Riverhead negotiating with MTA to use old railroad station ticket building as offices for ambulance corps, police

Riverhead Town officials are looking to use the old ticket office building at the Riverhead train station to house administrative offices for the Riverhead Volunteer Ambulance Corps and a small office for Riverhead Police.

Riverhead chief of staff Larry Levy and deputy town attorney Ann Marie Prudenti have been in talks with the MTA about gaining the use of the building and the state authority is amenable to the idea, they told board members at yesterday’s work session. Prudenti is drafting a proposal to submit to the MTA.

The town would have use of the long-vacant building at no cost through a licensing agreement, but would be responsible for routine maintenance.

“It’s been vacant for many, many years and its created not a great element,” Levy said.

There is a mold issue in the small basement of the brick building, the result of a broken pipe. The MTA will take care of mold abatement, Levy said.

“We’re requesting that all mechanicals be in working order,” Prudenti said.

Councilman John Dunleavy, who has inspected the building interior, said the air-conditioning system is not in working order.

Prudenti said she would not want to see the town enter a license agreement to use the premises if it had to assume responsibility for major repairs or replacements.

The building has not been used as a ticket office “in decades,” Levy said. It has fallen into some disrepair.

Riverhead Volunteer Ambulance Corps needs administrative office space, which is lacking in its severely cramped Osborn Avenue headquarters. The town board is requiring RVAC to begin billing for certain services, a function which will require even more office space.

The MTA has allowed the town to use it in the past. It was occupied briefly by the Riverhead Business Improvement District Management Association more than a decade ago, but the organization’s executive director at the time, Vicki Staciwo, felt uncomfortable being alone inside the building. Several years ago, the Open Arms soup kitchen used the building for a time to distribute boxed lunches to the needy. It currently remains locked at all times.

The town intends to erect a fence around three sides of the building to secure an entryway on the north side — adjacent to the tracks — and to prevent loitering, especially at night.  The proposed fencing location would require relocation of a bicycle rack under the covered plaza on the east side of the building.  See plan diagram below.

People have been using the back of the building as a urinal, Supervisor Sean Walter said. The MTA is agreeable to the fence, he said. The cost would be paid out of ambulance district funds.

The town is asking the county to move the bus stop from the front of the building to the sidewalk along Cedar Avenue, Dunleavy said.

“I don’t know that’s going to happen,” Walter said, adding that he didn’t like the idea personally.

“That’s important. That’s why people hang out there,” Dunleavy responded. The councilman said the ambulance corps asked for the bus stop to be relocated.

“I don’t think people coming off the train to visit Riverhead should have to meander around looking for a bus stop,” Councilman James Wooten said.

“I hope the ambulance corps doesn’t balk at moving in if we can’t get the bus stop moved,” Walter said.

Dunleavy said he would speak to County Legislator Al Krupski. Levy said an MTA representative offered to speak directly with Suffolk County Transit, which operates the buses.

The old ticket office building is a connecting bus stop where several different Suffolk Transit lines stop throughout the day. There are far more buses than trains arriving and departing from the Riverhead station.

There are two benches placed against the building wall, which together with the building overhang, serve to provide shelter for riders waiting for their buses to arrive.

“I’m here a few days a week,” said Danielle Owens, a Suffolk County Community College student standing at the bus stop Thursday afternoon, waiting for the arrival of the 8A, which she uses to travel to her home in Calverton. She had been at the library studying, she said.

Told about the idea to move the bus stop across the street, along the wall of a building on Cedar Avenue, Owens shrugged. “I hope they put up a shelter over there,” she said.

Another rider waiting for a bus complained about “too many drunk guys hanging around here,” gesturing across the street toward the bodega on the corner of Railroad and Cedar.

An elderly man sitting on the bench said he was waiting for a bus that was already 10 minutes late. “It’s par for the course,” he said.

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