Forchelli Deegan Terrana expands to Huntington with real estate partner
Huntington just gained a new land-use heavyweight as Forchelli Deegan Terrana positions itself for Melville’s redevelopment push and NYU Langone’s 45-acre medical campus.
Forchelli Deegan Terrana has planted a deeper flag in Huntington, adding veteran land-use lawyer Michael L. McCarthy as a partner and opening its second Suffolk County office at 444 New York Avenue.
The move is about more than headcount. It places a Uniondale-based firm, founded in 1976 and now home to more than 70 attorneys across nearly 20 practice groups, directly inside one of western Suffolk’s busiest development corridors, where zoning fights, environmental reviews and redevelopment proposals are starting to converge. McCarthy joined the firm’s Land Use & Zoning practice group after more than 40 years handling development, real estate and environmental matters before town and village boards and agencies in Suffolk and Nassau counties.
McCarthy’s background is especially relevant in Huntington, where municipal approvals can determine whether long-delayed sites move ahead or stay frozen. He served as an Assistant Huntington Town Attorney from 1987 to 1992 and also worked as an Assistant Suffolk County Attorney. The Huntington native has also represented national and regional developers, property owners and homeowners through the approval process, giving FDT a practitioner with long ties to the local regulatory landscape.
The timing lines up with a broader shift in western Suffolk’s real-estate market. Huntington officials are advancing the Melville Town Center plan, which would turn parts of the office-heavy Melville area into a more walkable downtown built around vacant office and industrial buildings. The project area is bounded by Maxess Road, Melville Park Road, Baylis Road and Corporate Center Drive, south of the Long Island Expressway, and the town says the current population is 204,000. Under the town’s framework, development could unfold over seven to 10 years, with a pause after 400 residential units for an impact review.
Town documents also set a 3,000-unit cap in the overlay district, limit buildings to 50 feet or four stories, and prohibit vape and cannabis stores, drive-through windows and self-storage facilities. Each project would require a separate public hearing and a site-specific SEQRA review, underscoring how much public process still stands between concept and construction.
The biggest signal comes from NYU Langone Health, which announced plans June 2 for a new academic medical center in Melville on a 45-acre site near the Nassau-Suffolk border. The campus would include more than 500 private inpatient rooms, 70 emergency department bays, the tuition-free NYU Grossman Long Island School of Medicine and research space. NYU Langone said the project could generate up to 8,000 union construction jobs and 2,500 indirect jobs, with thousands of permanent jobs once the facility opens.
For Suffolk, that combination of office-to-mixed-use redevelopment and a major new health-care campus suggests rising pressure on planners, attorneys and municipal boards alike. McCarthy’s arrival shows where the professional-services market believes the next round of work will be.
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