Riverhead’s downtown parking lots will get some much-needed rehab this year.
The town board voted Tuesday to issue $725,917 in Riverhead Parking District bonds to cover most of the cost of repairing and repaving six parking lots in the district. The total cost of the project was estimated in October to exceed $820,000. A portion of the cost will be paid by parking district reserves, grants and a $15,000 contribution from the developer of the Riverview Lofts apartment building on East Main Street.
The debt service on the bond, estimated to be about $100,000 per year, would be paid by taxes on properties within the parking district and not by taxpayers outside the parking district, Councilman Tim Hubbard, the town board’s liaison to the parking district said during a discussion at a town board work session last year.
The work includes reconfiguring the First Street parking lot — the lot north of East Main Street between Roanoke and East avenues — including the removal of a series of islands. The new design, originally devised in 2013 by architect and parking district board member Martin Sendlewski, will add 57 spaces to the lot, Hubbard said.
A new lot on the corner of Roanoke and Third Street, an unpaved and unlit parking area on a half-acre site purchased from Suffolk County National Bank in 2014, will be paved and striped and lighting will be installed.
Municipal lots also slated for repaving: the lot adjacent to Griffing Hardware; the lot between Griffing and Roanoke avenues; the lot adjacent to Tuthill-Mangano Funeral Home; and the riverfront lot.
On Tuesday, Hubbard said the timing of the work will be coordinated with the completion of the demolition of two buildings the town is buying on the south side of East Main Street to make way for a new town square.
“The work is going to start in the First Street parking lot because it’s not going to be affected by any of the other construction downtown,” Hubbard said, “and we will finish up with the parking lot behind what hopefully will be the new Science Center and the town square. None of that will be done prior to everything being in place. We don’t want to put some new stuff down have to rip it up and re-do it. So that’s going to be done later,” he said.
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