Drive along Maxess Road in Melville, just off the Long Island Expressway, and the property at 75 Maxess Road doesn't look like a battleground. It's a 170,000-square-foot office and industrial building with a parking lot around it, the kind of low, unglamorous structure that fills a lot of the commercial spine south of Route 110. For a while, Amazon had eyes on it for a warehouse. Those plans fell apart. Now the site is at the center of the most consequential zoning decision Half Hollow Hills has seen in years, and the part everyone is talking about isn't the part that will actually determine how fast Melville changes.
In April 2026, the Huntington Town Board voted 4-1 to grant developer Steel Equities a special use permit for Melville Crossing, a $130 million redevelopment of the 16.6-acre parcel. The plan calls for demolishing the existing building and replacing it with roughly 400 residential units split between rental apartments and for-sale condos, a 6,300-square-foot clubhouse, and close to 40,000 square feet of retail and food space. It's the first project approved under the Melville Town Center Overlay District, a zoning framework the town created to allow taller, mixed-use buildings in an area that had been almost entirely office parks and light industry.
That headline is the version that travels. What gets lost is the mechanism the town built into the zoning to control what happens next, and that mechanism, not the unit count, is what a buyer weighing Melville against another North Shore town should actually be watching.
The Cap Isn't 400. It's 1,500, Released in Batches
The Melville Town Center Overlay District doesn't just approve Melville Crossing and stop there. According to a Half Hollow Hills school district announcement to families, the town has authorized up to 1,500 residential units total across the district, spread over several separate developments, with a mandatory pause after each 400-unit phase so the town and the school district can evaluate the real impact on enrollment before the next phase is allowed to move forward.
That structure matters more than the topline number. A developer can't get approval for 1,500 units in one shot. Every 400 units triggers a stop, a look at how many kids actually enrolled and how the district actually absorbed them, and then a decision about whether the next phase proceeds. Melville Crossing is phase one. Whatever comes next depends on what phase one actually does to classrooms, not on what a site plan projected it would do.
For someone comparing Melville to a neighboring district, this is the detail worth sitting with. The overlay isn't a blank check for unlimited apartment towers. It's a metering system, and the town clearly designed it that way because the debate leading up to approval was not quiet. Public hearings on the broader overlay district drew large, contentious crowds before Melville Crossing was even filed, and the fight became one of the more heated local zoning disputes in recent Huntington history, spilling into an intra-Republican primary for town supervisor that incumbent Ed Smyth won while running as the plan's most visible supporter.
The Vote Split Tells You Where the Friction Actually Sits
The Town Board approval was 4-1. News 12 reported that Smyth, who championed the project throughout, called it "the model for what development should be in Melville" and said he hopes it's "the first of several others over the next few years." The report also quoted Councilwoman Brooke Lupinacci, who cast the lone dissenting vote, saying that after reviewing the application and listening to residents at the prior month's meeting, she couldn't support it yet because "some details would benefit from further clarity."
Residents at that meeting, as quoted in the report, split roughly the way you'd expect for a project this size. One, Jeb Bergh, welcomed it in blunt terms: "More people, more business, more industry, more prosperity." Another, Robert Lamont, raised a concern that had nothing to do with schools and everything to do with the grid: "I think we're going to have a big problem with electricity. I think that property can be utilized as a solar farm."
None of this changed the outcome. What it tells a prospective buyer is that the approval process here is not a formality. Every phase past Melville Crossing will go through the same public airing, and a council that split 4-1 on a project widely described as the template isn't likely to wave through the remaining phases without the same scrutiny on schools, water, and power capacity.
The Real Contingency Is a Number Nobody Has Published
Here's the detail that doesn't show up in the coverage of the vote. Before the public hearing on Melville Crossing even happened, the Half Hollow Hills school district was already negotiating with the town and with developers to build financial accountability directly into the approvals. The district's own language describes an agreement that would impose no additional cost on a developer unless the actual student yield from a project exceeds a tuition-equivalent threshold tied to that yield.
As of the district's mid-March 2026 update, no agreement had been finalized. A meeting to continue the discussion was scheduled for that same week. Whether that number ever gets pinned down, and what it turns out to be, is the actual variable that determines how phase two of the Melville Town Center Overlay District gets negotiated. A developer facing an open-ended per-student liability approaches a 400-unit application very differently than one operating under a capped, predictable formula. That's the fine print that will shape the pace of everything after Melville Crossing, and it's still being written.
The district flagged one more thing worth knowing if you're looking at Melville specifically because of its schools. A similar overlay is being discussed in the neighboring Town of Babylon, called the East Farmingdale Overlay District. Part of that area sits inside the Half Hollow Hills district as well, meaning enrollment pressure on Half Hollow Hills schools could come from two separate overlay districts in two different towns, not just from Melville Crossing alone.
What Comes Next, and When
As of today, Melville Crossing has a special use permit, not a building permit. By mid-April 2026, Steel Equities had already filed detailed site plans and environmental assessment materials, which the town posted for public review under the developer's filing name, Steel 75 Maxess, LLC. That review, along with the required environmental sign-off, still has to run its course through the town's normal approval steps before anything gets built. There is no construction start date on the public record.
That timeline matters for anyone trying to time a purchase around this project. The 400 units approved this spring aren't arriving next year. Site plan review, permitting, and construction on a project this size typically stretch over several years, and the pause-and-evaluate structure baked into the overlay means the town has every incentive to let phase one fully play out, watch what it does to Half Hollow Hills enrollment, and only then decide how phase two gets structured. If you're comparing Melville to a district without an active overlay conversation, the honest read is that Melville's growth is coming, but it's coming on a schedule the town explicitly designed to be slow and reversible in spirit if not in law.
What This Means If You're Comparing Melville to Somewhere Else
The instinct when you hear "1,500 new units" is to assume a flood. The actual mechanism the town built is closer to a valve. Growth here is arriving in controlled increments, each one gated by a real enrollment check and, eventually, by a specific financial formula tied to how many of those new units end up housing school-age children. A buyer weighing Half Hollow Hills against a comparable North Shore district shouldn't be asking how many total units the overlay allows. The better question is whether the school district and the developers ever land on that per-student cost figure, because that number, far more than the 1,500 ceiling, is what decides whether Melville's next phase happens quickly, slowly, or at all.
FAQ
Is Melville Crossing definitely getting built? It has a special use permit approved by a 4-1 Town Board vote in April 2026. Site plans and environmental review materials are filed and under town review, and no construction start date has been announced.
How many new homes could eventually come to the overlay district? The Melville Town Center Overlay District allows for up to 1,500 residential units total, released in phases of 400 with a pause after each phase for the town and school district to assess actual impact before the next phase is considered.
Does this affect schools outside of Melville itself? The Half Hollow Hills school district has noted that a similar overlay proposal in the neighboring Town of Babylon, the East Farmingdale Overlay District, also overlaps part of the Half Hollow Hills attendance area, meaning enrollment pressure could come from more than one direction.
If you're trying to figure out what a project like this actually means for buying or selling in Half Hollow Hills right now, that's exactly the kind of local nuance worth a conversation rather than a guess. Fran Mazer has spent years tracking how zoning changes like this one play out on the ground in North Shore communities, and can walk you through what it means for your specific timeline. Let's Connect.
This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional about your situation.
