$25M land sale advances mixed-use project at former Dowling campus

A New Jersey development firm has closed on its $25 million acquisition of 105 acres in Shirley to advance its industrial and recreational project for the site. 

Hampshire Venture Partners LLC, an affiliate of Morristown, N.J.-based Hampshire Real Estate Companies, purchased the 104.73-acre site next to the Town of Brookhaven’s Calabro Airport that was formerly occupied by Dowling College‘s aviation school.  

Hampshire plans to build nearly 600,000 square feet of speculative warehouse space in three buildings measuring 206,206 square feet, 183,750 square feet and 206,800 square feet on about 60 acres of the site that will be built in phases.  

The developer is dedicating the remaining 45 acres to the Town of Brookhaven, including three existing athletic fields on the north side of the site, about 22 acres of mostly wooded open space and a $25 million, 81,250-square-foot recreation center with two ice hockey rinks that will be built by Ronkonkoma-based J. Petrocelli Contracting. 

The plan includes demolishing the 72,000-square-foot former Dowling dormitory building but retaining 53,000 square feet of offices and classrooms and an airplane hangar for future reuse. 

The former Dowling property had been owned by Triple Five Aviation Industries, a subsidiary of Edmonton, Alberta-based Triple Five Worldwide Group, which purchased it in May 2018 for $14 million as part of the college’s bankruptcy sale. Triple Five had planned to create an “industry-university research and development center for advanced transportation technology” at the site, but a Florida firm that was supposed to operate it backed out, according to a real estate source. The Town of Brookhaven Industrial Development Agency subsequently terminated the economic incentives it had approved for the proposed Triple Five project. 

In another short-circuited plan, Triple Five affiliate Calverton Aviation & Technology LLC filed a lawsuit in Jan. 2024 against the Town of Riverhead for cancelling the developer’s $40 million purchase of 1,643 acres of the Enterprise Park at Calverton, where it planned to build a nearly 10 million-square-foot industrial park. The suit is still pending. 

The Shirley site is zoned residential, but the Brookhaven Town Board will soon schedule a public hearing on changing the zone from residential to industrial for the 60 acres earmarked for warehouses and also for allowing the recreation building. 

“We are enthusiastically looking forward to presenting our applications to the town board and the public very soon,” said attorney Christopher Kent, real estate development partner at the Farrell Fritz law firm, who is representing the project. “We are looking forward to our partnership with the town to develop the industrial portion and to dedicate the remainder of the land to the town for a town park that will include a hockey rink and over 20 acres of open space.” 

John Durso, chief investment officer for Hampshire Real Estate Companies, said the development firm hopes to receive site-plan approval and begin construction by the end of the year.