2 HOTELS RISING ON ROUTE 10; 2 OTHERS FACE CONTROVERSY

AFTER several years of fruitless efforts by various developers, the area of Long Island that one hotel executive has termed part of ''the most exciting hotel market in the country'' has two definite hotel starts, controversial applications for two others and nearby construction for yet one more. If each of these development plans comes to completion, this area, which now has no lodging facilities, will have almost 1,500 available hotel rooms.

The Route 110 corridor, cutting a swath through Huntington and Babylon Towns, has, over the last decade, achieved the status of Long Island's major commercial and industrial artery. The office complexes that rise on either side of this bustling hub serve as home base for many banks and corporations. But the explosion in office space has not yet seen a corresponding growth in lodgings and conference facilities for the many business travelers flocking into the area.

That situation is about to change. The Westchester-based Carlin Organization has broken ground on a 15-acre site in Melville at Route 110 and Bethpage Spagnoli Road for a 308-room facility that Joel B. Mounty, Carlin vice president, described as ''a suburban, luxury, corporate hotel.'' The $34 million project, once expected to be a part of the Sheraton chain, will now be called the Royce-Carlin and will be operated by the Royce parent company, Servico Inc.

The new Royce-Carlin will join the Royce chain, which consists of three existing hotels - in Palm Beach and Pompano Beach in Florida and in Palm Springs, Calif. - and three others under construction. Completion of the Royce-Carlin is anticipated for the spring of 1986.

At about that same time, a Ramada Hotel will open at the intersection of Routes 110 and 109 near Republic Airport. Groundbreaking for this 192-room facility is expected later this month, according to Edward Kaplan of Kaplan Associates, which is developing the $15 million project on a seven-acre site in Farmingdale.

The fall of 1985 is the projected completion date for a Holiday Inn to be constructed on a 14-acre parcel at Crooked Hill Road and the northern service road of the Long Island Expressway, according to Tony Vitale, director of marketing for the builders, the Kulka Construction Corporation. This parcel, in Commack, is several miles from the Route 110 corridor, but it is anticipated that it will be used by Melville businesses as well as the neighboring industrial parks in Hauppauge. Mr. Vitale described the $34 million project as ''a corporate, luxury facility that will have eight floors of rooms and a two-story atrium.''

While the Royce-Carlin and Ramada Hotels are being constructed on parcels that have long been planned for commercial development, two other proposed hotels would require controversial zoning changes.

The Tilles Investment Corporation plans to develop a 52-acre site at Old Walt Whitman Road and the Long Island Expressway service road west of Route 110 into a complex that would include cluster town houses and a 350-room Hilton Hotel. The Tilles application calls for the parcel, now zoned for one-acre residential (R40), to be rezoned to hotel/motel district (C10) and R5, the lowest category of residential zoning, which allows for a density of up to six units per acre.

Huntington's Planning Director, Harold Letson, said that the application was in its initial stages of review, and it is not yet known whether it will proceed to the stage of a public hearing.

Another hotel proposal for the Route 110 area has progressed to the point of a public hearing by the Huntington Town Board, and at that hearing board members heard an outcry of community opposition to the project. The application by McGovern-Barbash Associates to construct a four-story, 300-room Marriott on the northeast corner of Pinelawn Road and the Long Island Expressway service road in Melville one block away from Route 110 requires rezoning of 15 acres of the 133-acre McGovern Sod Farm from one-acre residential to hotel/motel district.

This application is currently under review by the Huntington Town Board, whose members will have to wrestle with markedly differing views of the town's master plan for development. Melville residents opposing the project say that the master plan, adopted by the town's Planning Board in 1965, is a ''covenant'' with Huntington homeowners; town officials, including Mr. Letson and the Planning Board chairman, Richard V. Holahan, described the master plan as ''a guide, not a static document.''

According to this master plan, commercial development was to be west of Pinelawn Road, residential development to the east. The area subsequently grew in a pattern consistent with the plan; private residences dot the eastern periphery of the McGovern Sod Farm while directly across the street, on the west side of Pinelawn Road, is the headquarters of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and, just north of that building, a large office complex.

The residents fear that if commercial development is allowed to ''spill over'' to the east, the traditional Pinelawn Road buffer zone will no longer protect the residential nature of the Melville Community. The real issue, they said, is not whether Route 110 needs more hotels, but whether the Pinelawn Road buffer should be ''violated.''

''What we're concerned about is the integrity of the master plan - we want to retain the balance of residential, commercial and industrial property in Melville,'' said Gerald Grayson, president of the Strathmore Hills Civic Association.

Another opponent, Paul W. Roussillon of the Melhollow Civic Association, added: ''Our objection is not to another hotel in the area, but it must be placed in an area suitable to hotel building, not residential building.'' Mr. Roussillon said there was ''no question that the sod farm property could be developed residentially.''

Others sharply disagreed, among them Maurice Barbash, of McGovern-Barbash Associates. He said that his 33 years of experience in land development on the Island had demonstrated that ''people don't like living in juxtaposition to major traffic roads and commercial arteries.'' In Mr. Barbash's view, the property is unlikely ever to develop as one-acre homesites.

This view was supported by Mr. Holahan of the Planning Board. ''The property is in an area near the Expressway on the edge of industrial development; it is not apt to be developed for residential use,'' Mr. Holahan said.

He acknowledged that approval of the rezoning request would be a departure from the master plan, but termed it a ''proper departure.'' When asked about previous departures from the master plan, Mr. Holahan cited a 1965 case in which 500 acres near the Babylon town line were allowed to be used for light industry.

Both Mr. Holahan and Mr. Letson say that the Melville residents' fears of future commercial development in the Pinelawn Road area, should the Marriott project be approved, are unfounded.

''I don't accept,'' Mr. Letson said, ''the domino theory that the rest of the 133-acre site and other areas east of Pinelawn Road will go commercial. Inevitably there will be some impact, but that doesn't mean that the whole area will be commercial.''

''It will not set a precedent'' for commercial rezoning, Mr. Holahan, added, ''because every application is viewed separately by the board. There is no such thing as a precedent in rezoning.''

But James Jarvis, who served on the Huntington Planning Board in the mid-60's, when the master plan was developed and adopted, expressed a differing view. Addressing the Town Board, Mr. Jarvis said he saw ''no reason to revise the comprehensive plan.'' He further stated that ''breaking down the barrier of Pinelawn Road would be an absolute disaster for Melville.''

According to Mr. Roussillon, residents are additionally concerned with what he called ''unresolved sewer problems'' connected with the hotel project. Some of the homes nearest the site, he said, have private wells that could be subject to contamination by the sewage generated by a hotel.

However, an environmental impact statement, prepared by the engineering firm of Noble & Pope and currently under review by Huntington officials, states that the chemicals used by the sod farm, especially ''nitrogen-loading chemicals,'' are more detrimental to the ground water than a hotel whose sewage would be treated.

Mr. Barbash added that his firm, which he said had a long record of involvement with ''environmentally sensitive'' projects, is ''committed to building a state-of-the-art tertiary treatment plant for sewage at the hotel.''