Townhouse apartments planned for E. Second St. site of home destroyed in 2021 fatal fire

New townhouse apartments are planned for the East Second Street site of a historic home destroyed in a 2021 fire that killed five people.

Tamer Pepemehmetoglu, of the Sag Harbor-based contractor Houseworks, is proposing eight 950-square-foot, two-bedroom townhouses in a pair of two-story buildings at 46 East Second St., according to a site plan application filed last month with the Town of Riverhead. 

“I think the Riverhead is coming up, finally, and there’s a lot of development going on and I think this is great,” Pepemehmetoglu said Tuesday on his decision to build in Riverhead. 

He said the apartments are larger than the typical apartment stock in Riverhead, which he said would help the community. The rent will be around $3,200 a month, Pepemehmetoglu said.

The townhouses will be built sustainably and fully powered by electricity, Pepemehmetoglu said. The building’s HVAC system features “modern and energy-efficient heat pumps that minimize the use of non-renewable energy sources,” the site plan states. The parking lot, located behind the building, will be constructed using permeable pavers, according to the site plan application. The pavers filter rainwater and allows it to be absorbed into the ground, the plan states.

The .33-acre site, situated on the north side of East Second Street between Roanoke and East avenues, is located in the Downtown Center 4 (“Office/Residential Transition”) Zoning Use District. The DC-4 district allows townhouses as a permitted use. The proposed construction meets or exceed all dimensional and site requirements of the town code, with one exception. It maps out 11 parking spaces, located behind the buildings, which is one park space short of the minimum number required by code, calculated at 1.5 spaces per dwelling unit. The property is located within the Riverhead Water District and the Riverhead Sewer District.

The parcel was the site of a historic three-story home that caught fire in November 2021. That fire, caused by improperly discarded cigarettes, according to a Suffolk County Police arson investigation, resulted in the death of five members of the Rivera family, Guatemalan immigrants who lived in the home’s third-floor apartment and were trapped when the only staircase to the third floor was destroyed by the fire and partially collapsed, according to the police investigation. Family members of the people who died in the fire have since brought wrongful death actions against Riverhead Town and the owner of the home, who lived on the first floor and rented two apartments on the second floor and one on the third floor. The landlord and the second-floor tenants escaped from the fire.

The charred remains of the home were razed by the owner in October 2022, after pressure from Riverhead town officials. The Town Board had taken steps to deem the building an unsafe structure, which would have allowed the town to do the demolition and charge the cost to the property owner.

The cleared, vacant lot was purchased by 46 East 2nd Project LLC, a company owned by Pepemehmetoglu, in March 2023 for $500,000.

Pepemehmetoglu, 60, said he has been working on the project since he purchased the property. Town planning officials like it, he said, and he hopes to receive approvals soon to start building. The developer anticipates a phased construction on the development, finishing the final phase in October 2025, according to the site plan application.