corporate Center Drive in Melville.

“This is the first solar farm, or mini-solar farm, that has come before the planning board,” Anthony Aloisio, director of the Huntington planning department, said at the Dec. 5 meeting.

Aloisio said the proposed site of the solar farm on 7 Corporate Center Drive is surrounded by other commercial uses or parking lots. Estee Lauder plans to cover about four acres of the property with solar panels.

“It is fairly well buffered from what would be our normal concern, which is residential uses,” Aloisio said, adding that plans call for a significant landscape buffer around the solar farm.

Huntington-based engineer Christopher Robinson, who designed the plans for the solar farm, said at last week’s meeting the solar panels would face south towards Corporate Center Drive.

Planning board members praised Estee Lauder’s move to increase the use of renewable energy, but expressed some concerns about the possibility of glare from the solar panels distracting drivers on Corporate Center Drive.

Robinson said the panels would be constructed at an angle, “so any reflection that may occur would be in an upward direction.”

“There will be nothing that would reflect down to any vehicular area or anybody on the ground level,” he said.

The Estee Lauder building next to the site of the proposed solar farm already has solar panels on the roof, and Robinson said the additional panels would help the company “reduce their dependence on the grid.”