Can Riverhead come ‘Alive After Five’ like Patchogue? BID board thinks so

Downtown Riverhead business owners are looking at hosting a street fair modeled after Patchogue’s popular “Alive After Five” event.

A committee of the Riverhead Business Improvement District Management Association has been established to pursue the idea, which board member and Main Street restaurateur John Mantzapolous said was suggested by PeraBell Food Bar co-owner John Peragine. Peragine and his partner Scotti Campbell, owners of PeraBell Food Bar in Patchogue, opened a location on East Main Street in Riverhead last month.

Peragine told RiverheadLOCAL in an interview last October he thought an “Alive After Five” type of event would benefit downtown Riverhead the same way it helped turn Patchogue around.

The “Alive After Five” event, now in its 14th season in Patchogue, closes Main Street to vehicular traffic for a free street festival on four Thursday evenings in summer — with live music on six stages, craft and retail vendors, food, and family-friendly activities. It brings thousands of people to the village and has been a tremendous boon to business, Peragine said.

“You bring 10,000 people there each week, they stay and eat and hang out. And they come back,” he said.

Riverhead BIDMA president Ray Pickersgill agrees. He said in an interview yesterday he’s always looked to free events downtown to draw people in for exactly that reason.

“It’s worked,” he said. “So much so, that I think now we can start to look at other things, like the Alive After Five as a continuing event, and also at doing more in the way of capital improvements.”

Mantzapolos, owner of the new Mazi restaurant, Dee Muma, owner of Dark Horse Restaurant and Steve Shauger, general manager of the Hyatt Place East End, volunteered for the committee to pursue the “Alive After Five” concept for downtown Riverhead.

Riverhead’s continuing perception problem

BIDMA board members discussed downtown’s ongoing perception problem and how to combat it — with ideas ranging from producing television commercials to voicing complaints to Southampton Town about conditions in Riverside to asking County Legislator Al Krupski to intervene with the sheriff’s office on its inmate release policies.

“There are a number of people — I don’t know if they’re miserable personally, I don’t know if they like to spread misery to the public — but they take the small incidents and blow them up into something else,” Mantzapoulos said. “We’ve got to convince the new people not to listen to the old guard.”

Shauger said he sees a difference between people from this area and people from out-of-state who come to downtown Riverhead without a predisposed notion of what the town is like.

“They love it,” Shauger said. “They don’t have an opinion formed before they get here. They comment on how quaint and lovely it is.”

Some board members said Riverside continues to contribute to Riverhead’s perception problem.

People think of Riverside as Riverhead “because of the zip code,” Bobby Hartmann said.

Larry Oxman said he’s been attending Riverside Economic Development committee meetings for three years and “a lot of citizens are just as upset as you are about how Southampton neglects their area.” He said complaints center on lack of police presence, crime and homeless people living on the streets.

“They’re really trying to make a change,” Oxman said.

“It’s hard to get the two towns together,” Councilman John Dunleavy, the town board’s liaison to the BID organization, said.

“I’m behind making downtown and Flanders a village,” Dunleavy said. “Then you have a mayor who controls the area and one village board. Dunleavy floated the idea of incorporating a village in October 2010 and said he would ask the town board to set up a committee to look into it. A village could more effectively address problems in th whole area, he said. But he had no support from fellow Riverhead Town Board members.

Shauger suggested the BID board write to the Southampton Town Board to air its concerns.

“Silence is acceptance,” Shauger said.

Isabelle Gonzalez said she thinks the BID should focus on Riverhead’s own problems. “We have houses that have 20 people living in them right here in downtown Riverhead.”

Other items discussed at yesterday’s BID Management Association board meeting:

• possible grant applications for a variety of projects, including LED light fixtures for the parking lots and construction of a pavilion or some kind of “community center” downtown;
• purchasing outdoor ashtrays for placement at downtown locations; and
  paying for a part-time employee to clean the streets on Fridays and Mondays.

The BID board yesterday also elected its officers, all unopposed: Ray Pickersgill, president; Steve Shauger, vice president; Bill Allan, treasurer; and Nancy Kouris, secretary.