Sale of East Lawn building hits the skids again; town will list property with broker

The people selected by the town board to buy the dilapidated East Lawn building on East Main Street won’t be signing a contract for it after all, if the board passes a resolution discussed at today’s work session to back out of the deal.

No board members objected to the resolution, which would rescind an October 2014 resolution authorizing the sale of the building. The board also agreed to list the property with Cushman and Wakefield, a real estate brokerage firm recently engaged by the town to market the EPCAL site. A second resolution authorizing the brokerage firm to list the building will also be on the agenda at next week’s meeting.

The news came as a shock to a principal in the company that was buying the building, who heard of the board’s intended action from a reporter.

Isabelle Gonzalez of I’m a Ruralpolitan Inc., the purchaser who submitted the successful proposal in response to a request for proposals issued by the town last year, said she thought she was still negotiating the terms of the contract with the town.

Gonzalez said she wrote to the town attorney a few weeks ago asking for a price reduction after she learned the town would not repair a leaky roof.

“On the date of the first inspection, there was no sign of a leak. On the date of the second inspection, there was a tarp on the roof,” Gonzalez said in a phone interview this afternoon. “Both Rob Hubbs and Ken Testa [of the town’s engineering department] said the town would repair it,” she said.

Then when she got the contracts from the town attorney’s office, the terms said “as is.”

The contracts also said the site had no off-street parking spaces. The RFP documents said the site had three off-street parking spaces, according to Gonzalez. The documents are no longer available on the town’s website.

The town apparently leases those three spots from the owner of the office complex behind the East Lawn building. Gonzalez says she was told she’d have to negotiate with that owner for the parking. “But the RFP didn’t say that.”

Finally, the contracts also required that the town historian’s office remain in place throughout the construction, she said. “I contacted our contractor about that and he said he could never agree to that for liability reasons,” Gonzalez said.

So Gonzalez called deputy town attorney Annmarie Prudenti about the discrepancies and, she says, Prudenti told her she would discuss the terms with the town board. Gonzalez followed the conversation up with a letter.

“She never got back to us,” Gonzalez said. “We never heard anything until today” when asked for comment by a reporter. “We were never informed the town was going to rescind it.”

The board reviewed a resolution at this morning’s work session that would rescind its June 16, 2015 resolution authorizing the sale to Gonzalez’s company.

The town “did not reach an agreement was to the terms of the contract and the town rejects the terms set forth in a written communication dated August 18, 2015,” according to the resolution now before the board.

Councilman John Dunleavy mentioned the issue with the parking spaces, but no one on the board offered any solution to the dilemma.

Supervisor Sean Walter, who was opposed to selling the building to I’m a Ruralpolitan, told board members the prospective buyer wanted the town to put a new roof on the building.

“Can we please have Cushman and Wakefield market this property?” Walter asked. He had advocated for that course of action — listing East Lawn with a broker — before the board authorized the sale to Gonzalez’s company.

The board, in March, had originally authorized the sale of East Lawn to Castle Restoration, a company headed by Bob Castaldi, who purchased the Suffolk Theater and the Second Street firehouse from the town. Castle Rock had offered the town $150,000, while I’m a Ruralpolitan had offered $250,000.

After an opportunity to examine the structure in depth, Gonzalez and Castaldi both reduced their offers, with Castaldi, at $125,000 coming in just under the $130,000 offer from Gonzalez. The board awarded the RFP to Castaldi anyway, but he later backed out of the deal. The board then, over Walter’s opposition, awarded the contract to I’m a Ruralpolitan.

“I’m not sure what I’m going to do,” said Gonzalez, who has been dealing with the town without an attorney. Finding legal counsel may be her next step.

“I’m just baffled that they’d do this to me. Instead of negotiating, just pulling out, without even telling me,” she said.

Gonzalez, who lives in downtown Riverhead, has been for several years a tenant representative on the Riverhead Business Improvement District Management Association board of directors.

After rescue from wrecking ball, restoration, then decline
The stately East Main Street converted residence the town is looking to sell is a designated landmark built around 1850 by a successful businessman who went on to become a Riverhead Town supervisor.

Hubbard Corwin raised 10 children in the two-story Italianate home, which was originally part of a 50-acre farm stretching north from East Main Street.

The last Corwin descendent to live in the home, called East Lawn, was his granddaughter, Marion Terry, who inherited the house in 1956. She lived there until 1983, when she sold the house to a developer who planned to demolish it to make way for an office complex.

But a group of Riverhead residents fought to have the historic home saved. Their efforts resulted in the Town of Riverhead purchasing the home in 1984. The town restored the building and converted it to office space for use by the town historian and several community groups.

The Riverhead town historian, the Riverhead Chamber of Commerce, the Riverhead Housing Development Corporation and the Riverhead Community Awareness Program took occupancy of East Lawn in 1988, the year the building was designated a town landmark.

But under town ownership, the once-grand landmark has steadily declined into what is today a state of extreme disrepair. The current board, citing repair costs and the cash-strapped town treasury, opted to sell East Lawn rather than repair and restore it.

Once the process to sell the building began in earnest, two tenants — the Riverhead Community Awareness Program and the Riverhead Chamber of Commerce — found other offices. The Riverhead Housing Development Corp., a private, nonprofit that administers the federal Section 8 housing assistance program in the town, has been relocated to another town-owned building, a two-story building on East Avenue originally acquired, to expand public parking, from architect Martin Sendlewski in 2009 for $300,000.

The town historian remains — unhappily — in the East Lawn building. In its current condition it provides a poor environment for properly storing and preserving the historical records being stored in the cramped, two-room office.

“They are irreplaceable,” town historian Georgette Case said.

The records date back to Riverhead’s founding, when it seceded from the Town of Southold in 1792. Records of births, deaths, marriages, burials and taxes paid; oaths of office sworn by citizens elected to serve in public office; minutes of town meetings.

The old, single-pane glass windows, with missing or cracked glaze, allow cold air and sometimes water to infiltrate the building’s interior, she said. Thick plastic sheeting has been tacked up on the windows in her office to protect the interior from the elements. Thick plastic sheeting has been tacked up on the windows in her office to protect the interior from the elements.

“Climate control is very important,” Case said. She also frets that the records are not stored in a fireproof room.

Case has been asking to have the office moved out of East Lawn for years. She dreads having to spend another winter in the office there — dreads even more exposing the town’s historical to the fluctuations in temperature and dampness winter brings to the old home.

There was talk of moving the historian’s office to the Second Street Firehouse, which Castaldi is currently renovating. But if any firm decisions have been made, Case hasn’t been informed of them.