Melville Mall Expansion Moves Forward

Maryland-based development company Federal Realty Investment Trust plans to construct a 15,000-square-foot pad site at the front of the Melville Mall property on Walt Whitman Road. Google Maps photo

By Connor Beach
cbeach@longislandergroup.com

The Huntington Planning Board approved last month plans to construct a 15,000-square-foot extension of the Melville Mall.

Plans first submitted to the town in December 2017 show that Maryland-based development company Federal Realty Investment Trust wants to construct two additional buildings at the front of the 834 Walt Whitman Road property in Melville.

The Melville Mall currently houses Dick’s Sporting Goods, Field & Stream, Marshall’s, Macy’s Backstage and a new Uncle Giuseppe’s grocery store.

Plans show the new “pad site” is slated to include two proposed retail or restaurant spaces connected by an open plaza with a walkway leading through the parking lot to the existing shopping center at the other end of the property. The proposed buildings are slated to be 9,820 and 5,150 square-feet, respectively.

The Huntington Zoning Board of Appeals granted Federal Reality the required variances to move forward with the expansion in March 2017.

At last month’s planning board meeting, Planning Department director Anthony Aloisio said that town code requires 1,295 parking spaces for the entire site. He added that the 1,140 spaces proposed in the new plans “should be more than enough to meet the demands.”

“Much of the parking that has gone underutilized for all these years would be closer to the new use,” Aloisio said.

Planning board chairman Paul Mandelik added that the new pad site would make the Melville Mall a “much more attractive area for that part of 110.”

“It would be more attractive, which would conform somewhat with the small shopping center across the street that has also been updated and enhanced,” Mandelik said.

Federal Realty Investment Trust did not return a request for comment before deadline Wednesday.

Planning officials included a condition in the site plan approval that requires Federal Reality to make improvements to any parking spaces on the site “upon subsequent finding by the planning board that such improvement is needed as a result of increased demand generation or actual site conditions.”