CHCA "Ambushed" to Back Melville Apartments; Fire Attorney
By Maureen Daly
The Centerport Harbor Civic Association (CHCA) leaders were shocked when a routine meeting with Huntington Councilman Sal Ferro over proposals to put apartments in the "Jellyfish" property on 25A, turned into a political group ambush with Supervisor Ed Smyth and his staff crashing the meeting.
The CHCA group was also pressured to fire their longtime attorney, Darrin Berger, and support Ferro and Smyth's Melville Mass-Apartments Re-zoning scheme.
The former Jellyfish restaurant in Centerport has been vacant for 10 years, with the latest development proposal - filed in 2023 - seeking to demolish the existing building and construct a 10-unit multi-floor apartment building.
That proposal was withdrawn "for the present time" earlier this year by the developer - with a pledge to re-submit a modified apartments plan.
CHCA leaders Anne Wesp, Betsy Cambria, and Judy White were meeting with Ferro to voice their concerns for traffic safety and over-development at the critical choke point in 25A where the Mill Pond restaurant, the Jellyfish property and the Water's Edge catering hall reduce 25A to only two narrow lanes around a dangerous curve.
When the group arrived, they found instead that Smyth, Deputy Supervisor John McCarron, and another staffer were crashing the meeting.
And they barely got to address the traffic and environmental issues of Centerport, before they were hijacked into a presentation on the totally unrelated Melville project - with Ferro producing maps and schematics of Melville, and pressing the three women to support the plan.
Also shocking were the personal attacks on Darrin Berger, the attorney for CHCA. Berger is a respected Huntington attorney - and the civic leaders urged fire Berger. Smyth, himself an attorney, was particularly hostile to Berger.
Berger has represented the CHCA recently before the Huntington Planning Board, where the most recent Jellyfish apartment development proposals were acknowledged to be withdrawn.
"It is grossly unethical for an attorney to circumvent another attorney's client - a represented party - around their attorney, and then demand that the person fire their attorney," stated noted ethics attorney Mark Demetropoulos. "Any discussion about legal matters between one lawyer and another lawyer's client - without that lawyer being present - is completely prohibited."
"It would be even more unethical for one attorney to tell another attorney's clients to then 'fire your lawyer."" added Demetropoulos.
Also shocking was the hostility expressed by the town officials towards the Huntington Alliance of Responsible Civics (HARC), an umbrella group of local Huntington civic associations. The women were warned that there were "bad people" in HARC and to stay away from the group.
The CHCA filed a lawsuit in May against the Town and its Planning Board, to stop the apartment proposals being planned for the Jellyfish, and to require that the Planning Board adhere to state environmental laws regarding the Jellyfish property.
The Jellyfish property is about 22,000 square feet or about 1/2 acre. The property is sloped on a steep hillside and sits directly on the environmentally-sensitive mill pond waterfront. Runoff from the roadway and parking lots of the property could pollute and foul the mill pond, which is used as a source of fish by the local Bald Eagles and ospreys, and nesting for local water birds.