SOMERS, N.Y. - A decades-long battle over the fate of Granite Pointe took an interesting turn recently when Somers officials revealed that the town was exploring its options, including purchasing the land.
The announcement, made at the Town Board’s Aug. 6 meeting, appeared to take some residents by surprise, including Fred Higham, who has been leading the charge against the luxury subdivision proposed by Suelain Realty, a Katonah-based firm owned by John Harkins.
Slamming building on a peninsula that juts out into the Amawalk Reservoir as an “unacceptable, long-term threat” to the Croton Watershed system, which “supplies drinking water to millions of downstate New York residents, especially those in Somers and Yorktown,” Higham took to the podium to urge the town to “do whatever can be done to stop Granite Pointe from being developed.”
(The 28.8-acre site is located at 44 Route 118 (Tomahawk Street) in the Hamlet of Granite Springs. Proposed are 24 single-family homes.)
This past June, the town’s Planning Board voted 4-1 to grant Suelain its 36th 90-day time extension for land-use approvals and permits. That expires in early October and whether Granite Pointe will go for No. 37 when the Planning Board meets on Sept. 9 is unknown at this time.
Higham called on the Town Board, the Planning Board, and other involved agencies to kibosh any further extensions.
Moments later, Town Supervisor Robert Scorrano announced he had some information to share on Granite Pointe, namely that the town is applying for a $5 million land-acquisition grant via the state Department of Environmental Conservation’s Water Quality Improvement Program (WQIP).
(There is a required match for those funds of 25 percent, or $1.25 million.)
“Now there’s no guarantee that the town will actually get the grant for $5 million, but we are pursuing this,” Scorrano said, adding that Suelain Realty itself had sent a letter to the state Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) expressing its “strong support” for the town’s WQIP application.
The letter was dated July 28, 2026, and signed by Suelain’s chief executive officer, Gerald Messuri.
PROCESS MOVES FORWARD
Scorrano emphasized that night that the town’s exploration of grant possibilities would “in no way, shape, or form stop the process that is right before the Planning Board currently.”
“The developer has a right to continue with that process as we continue doing this so nothing is going to halt, nothing is going to stop on that end,” he said.
Resident Patrick DeSena, a former town councilman, asked if the board believed that the developer would accept $6.25 million for the land?
“There’s a lot that goes into it,” responded Scorrano, explaining that the property first has to be appraised.
“Who knows what that value will be? It could be $10 million, $12 million,” he said at the Aug. 6 meeting adding that until the numbers are known, the town really can’t say anymore.
(It legally can’t go higher than the appraisal value anyway.)
Scorrano told Halston Media later that the town is moving “slowly” out of an abundance of caution.
Even if it gets the grant, it doesn’t have to accept it.
“We will look at every single scenario that could possibly happen,” he said, adding that “it has to make sense and it has to be economically feasible.”
Agreeing that things are “open-ended” at present, Councilman Anthony J. Cirieco supported “looking at other options.”
“When this comes to fruition, you know, all these other pieces (like what the owner wants for the land) have to come together,” he said.
“This grant doesn’t obligate us, the town, to put up $1.25 million to close this deal. If it comes to that point, we’d have to discuss that. But we’re going to go write the grant and see where it takes us,” Cirieco added.
Councilman Richard Clinchy pointed out that the Granite Pointe situation had developed over a number of years, prior to the current board’s existence.
“I think everyone of us would say, if you had to do it again, that that’s not the appropriate place (to locate a development),” he said.
Clinchy also said that whatever happens in the future is “probably going to require a team approach” just as it had when the town got together in 2006 with state and other governmental entities to acquire and protect environmentally sensitive land that eventually became one of Somers’ crowning jewels, Angle Fly Preserve.
The 654-acre wildlife habitat off Route 139 was shepherded by the advocacy of the Somers Land Trust and local volunteers. In 2023, that stewardship transitioned back to the town.
“That’s the good part of politics, getting things done by getting people to agree and give up something to get something bigger than just their own interests,” Clinchy said. “So that would have to happen, but I think this is a pretty good thing as a start.”
PUBLIC PUSHBACK
The Granite Pointe project has faced decades of local pushback over environmental concerns.
Opponents fear that sewage leakage from the development’s septic systems, lawn fertilizers, and chemical runoff from impervious surfaces such as roads and roofs will pollute the drinking water supply.
Once the site of a trap and skeet shooting range, the land had been tainted by lead, antimony, arsenic, and other toxic metals.
The state DEC oversaw an $18 million Superfund project to clean up the contaminated soil.
Higham expressed concern that excavation work when the houses are built could potentially unearth “pockets” of contaminants.
It’s been reported that the DEC holds the land’s current owner, Suelain Realty, liable for reimbursement of that cleanup cost. Suelain argues that it’s not responsible because it wasn’t aware of the contamination when it took title to the property in 1991.
(Whether the state actually goes forward and tries to collect the money,-- and from whom -- is a question for another day.)
Project foes have frequently shown up with placards and speeches at Town Board and Planning Board meetings.
Last year, the state Superfund law was "reauthorized" to make it easier to recoup costs from property owners or the folks who caused the pollution in the first place.
According to media reports, Democratic state Sen. Pete Harckham (D, South Salem), whose district includes Somers, had supported the state’s deploying of its new powers.
That was backed up by Republican state Assemblyman Matt Slater (R-C, Yorktown) who was also reportedly eager for the state to get back Superfund funding.
(However, neither lawmaker wished to comment on the town’s pursuit of a WQIP grant at this time.)
County Legislator Erika L. Pierce of District 2, which includes Somers, told Halston Media in an email that she “appreciated seeing this on the agenda.”
“I’ve watched the video (of the Town Board meeting) and look forward to hearing more,” she wrote.
Comments
No comments on this item Please log in to comment by clicking here