As end of outdoor season nears, Riverhead’s popular indoor farmers’ market is still without a home

The season for Riverhead’s outdoor farmers’ market is drawing to a close.

The Saturday riverfront market is supposed to run through the end of this month, but Business Improvement District Management Association president Ray Pickersgill is looking to move the market indoors earlier than planned, if possible. Attendance at the outdoor market, never as high as the indoor market launched this past winter, has been steadily declining as the weather gets cooler.

The problem with moving indoors: Where to?

The vacant Main Street storefront the market occupied from February through May this year, is probably no longer available, Pickersgill told BIDMA board members at the board’s regular monthly meeting Wednesday.

Building owner Sheldon Gordon of Riverhead Enterprises is close to signing a lease for the space with a dollar store, Pickersgill said.

But Riverhead Enterprises also owns the long-vacant Sears building and Gordon offered to rent that space to the BID instead, Pickersgill said. Gordon asked for $5,000 per month rent, but Pickersgill said he believes the landlord will agree rent the store for $2,000 per month if the rent for six months is paid in full up front. The lease would run from November to May.

“That space is bigger and we could have a bigger market with more vendors,” Pickersgill said, noting that the BID last year was turning away vendors for lack of space. The number of vendors could be increased from 30 to 50 or 60, he said. The vendor fees — even at the same $400 fee for the whole season — would more than cover rent, insurance and other costs.

As he did with the storefront used by the BID last year, the landlord would require the BID to be responsible for making the space habitable. That includes installing a fire alarm system, repairing the roof, replacing water-damaged ceiling tiles, cleaning and painting, Pickersgill said. The BID would also have to build a wall to block access to the large warehouse area in the back of the building, Pickersgill said. The town won’t allow the BID to use the rear warehouse space, he said.

The front portion of the Sears building is nearly twice the size of the storefront the indoor market occupied last winter.

Pickersgill suggested opening the market two days a week, both Saturdays and Sundays. “I had complaints from people who work on Saturdays that we’re not open Sundays too,” he said.

“We have 60 vendors interested in the winter market right now and I think we could get 100,” Pickersgill told board members. “We could have 50 vendors each day, both Saturday and Sunday. People would like that.”

BIDMA board members agreed to have Pickersgill pursue the Sears building.

Pickersgill told them he’s still not sure town officials will sign off on it. Besides the fire alarm, the town may insist on a sprinkler system. If it does, that’s a deal-breaker because of the cost involved, the BIDMA president said.

He said Friday he’s still waiting to hear back from the town.

There’s still a chance that last year’s location will be available,Pickersgill said, because the lease with the dollar store isn’t a done deal yet.

“Those two buildings are our only alternatives right now, unless maybe we can use the old firehouse,” Pickersgill said.

Riverhead in the running for $500,000 state grant for firehouseThe town owns the former fire department headquarters on Second Street, which sits vacant. The Town Board has agreed to sell the building for $500,000 to builder Bob Castaldi, who renovated, refurbished and operates the Suffolk Theater.

At the same time, the town is pursuing a $500,000 N.Y. state regional economic development council capital grant to support the development of “an East End gateway tourism center” in the historic firehouse, with the thought of relocating the indoor farmers’ market to that site. The proposal was one of 28 selected for capital grant funding by the L.I. Regional Economic Development Council and recommended to state officials this summer, part of nearly $27 million in Round Four funding recommended by the LIREDC. The L.I. council is competing for up to $150 million in capital funds statewide. The awards are expected to be announced this fall.

Castaldi said Saturday he’s got a lot of good ideas for the firehouse space that would all work well together to showcase tourism and agriculture. He’s talking with a couple of breweries, he said, as well as a trolley operator who would start and end tours at the firehouse, so that returning tourists could enjoy a night out in downtown Riverhead.

The builder has been contemplating ways to make a farmers market viable five or even seven days a week, he said. It could perhaps be modeled after the “antique malls” he’s visited upstate. The operator has staff to run the vendors’ kiosks so they don’t have to personally attend every day— which is impossible for farmers to do since they have to spend their growing or creating what they sell.

“It’s almost like you create a kind of supermarket farmers’ market,” Castaldi said.

He said he thought it would work really well with a tourism center and brewery at the site.