The Riverhead Industrial Development Agency’s public hearing on financial assistance for the proposed Town Square hotel drew no members of the public yesterday afternoon, prompting the agency to extend the opportunity for public comment through its next regular meeting, scheduled for Oct. 5.
The only people in the audience at the 5 p.m. hearing at Riverhead Town Hall were the developer’s attorney, a company representative and this reporter.
After opening the hearing and reading the published legal notice, IDA Chairman James Farley noted the lack of public turnout and that the meeting was not being carried on Zoom. He asked whether there were any comments.
Asked where and when notice of the hearing had been published, Farley said it appeared in the Riverhead News-Review on Sept. 17.
Farley noted that the board was aware of considerable public discussion about the project.
Board member Lee Mendelson said he had a number of questions about the application but deferred them until next week, when a representative of the applicant is expected to be available to answer questions.
Farley then recessed the meeting to call the IDA’s attorney to discuss how to proceed. He briefly stepped out of the meeting room.
When he returned, Farley announced that the agency would close the public hearing but continue accepting written comments through the close of its next regular meeting one week later. The agency will also provide another opportunity for members of the public to comment on the project at that meeting.
The board then voted 3-0 to close the hearing, with member Lori Pipczynski absent.
Developer seeks tax exemptions and 20-year PILOT
The amended application before the IDA was submitted by J. Petrocelli Riverhead Town Square LLC in June and formally accepted by the agency on Aug. 3. The IDA scheduled yesterday’s hearing at its Sept. 14 meeting, when it also authorized publication of a public notice in the Riverhead News-Review, the newspaper designated by the IDA for publication of its legal notices.
The application, originally submitted in November, included fifth-floor condominium units and was later revised to reflect a hotel-only use.
The project, estimated to cost about $35.15 million, calls for construction of a five-story, approximately 69,738-square-foot building on the site of an approximately 11,800-square-foot building that has already been demolished. The new building would provide 94 hotel rooms as well as a ground-floor restaurant, coffee shop and retail space.
The Town Board approved the applicant’s site plan on Aug. 4.
Petrocelli is seeking an estimated $1.36 million exemption from state and local sales taxes on construction and equipment purchases and an estimated $147,028 mortgage-recording-tax exemption. The company is also requesting a 20-year property-tax abatement through a payment-in-lieu-of-taxes agreement, commonly known as a PILOT.
Together, the requested sales- and mortgage-tax exemptions total about $1.5 million, not including the proposed 20-year property-tax abatement.
The application available on the IDA’s website as of yesterday’s hearing did not state the dollar value of the requested property-tax abatement. The exhibit reserved for the proposed PILOT schedule is blank and says the schedule will be prepared after the agency accepts the application and completes its cost-benefit analysis.
The economic impact analysis was also not posted on the agency’s website as of yesterday’s hearing. It is listed on the IDA website’s “Projects” page with a notation that it is “pending.”
The applicant projects the development would create 54 full-time and 10 part-time jobs with annual payroll of about $2.46 million, as well as 210 construction jobs, according to the application documents.
In its application, Petrocelli says the project is unlikely to proceed without IDA assistance, citing extraordinary upfront costs, high interest rates and operating expenses. The company says the requested financial assistance is necessary to make the project economically viable.
View application on the RIDA website.
Written comments on the application will be accepted through the close of the IDA’s Oct. 5 meeting, when members of the public will also have another opportunity to comment on the project. The Oct. 5 meeting is scheduled for 5 p.m. at Riverhead Town Hall.
Questions about compliance with notice rules
RiverheadLOCAL received no advance notice of the Sept. 14 regular meeting. Board secretary Pipczynski emailed this reporter on Sept. 14, the day of that meeting, saying she wanted to “confirm that tonight’s meeting is on.”
