Southold’s Planning Board has scheduled a public hearing for Dec. 7 at 5 p.m. on the Colusa conservation subdivision, a sprawling 372-acre proposal in Cutchogue that would carve out 47 building lots while preserving 267 acres of farmland. The project, filed under the name Crossroads Atlantic LLC, sits east of Bridge Lane off Route 48 and was first submitted in 2025.
The hearing date was set at the board’s Nov. 2 regular meeting, according to East End Beacon. Crossroads Atlantic LLC is owned by Stefan Soloviev, whose companies are estimated to hold more than 1,000 acres on the North Fork and who is the son of New York real estate developer Sheldon Solow, per the same outlet’s earlier reporting on the project.
The Colusa plan calls for a private access road east of Bridge Lane on Route 48, with housing lots and a right of way for beach access, according to East End Beacon’s account of the application. Eighteen of the residential lots sit on bluffs overlooking Long Island Sound, including one for private beach access, as reported by Newsday. The property contains 11 separate tax lots in total.
A Revised Design and a Farmland Trade-Off
Applicants resubmitted a revised site plan in February, removing a spur road and centering the side road that runs out to Route 48 with lots placed on both sides, East End Beacon reported, citing discussion at the time. The redesign also split the preserved farmland into three separate farms, each keeping a house lot and intact development rights for a farmhouse — a shift Southold Town Planning Director Heather Lanza recommended in an October 2025 work session as more consistent with the town’s comprehensive plan.
The project is described as a 75/75 conservation subdivision, meaning it preserves 75 percent of the property while cutting potential residential lots by 75 percent. Before that reduction, the land could have supported 193 building lots, Lanza told the planning board, according to East End Beacon’s report on that same work session. Conservation subdivision rules allow clustered lots smaller than the standard two-acre minimum in exchange for that kind of preservation.
SEQRA Review Still Pending
Lanza has said Colusa would likely be classified as a Type I action under the State Environmental Quality Review Act because it converts more than 2.5 acres of land in an agricultural district to non-farm use, the station's report from a March planning board meeting indicates. The planning board is expected to decide whether the project needs extensive SEQRA review before the December hearing, with that determination set for discussion at a Nov. 16 work session, per the same account.
The applicant submitted a long-form environmental assessment form with the original filing, and attorney Martin Finnegan put down a $20,000 deposit toward a $30,000 environmental review to be conducted by Hardesty & Hanover, East End Beacon reported in May. Southold Town Trustees have recommended a non-disturbance buffer at least 100 feet wide landward of the bluff crest on every lot abutting Long Island Sound, along with a pre-application site inspection on five lots to locate that crest precisely, according to a June letter cited by the outlet.
Fire Protection Concerns and Infrastructure Asks
The Southold Fire District has recommended a 12-inch water main running from County Road 48 down the access road, with a hydrant 500 feet from the Route 48 corner and additional hydrants every 1,000 feet to the Cutchogue Fire District line, East End Beacon reported. The Cutchogue Fire District has separately asked whether the proposed water mains would hold up during a large-scale fire incident.
Cutchogue’s fire department purchased a 4,000-gallon water tanker truck meant to serve unhydranted parts of its district and remote areas under development, and installed new fire hydrants along Oregon Road adjacent to the nearby Cole Harbor project over the winter, according to the same reporting.
What Farmland Preservation Could Cost
Southold funds its share of farmland preservation through the Community Preservation Fund, financed by a 2 percent real estate transfer tax on land buyers. Southold Land Preservation Coordinator Lillian McCullough has said the fund held more than $30 million, with just over $10 million already committed to projects in the pipeline, per remarks East End Beacon reported from a town forum.
The Southold Town Board approved a development-rights purchase this spring on 30 acres of Pellegrini Vineyards at $84,500 per acre, totaling $2.53 million — a benchmark that, if applied to Colusa’s 267 acres, could put the preservation cost at roughly $22.56 million, though the actual price remains undetermined pending appraisal. Any sale of development rights for Colusa would require its own public hearing before the Southold Town Board, separate from the Dec. 7 planning hearing.
The math carries extra weight against Southold’s 2020 comprehensive plan, which set a goal of preserving 8,000 acres of agricultural land, as Newsday noted in its coverage of the proposal. Nearby, the scale of North Fork land values was underscored by an 88-acre Cutchogue subdivision with eight residential lots that was recently offered for $23 million, according to the same Newsday report.
A Second Soloviev Project Nearby
Crossroads Atlantic LLC has also proposed a second subdivision, Cole Harbor, on Oregon Road in Cutchogue. That 147-acre project would include 13 building lots and one 94-acre farm parcel, with preservation of that farmland potentially costing roughly $7.94 million using the Pellegrini price as a guide.
