The North Fork Horseradish Festival will be held in Polish Town this year, if the Riverhead Town Board approves a special event permit application on its agenda tomorrow.
Starfish Junction Productions, which debuted the horseradish festival last year at Hallockville Museum Farm, is planning to stage this year’s event at the Long Ireland Beer Company’s Pulaski Street brewery on Sunday, April 19.
Board members had no comment when a resolution approving the special event permit came before them at Thursday’s work session — one in a series resolutions approving special events planned around town this spring and summer — until Deputy Supervisor Jill Lewis and Police Chief David Hegermiller suggested the board take a closer look at the application.
The event is planned for a Sunday, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. at a location very close to St. Isidore’s church. The site has very limited on-site parking, Lewis noted. Traffic in the area is a real concern, Hegermiller said.
The festival is expected to draw 1,000 people this year, according to organizers. Last year’s festival saw some 1,500 attendees, organizers said at the time. The idea for the festival grew out of the annual horseradish party that had been a rite of spring in Riverhead for decades. The informal horseradish party go so big that the people who’d been hosting it for many years decided to call it a day. Last year, Starfish Junction, a Bay Shore events and promotions company that hosts other festivals, including the North Fork Craft Beer Festival and the Pore the Core Hard Cider Festival, stepped in with the inaugural North Fork Horseradish Festival.
The event is ticketed, with tickets priced at $20 in advance and $25 at the door. It will be held outdoors, rain or shine, in tents set up outside the brewery building, according to the event website. The brewery is located on a 3.5-acre site, according to town tax records. The website lists 28 participating vendors in this year’s event
The website advises visitors that on-site parking is “limited,” but says “there is ample street parking in the area.”
After prompting by the deputy supervisor, board members, who had already moved on to resolutions dealing with two other special event applications, revisited the horseradish festival application, discussing concerns about lack of on-site parking, reimbursement for police expenses associated with traffic control and proposed hours of operation.
“Me personally, I don’t like to see anything start on a Sunday before noon,” Councilman James Wooten said.
The other board members agreed and asked Lewis to speak to organizers about running the festival from 1 to 6 p.m. instead of the proposed 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. time.
The board also agreed that the resolution should require reimbursement to the town for police expenses in connection with traffic control.
“I think that should be a standard in all these special event approvals,” Councilman George Gabrielsen said.
Councilwoman Jodi Giglio added that, since the brewery is in a residential area, police might be required to make sure visitors are “contained” on the property.
“The visitors will be spread out over six hours, so there’s not going to be 1,000 people there at any one time,” Wooten said.
Festival organizers should also be asked to submit a parking plan showing how many vehicles can be accommodated on site, board members agreed.
There’s not much time to get everything in order, since the event is in two weeks, Councilman John Dunleavy noted. Tomorrow’s meeting is the only regular board meeting scheduled prior to the April 19 event date. Starfish Junction filed its special event permit application on Feb. 26, according to the town board resolution under discussion.
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