Riverhead Landmarks Commission to renew effort to list Main Road historic district

If at first you don’t succeed…

Riverhead’s Landmarks Preservation Commission is planning to take a second stab at getting a Main Road historic district on the state and national registers.

Designation as a historic district on the state and national registers of historic places brings the opportunity for substantial tax credits — 20 percent on state income taxes and 20 percent on federal income taxes for restoration investments — with no new restrictions, Riverhead Landmarks Preservation Commission chairman Richard Wines stresses.

“It’s the carrot approach to preservation, rather than the stick,” Wines said.

The availability of substantial tax credits is an incentive to restore rather than raze historic homes and buildings that have fallen into disrepair, he said.

In 2013, the Riverhead commission conducted a survey of historic resources along Main Road in Aquebogue, Jamesport and part of Laurel. (See the historic resources survey here.) The commission subsequently nominated the corridor for designation as a state and national historic district. State historic preservation officials later asked that the proposed district be expanded across the Southold Town line to include the entire hamlet of Laurel, which is split between the two towns.

That touched off a maelstrom of controversy, with property owners in the Southold Town portion of the proposed district loudly objecting to being swept up in the nomination effort without warning or sufficient opportunity for input.

Southold Town officials, who said the inclusion of 42 properties in Southold caught people off-guard, voiced concerns over feared loss of autonomy in land use decisions and feared restrictions on property rights.

After an August 2014 informational meeting held by the State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation drew a crowd of angry residents, the state agency postponed acting on Riverhead’s application, which was on the agency’s September agenda. In October, the Riverhead Landmarks Preservation Commission decided to withdraw its application. By that point, community opposition led four of the five members of the Riverhead Town Board, which had initially blessed the nomination effort, to sign a letter to the commission asking it to withdraw the nomination. Only Councilwoman Jodi Giglio, the town board liaison to the landmarks commission, declined to sign the letter.

At a town board work session Thursday, when the commission met with town board members to report on its activities, Wines said since the first effort to create the Main Road district, two historically significant homes on Main Road in Aquebogue have been demolished. The 1873 Aldrich house at 621 Main Road was torn down in July 2015 (pictured above) and the Fanning-Goodale house at 190 Main Road was razed in March.

“With the incentives in place, maybe these resources would not have been lost,” he said.

Commission members said the previous nomination effort was scuttled by “misinformation,” with property owners wrongly believing that the designation of the historic district would bring new restrictions on their property rights.

That’s simply not the case, Wines said.

Property owners in a registered district can do whatever they want with their properties — even tear their buildings down — if they’re not taking advantage of the available tax credits that come with the designation, Wines said. He pointed to other historic districts in the town, including the downtown district, where he said the tax credits have incentivized property owners like Joe Petrocelli to renovate and restore historic homes on Main Street. Other owners have demolished buildings, including the former Sears building on Main Street, even though it was listed as a historic resource in the district.

Last time, the landmarks commission “lost the information war,” Wines said.

This time around the Riverhead landmarks group has had opportunities to meet with Southold Town officials and civic groups up front, before the nomination application is even filed, Wines said.

The nominations are due in the State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation in February 2020. The state will send letters to property owners within the proposed district in April, in advance of a May 2020 public information meeting. The state would then review the nomination at its June 2020 meeting.