Demolition begins at 127 East Main Street as town square project moves forward

The final building demolition in Riverhead’s town square project got underway today to the soundtrack of the Andy Williams Christmas classic, “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year.”

A Caterpillar demolition excavator began shredding the rear facade of the two-story brick building at 127 East Main Street at 12:39 p.m., drawing cheers and applause from the crowd of assembled officials and stakeholders. 

“This is the best feeling in the world,” Riverhead Supervisor Tim Hubbard said as he stood on the edge of the parking lot along the Peconic River watching the demolition begin. 

“It’s been such a long time coming. Think back to the days when Apollo was going to do the [downtown] renaissance,” he said, referring to the Apollo Real Estate Investors, the real estate company, appointed master developer for the central Main Street corridor in 2006, during the Phil Cardinale administration. Hubbard was then a Riverhead Town Police officer.

“To finally have it come to fruition,” he said, looking up at the arm of the excavator tearing chunks of the building away. “I’m so excited for the Town of Riverhead.”

That feeling of excitement percolated through the crowd gathered behind the building on a very cold and windy mid-December day to witness the beginning of the demolition. 

The building will be fully razed within a couple of weeks, developer and builder Joe Petrocelli said in an interview following the noon ceremony he attended as an onlooker. 

“We have to do some soil testing. The piles will be 70 feet deep,” Petrocelli said, pointing to a giant drill rig parked on the site. “In three or four months we’ll be ready to start construction, which will take about a year,” he said.

“We’re so excited we got the Hilton,” Petrocelli said of the five-story boutique hotel and condominium project planned for the east side of the town square. The Peconic River Hotel will join Hilton’s Tapestry Collection and is expected to open in spring/summer 2027, Petrocelli’s organization said in a press release issued prior to today’s ceremony.

The hotel will have 80 rooms on the second through fourth floors, above ground-floor retail and dining spaces that will open on the town square plaza and Main Street. The fifth floor will comprise private condominiums, “offering luxury river-view residences,” the press release said.

The Peconic River hotel will be the third Petrocelli-affiliated hotel in downtown Riverhead. His company owns the Hyatt Place Long Island/East End and the Preston House. It also owns the Long Island Aquarium and the adjoining marina.

The project’s public features will include a pedestrian plaza linking Main Street to the Peconic River, an amphitheater and event lawn, an adaptive playground and seasonal splash pad, terraced flood-resilient landscaping, new walkways and lighting, public art, and improved riverfront access and docking.

New York Secretary of State Walter Mosley was on hand to congratulate the town for what officials described as a major step forward, backed by multimillion dollar state and federal financial backing. The state awarded Riverhead Town a $10 million downtown revitalization grant in January 2022. 

“This allowed for a series of transformational projects around the downtown area,” Mosley said. “Our downtowns are the heart of our communities,” he said. “Our downtowns serve as a catalyst for revitalization as well as economic development. They epitomize the sense of place,” he said.

The federal government awarded the town a $24 million grant in funding through the Department of Transportation’s  RAISE (Rebuilding American Infrastructure with Sustainability and Equity) discretionary grant program. The RAISE grant will help fund a 500-space parking garage on the north side of Main Street, improve the downtown’s streetscapes and implement flood mitigation measures on the Peconic riverfront. 

Kevin Law, who chairs the board of directors of the Empire State Development Corporation, credited Riverhead Planning, Community Development and Economic Development Administrator Dawn Thomas with pulling it all together for the town. “One of the best public servants that I’ve worked with in my long career in and out of the public sector and private sector is Dawn Thomas,” Law said.

The town bought three buildings on East Main Street in 2021 from Riverhead Enterprises for $4.85 million. The properties are immediately east of a building purchased by the Long Island Science Center for a new children’s science museum, classrooms and a planetarium. The science center has yet to commence the major renovations needed to open the new facility. The town demolished two of the buildings in 2021 and signed a contract to sell 127 East Main Street to J. Petrocelli Development Associates, the town’s designated master developer for the town square project, for $2.625 million. 

The building at 127 East Main was an office building constructed around 1950 with retail stores on the first floor. It was antiquated and the upper floor was largely vacant when the town bought it. One of the retail spaces was occupied by the bar Craft’d, which the town began eminent domain proceedings to remove; it reached a settlement with the bar’s owners and the bar closed down in October. 

Town officials said they were anxious to empty the building so that Petrocelli’s company could begin demolition and site work before winter. When the Town Board authorized a possession and lease agreement with Petrocelli in October, Hubbard said the demolition was tentatively scheduled to take place by the end of the month. He later said it was delayed by difficulty coordinating attendees at various levels of government. Then Election Day came with an upset victory by challenger Jerry Halpin. 

Halpin attended today’s ceremony declined comment on the town square project afterward. “Today’s about the current administration and the decisions they’ve made,” Halpin said. “I’m listening and like every other project in Riverhead, I’m meeting with everybody and getting ready, so that we can help downtown be successful, whether a business currently exists or it’s a project that’s coming in, as soon as my administration starts,” he said.

Today was a bittersweet moment for the outgoing supervisor, but he was upbeat nonetheless. 

“There couldn’t be a better way to go out of office than to see this actually taking place,” Hubbard said. “I’m extremely happy.”