Once-successful downtown restaurant
is now a threat to public health, according to Riverhead Town officials

Riverhead officials are moving to condemn and tear down a vacant building on the corner of Railroad Street and Griffing Avenue.

The former site of the Courthouse Restaurant has been vacant for many years and now poses a threat to public health, according to notices tacked to the building by the Riverhead fire marshal.

The roof is collapsed, exposing roof rafters to the elements, soffits are rotting away, rubbish and refuse has accumulated on the property and vermin activity has been observed, according to the fire marshal’s notices, dated Nov. 19 and addressed to three different companies.

“When the fire marshal went there he saw rodents coming out of the building,” Councilman John Dunleavy said at a town board work session last week.

“We’ve got to clean up Riverhead of these old dilapidated buildings,” Dunleavy said in an interview after the meeting. “People going to the new courthouse and look out the window there see a building falling apart. All of the people coming to the court by train or parking in the public lot across from this building see this and it’s not good. It’s just a mess.”

Dunleavy said the town sent the owner of the building a letter prior to sending out these notices. “He never contacted the town board,” the councilman said. “He hasn’t done nothing.”

The town has issued violation notices to the property owner in the past, according to Supervisor Sean Walter. “We were trying to work with the guy,” Walter said. People have offered to buy the property from the owner, whom he identified as Lyle Pike of Southampton, but “he wanted too much money for it and wouldn’t budge.”

According to town’s 2014-2015 assessment roll, the property owners of 307 Griffing Avenue are two companies with a common Southampton address: Ebb Tide Bay Ltd. and Libra VII Ltd. of 134 Mariner Drive, Southampton. That address is shared by LGP Foundations, a concrete contracting company owned by Lyle Pike.

Pike is an owner of four other downtown Riverhead properties, according to town tax rolls. His property holdings in Southampton town have also been the subject of code enforcement actions and, in one instance, a police raid on an alleged brothel.

Ebb Tide Bay bought the former restaurant site in 1999 from STU Corp., a company operated by Michael Jacobchek. STU Corp bought the building in 1989, when Jacobchek was the successful proprietor of the Birchwood restaurant in Polish Town. Jacobchek undertook extensive renovations of the restaurant, the former Klein’s Courthouse restaurant, which was then shuttered. Located steps away from the State Supreme Court building, it had once been a popular eatery and hangout for lawyers and judges. The building itself dates back to 1890, according to town records.

Jacobchek opened the renovated restaurant in 1990. Featuring a grand piano and mahogany bar in its pub and upscale dining rooms with fireplaces, it was an instant success. Jacobchek was recognized by Riverhead Townscape with a community beautification award for his transformation of the site. He continued in successful operation there for several years but after a decline in business that he blamed on the decline of the surrounding neighborhood and media crime reports, Jacobchek sold the building.

Under Ebb Tide’s ownership, a chef turned the site into a high-end Italian restaurant, which soon closed. After that, the building had a short-lived reincarnation as the Courthouse Restaurant. It has been closed and boarded up for much of the past decade.

According to the Suffolk County Clerk’s online records, Suffolk County National Bank took the property in a foreclosure sale in December 2005, after obtaining a $598,000 judgment against Ebb Tide in a mortgage foreclosure action.

Riverhead Town Attorney Robert Kozakiewicz said the property was apparently redeemed by the mortgagor and title is now held in the name of a new corporate entity “we believe to be controlled by the same individual.” As a result, the notices of unsafe structure served this month will be redrafted and resent, Kozakiewicz said.