The Line in Melville's Town Center Code That Makes Room for Condos

"In the event a building contains residential equity ownership units such as condominiums or cooperatives, then these units are excluded from the mixed-use building calculation."

That sentence is in Section 198-34.1 of the Huntington Town Code, the rule that created the Melville Town Center Overlay District in December 2024. Most coverage of the overlay leads with the cap of up to 1,500 multifamily units on old office sites south of the Long Island Expressway and north of Ruland Road, between Walt Whitman Road and Pinelawn Road. For someone hoping to own a home in Melville, the condo sentence matters more. Read alongside the approvals and the deal that fell apart, it shows a district set to become Melville's main source of new for-sale attached housing. Timing is the open question.

What the mix rule counts, and what it leaves out

The overlay sets a ratio for mixed-use buildings. Up to 75 percent can be residential, and at least 25 percent but no more than 40 percent has to be office or commercial space such as retail, personal service shops, restaurants or day care. Ground floors facing Maxess Road, Baylis Road, Melville Park Road or Corporate Center Drive cannot be residential at all.

The condo sentence comes right after that ratio. As written, condominium and cooperative units are left out of the calculation. Limited-equity co-ops count as rentals and stay in. Going by the plain text, owned units are counted differently from rented ones when the town checks a building's mix. The code sets no minimum share of for-sale units and no affordable-unit percentage of its own.

The rest of the rules shape what any condo would look like. Buildings are capped at 50 feet and four occupied stories. Studios must be at least 600 square feet, one-bedrooms 700 and two-bedrooms 800. At least 15 percent of each site has to be civic or open space available to the public. Developers also pay $1,500 for every unit over 25, with 75 percent going to a fund for Town Center parks and 25 percent to the fire and ambulance district.

Every project so far has moved toward ownership

The code allows condos but does not require them. The town's decisions have pushed further in that direction, and the three sites in play show it.

Cornerstone shows the pattern most clearly. Huntington Matters reported that the project was first proposed as 200 rental units. It was cut to 168 homes with both rental and for-sale units "following discussions with Smyth about including homeownership opportunities." The town's August 2026 environmental filing puts that at 156 apartments plus 12 for-sale townhomes on about 3.82 acres, along with 19,000 square feet of commercial space. News reports give the site as 3.75 acres.

80 Baylis Road is the clearest case. Long Island Business News reported, citing sources, that an earlier sale of the vacant 10.9-acre former Henry Schein office site to Mill Creek Residential fell through because Mill Creek wanted to build only rentals and the town required some for-sale housing. B2K, the new contract buyer, told LIBN that "we are at the very beginning of what will be a lengthy process." According to LIBN's sources, B2K is weighing for-sale and rental homes and possibly assisted living.

The 400-unit pause sets the calendar

If owned units are the direction, the pause sets the pace. The code says the Town Board "will pause the acceptance of new applications after the submission of the first application(s) totaling four-hundred (400) residential units," and again after each later 400, "to assess the cumulative impact of the developments on traffic conditions, fire/emergency and educational services."

Melville Crossing is exactly 400 units, 290 rentals plus 110 condos, so it reached the first threshold by itself. Cornerstone's developer told Huntington Matters he submitted in September 2025 and was told the application was "just kind of sitting there in the ether, more or less, because we were told that that pause was in place." The town clerk's overlay permit page says applications are "on hold" under that section of the code.

Officials read the pause three different ways:

1. Supervisor Ed Smyth told the board it controls the pace of new applications and does not mean the first project has to be finished. "The pause was our break on the process to make sure that we didn't have a flood of new applications coming through the door," he said, as Huntington Matters reported. He tied the 400 figure to Suffolk County sewer capacity and said of the current pace, "Frankly I think it's too slow."
2. Councilwoman Jennifer Hebert said in August, according to the same Huntington Matters report, "I believe…that the pause was not well defined and I am not really clear on the parameters of it." At the Oct. 6 vote, she said the decision did not conform with the pause, Huntington Now reported.
3. Half Hollow Hills Superintendent Dr. John O'Farrell understood that the first 400 units would be built and occupied before more development went ahead, according to a letter read into the record that Huntington Matters reported.

Smyth's reading carried the Oct. 6 vote. Brooke Lupinacci and Hebert voted no, and Theresa Mari, Dr. David Bennardo and Smyth voted yes. Approved units now total 568, so the next 400-unit checkpoint is already in play. A B2K application, whenever it comes, would land in the middle of a pause the board has not defined in writing.

Approval also does not mean construction. Both projects have special-use permits, and both still need site plan approval. In April, Steel Equities' Russ Mohr told LIBN it would take 18 to 24 months for the first residents to move into Melville Crossing. In August, Huntington Matters described the project as not yet under construction. A water advisory committee that Bennardo tied to his support will study water quality and quantity across Town Center development and the proposed NYU Langone campus.

What Melville's owned attached housing looks like today

Today's attached market explains why 122 for-sale units on paper matter. Melville's best-known condo and townhome communities include The Greens at Half Hollow, The Club at Melville, The Coves at Melville, Stratford Park and the gated Country Pointe at Melville. Several of them are age-restricted. The Greens and The Club are 55+ communities, The Coves is 62+, and the Cornerstone filing describes Stratford Park as a 55+ townhome community. The town's filings do not say whether the Town Center condos will carry age restrictions.

No Melville-only figures split condos from single-family homes, so the closest current measure is county-wide. In August 2026, OneKey MLS reported a Suffolk County condo median sale price of $570,000, up 4.7 percent from a year earlier, with 304 condos in inventory and 45 days on market. Single-family homes in the county had a median of $760,000, up 7.0 percent, with 3,129 in inventory. Across the county, that is roughly one condo for every ten single-family homes on the market. Melville Crossing's 110 condos alone would be more than a third of that August county condo count.

Demand pressure is coming. NYU Langone bought One and Two Huntington Quadrangle in May 2026 for $135.5 million for a planned medical campus with a hospital of roughly 500 beds. Smyth told Newsday that planning a project of that size could take at least five to seven years. CoStar's Victor Rodriguez told the paper, "This just really isn't an area that has built much over the past decade." B2K's site sits across the street from the planned campus. The for-sale question for that parcel may end up the most consequential one in the district.

Questions buyers ask about the Town Center

Can I buy a Town Center condo now? No units are on the market. Both approved projects still need site plan approval, and no construction start had been reported as of this writing.

Will some of the for-sale units be priced below market? Melville Crossing designates 20 percent of its units as affordable or workforce housing, and Cornerstone lists 33 affordable units. According to Newsday's hearing coverage, Cornerstone's units are expected to cost between $985,000 and $1.2 million, with affordable units at around $330,000. The town's environmental filing values the 12 townhomes at a $1.2 million market price and a $330,000 affordable price, totaling $13.53 million. That total works out to 11 market-rate townhomes and one affordable one. Melville Crossing's filings reviewed here do not say how its affordable units divide between rentals and condos.

How far along is the NYU Langone campus? In July, Newsday reported that NYU Langone still needed Town of Huntington permits and a state certificate of need, and that it had not yet applied for the certificate. A planned Route 110 bus rapid transit stop near the site is not expected until at least 2031.

If you're deciding between waiting for a Melville Town Center condo and buying in one of Melville's existing communities, I'm glad to go over the site plan calendar and what's selling now with you. Jamie Marcantonio follows these Town Board votes as they happen. Let's Connect.

This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional about your situation.