Riverhead Town is considering a zoning amendment that would greatly expand the types of businesses that could be located at Tanger Outlets and properties surrounding it, including allowing general retail stores, specialty markets, restaurants, furniture showrooms and certain indoor and outdoor recreation.
The Town Board is scheduled to hold a hearing on the amendment Wednesday during its 6 p.m. meeting.
The zoning amendment, made in consultation with Tanger executives, is intended to provide increased “flexibility” for the outlet center, according to town officials.
The zoning would allow general retail stores, interior design and furniture showroom and specialty grocery stores as principal uses, in addition to manufacturer’s outlet stores.
The amendment would also expand accessory uses to allow a sit-down restaurant as an alternative to a food court. The restaurant would not be allowed to have direct vehicular access to Route 58 or Route 25. Drive-thru service would not be allowed. The restaurant can have limited live entertainment and can sell alcoholic beverages.
The amendment would also allow indoor and outdoor recreational areas. Outdoor recreation “may include walking or exercise trails, playgrounds, small amusements rides, carousels, splash pads. Indoor recreation may include arcades, virtual reality games, billiards, foosball, ping pong, yoga dance and other fitness activities.”
Theaters — which are currently allowed as accessory uses — may offer food and beverage service, including alcoholic beverages, at counters or by delivery to patrons at their seats, the amendment states. The square-footage of theaters would be excluded from being used to calculate parking requirements, the proposed code states.
Council Member Bob Kern, former president of the Riverhead Chamber of Commerce and the previous chairperson of the town’s Business Advisory Committee, said he has been talking to Tanger about amending the zoning for more than two-and-a-half years, predating his election to the Town Board.
“I asked them how they were being treated around the country in terms of what was happening with retail, and what other towns were doing to help them given the retail crisis,” Kern said. “And they had no problems whatsoever morphing their retail so that they could survive,” he said.
“And keeping in mind that Tanger is the largest taxpayer in Riverhead, it’s absolutely necessary that we as a town address the trend in retail, and address it with our largest retailer, as well as others,” Kern added.
Deputy Town Attorney Annemarie Prudenti said the zoning amendment will allow the flexibility “to not simply survive, but improve and remain viable.” Prudenti said Tanger shared several ideas and trends in other properties around the country to help the town craft its zoning amendment.
“The success and the ability for Tanger to thrive is critical to the Town of Riverhead,” Prudenti said. “Absolutely critical.”
Tanger, a publicly traded company, has 38 retail centers and one open-air “lifestyle center” in North America. Tanger opened its outlet center in Riverhead in 1994, roughly two years after the town adopted the zoning for the site, known as Business F, or manufacturer’s outlet center overlay zone.
A draft of the code discussed during the Nov. 30 work session discussion showed that Brian Auger, Tanger’s senior vice president, worked on the code with town officials and made suggestions on a shared document. An email sent to Auger was responded to by a representative from Tanger’s public relations firm, who declined a reporter’s request to interview Auger.
Community Development Director Dawn Thomas said Tanger would like to consolidate the three stores on the easternmost buildings — Pottery Barn, Williams Sonoma and West Elm outlets — into a “more experiential” store on the western end of its property. The easternmost buildings would be converted into “high-end, food-type uses,” Thomas said, using the retailer Whole Foods as an example of the type of use she described.
In addition to allowing the sale of food products, the “specialty grocery, food stores and markets center” use also allows cooking schools, food and beverage counters, and small scale restaurants — with seating not to exceed 25 seats per venue.
Prudenti said the town tried to “maintain the integrity of certain provisions” of the comprehensive plan with the zoning amendment. “We tried to create flexibility in this code, but at the same time put in limitations and restrictions to continue to foster downtown and not have the two compete against each other,” she said.
The only board member who raised concerns about the code during the Nov. 30 discussion was Council Member Ken Rothwell, who said he was concerned that Tanger’s moving away from being an outlet mall could make it less of a destination for people coming from New York City.
The changes will help Tanger become more of a destination in Riverhead, Thomas told Rothwell, especially people interested in furnishing their homes. Prudenti said outlet malls that have undergone similar changes remain shopping destinations.
“Route 58 and Riverhead will always be a destination. Why? Because on the East End you don’t have another Route 58,” Prudenti said. “If you go shopping on the weekends, whether it’s Tanger — anywhere along Route 58 — you are meeting people from Southampton, East Hampton, Southold… Route 58 is a destination and it will always be a destination because those areas east are not going to develop a similar Route 58.”
Kern said visitors to Tanger Outlets in Riverhead has been declining in recent years. “If it wasn’t declining, I don’t think we’d be having this conversation,” he said. “And when you go into Tanger and you drive through there and you have empty shops, the signal that sends to people coming to Tanger is not good.”
“The experiential retail model has really been the saving grace of the entire retail collapse that came with online shopping,” Thomas said. “And so that’s really where it started, and so they needed to shift and change to be able to make sure that they are still attracting their customer.”
Changes coming to Tanger’s malls are not isolated to Riverhead. It has announced partnerships with new brands, and partnerships with restaurants — Shake Shack and Dave & Busters — to open in and near other outlet stores.
In an interview with the media outlet ModernRetail published in August, Tanger CEO Stephen Yalor said Tanger malls have seen more traffic during the weekdays than it did prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, and has adapted since the pandemic with new offerings.
“It’s changed how we’ve merchandised our shopping centers,” Yalor told Modern Retail. “They were looking for places to gather, so we’ve leaned into making sure that our gathering spaces are a lot more inviting… We’ve leaned far more heavily into food more than we ever did before… They’re looking for daily conveniences as well. So we’ve leaned a little bit more into service, we’ve leaned into grocery, leaned into more entertainment and lifestyle, cosmetics.”
Tanger’s newest outlet, which opened in October in Nashville, has several restaurants. Tanger also purchased the Bridge Street Town Centre in Alabama, a “lifestyle center” with food, stores, apartments and movie theaters.
In addition to the two properties owned by Tanger, the zoning change also impacts a vacant property, also zoned Business F, wedged between Tanger I and Tanger II. The property, owned by William Dries and Anthony Specchio, obtained a special permit and preliminary site plan approval from the town last year to develop 31,000 square feet into outlet stores independent of Tanger.
A draft final scoping document for Riverhead’s updated comprehensive plan states that the flexibility “should be extended to the vacant parcel” owned by Dries and Specchio, but that the town may also consider rezoning the parcel to another zoning-use district.
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