Seaford QuickChek scrapped

There will be no QuickChek in Seaford. Plans for the proposed gas station and convenience store for the south side of Merrick Road, across from Stop & Shop, have been scrapped.
Mary Elizabeth Warner, corporate counsel for New Jersey-based QuickChek, confirmed last week that the company has terminated its lease with the property’s landlord. She said they could not come to an agreement internally on a final plan for what would have been Long Island’s second QuickChek.
She said that the application was not withdrawn because of public opposition. “We actually had worked through that,” she said.
The initial proposal, unveiled in late 2014, called for a 6,500-square-foot convenience store with eight gas pumps. It would have used two parcels of commercial property — an existing gas station and a car storage lot — as well as some undeveloped, residentially zoned land in the back.
After community members expressed outrage about using residential land, QuickChek officials announced that they were putting together a downsized plan that would use only commercial property.

Spokeman Russ Mensch said at the time that they would host a community meeting to give the details of a revised the plan.
That meeting never happened, and never will. As recently as February, QuickChek representatives publicly stated that they were committed to building in Seaford.
Phil Franco, president of the Seaford Harbor Civic Association, said that reaction among area residents has been mixed. “Some people were disappointed and some people were delighted, depending on the way they’re looking at it,” he said. “Some people wanted something better than what was there.”
Others, he said, are relieved because they had concerns about traffic and an increase in the number of trucks on Merrick Road. QuickChek officials insisted early on that it was not meant to be a truck stop, a concern that residents expressed because of the nearby southern end of the Seaford-Oyster Bay Expressway.
Carla Powell’s property abuts the woods that would have been part of QuickChek if it had pushed for its initial plan. She said that even a downsized proposal would have been too much for the remaining property, and would have led to a traffic nightmare on Merrick Road.
Powell said that QuickChek officials did look to address the concerns of the residents. “They definitely tried,” she said. “They were meeting with us. They were keeping us informed. I think they just realized they were never going to get it through. I think they just cut their losses.”
She added that she would still like to see the property redeveloped, and is fine with a gas station there, as long as it doesn’t have a big convenience store.