Woolworth building apartment applications now available

Applications are now available for 19 new workforce housing apartments the former Woolworth building on East Main Street.

The apartments are part of a $7.5 million redevelopment project underway by Woolworth Revitalization LLC.

The first-floor of the building is completed and partially occupied. It’s tenants include Maximum Fitness health club and Goldberg’s Bagels, with Riverhead Flower Shop moving in by the end of the year, developer Michael Butler said last Thursday following his appearance at a Riverhead Town Board work session. One 2,000-square-foot space remains available, he said.

“We still have had a lot of interest from restaurants,” Butler said of the remaining ground-floor retail space.

“It’s been a long road,” Butler said as he showed off the nearly completed interior of the second floor last week.

Butler said he expects the apartments to be occupied in the early part of next year. There remain another four to six weeks of work to finish them, he said.

The apartment lottery will be held in the first two weeks of November, according to Butler.

There are three studio apartments, three studios with alcoves, 10 one-bedroom and three two-bedroom units. The studios are between 440 and 597 square feet in size. The one-bedroom units range from 597 to 918 square feet. The two-bedroom apartments are about 800 square feet. See floor plans at the woolworthapartments.com website.

Rents will start at $895 per month for studios, $1,133 for one-bedroom units and $1,528 for two-bedroom units, according to a press release issued today by the Town of Riverhead.

Applications are due Oct. 30. Prospective tenants can obtain information regarding income qualifications and applications by visiting www.woolworthapartments.com or by calling the Long Island Housing Partnership at (631) 435-4710.

Amenities include: new modern appliances (dishwasher, refrigerator, stove), cable/internet-ready, air conditioning, on-site laundry, discount health club rates and free parking.

Woolworth Revitalization received $550,000 in federal Housing and Urban Development HOME funds that were administered by Suffolk County, $250,000 in Suffolk County Workforce Housing capital funds to offset infrastructure costs associated with utility improvements, drainage and excavation and $75,000 in New York Main Street funds through the Office of Community Renewal towards improving the building’s façade, according to the town’s press release.

“When we first started a lot of people couldn’t imagine how this second-floor space could be renovated the way we envisioned. Now you can see how nice they are going to be,” Butler said.

Woolworth Revitalization is the second workforce housing project to be undertaken in downtown Riverhead. Summerwind Square was completed last year and tenants began moving in last fall. Development of a third affordable apartment complex at the site of the L.I. Science Center on West Main Street has been proposed by Conifer Realty and Community Development Corporation of Long Island; 48 apartments are planned for that site.

The Woolworth discount store closed in 1997 after more than 25 years on Main Street. The building was subsequently leased to Swezey’s Department Stores, which used it as a furniture showroom. The building owner, Riverhead Enterprises, sold the site to Apollo Real Estate Advisers in 2006. Apollo, then the town’s designated downtown “master developer,” unveiled plans for a multiplex cinema there. But when the real estate market imploded in 2007-2008, Apollo’s plans were scrapped and the company put the property on the market for sale.

Peter Blasl contributed reporting.

Photo caption (top): Woolworth Revitalization LLC developer Michael Butler in one of the 19 apartments he’d building on the second floor of the former Woolworth building on East Main Street. (Photo: Peter Blasl)