The Sept. 14 meeting, at which the agency scheduled yesterday’s public hearing, was a regularly scheduled meeting. The IDA’s regular monthly meetings are scheduled for the first Monday of each month, with the meeting moved to the following Monday when the first Monday falls on a holiday. Since the first Monday of September was Labor Day, Sept. 14 was the date for the regularly scheduled September meeting.
The Sept. 14 meeting was not listed on the town’s calendar of meetings and was not livestreamed or recorded.
Yesterday’s meeting also did not appear on the town’s calendar of meetings, but it was livestreamed and recorded.
New York’s Open Meetings Law requires notice of the time and place of a meeting scheduled at least a week in advance to be given to the news media and posted publicly at least 72 hours before the meeting.
It was not immediately clear whether the IDA provided advance notice of the Sept. 14 meeting to any other news organization.
A legal notice of yesterday’s hearing was published on page 12 of the Sept. 17 edition of the Riverhead News-Review.
State law governing industrial development agencies requires at least 10 days’ published notice before a public hearing on a project and the proposed financial assistance. The law also requires interested parties to be given a reasonable opportunity, both orally and in writing, to present their views on the project.
The published notice described the proposed hotel project and the tax exemptions contemplated by the IDA. It also stated that the application and an economic impact study were available for public inspection by appointment at the agency’s office.
The application is posted on the IDA website, but it is accessible through a link at the bottom of the agency’s Projects page.
The hearing itself was not listed on the IDA website’s Public Hearing Notices page as of this morning.
The published legal notice says an economic impact study is available for inspection at the agency’s office by appointment. It is not posted on the IDA website, which lists the analysis as “pending.”
IDA website remains substantially out of date
The limited online information about yesterday’s hearing is part of a broader problem with the IDA website, which remains substantially out of date despite a 2024 review by the State Authorities Budget Office that identified numerous disclosure deficiencies.
The agency has been operating without an executive director since its longtime executive director retired last November. The IDA recently hired an administrative employee, who attended yesterday’s meeting. It is still searching for an executive director, Farley said.
Although the agency’s website was redesigned earlier this year, much of its content has not been updated for 2026. One apparent exception is the Petrocelli application, which Farley said yesterday was added Sept. 17.
Another application that was the subject of a public hearing yesterday — an application by Island Facades LLC for an expansion at 1011 Scott Avenue in Calverton — does not appear on the site’s Projects page.
The site’s Public Hearing Notices page lists no public hearings after Feb. 5, 2024.
Its Meeting Schedule page displays meetings for 2023, 2024 and 2025, but none for 2026.
On the Minutes page, the most recent meeting minutes listed are from the IDA board meeting of July 7, 2025.
The most recent entry on the site’s News and Notices page is a press release dated Aug. 18, 2023.
The Riverhead IDA’s website was previously cited by the State Authorities Budget Office for failing to meet online disclosure requirements imposed by state law.
The ABO conducted a review in October 2024 and found that the site came up short in numerous areas, according to a Dec. 19, 2024 letter from the ABO to Tracy Stark-James, then executive director and CEO of the Riverhead IDA. RiverheadLOCAL obtained the letter from the ABO through a Freedom of Information Law request.
Stark-James said in a Jan. 8, 2025 email to RiverheadLOCAL that the agency was working to improve the website and address the deficiencies identified by the ABO.
“With respect to other comments by the ABO, the Agency had already contracted with a firm back in October to create a dashboard for its website and has been updating its website to conform with any other recommendations,” Stark-James wrote. “Most of them have already been addressed.”
Many of the documents that were posted online at the time of the ABO review have not been posted for 2026. Some are also missing for 2025.
The site’s Policies page contains no entries for 2026.
The Reports page contains no entries for 2025 or 2026. Although it lists several documents under a 2024 heading, none of those listings are live links. Among the documents listed there is the agency’s annual budget.
The Financials page contains links to the agency’s audited financial statements, independent auditor’s report, report on internal controls and auditor’s management letter for 2023 and 2024. The same documents are listed for 2025, but there are no live links. Nothing is listed for 2026.
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