East Lawn tenant moving out: Riverhead CAP relocating in June

Riverhead Community Awareness Program will soon have a new home right next-door to its current location in the East Lawn building on Main Street.

“We’re very excited,” said Felicia Scocozza, executive director of Riverhead CAP, a not-for-profit agency providing substance abuse prevention and education services in Riverhead. “This will allow us to hire more staff and expand our services.”

CAP is moving into a 1,200-square-foot, handicapped accessible space in the former IRS building at 518 East Main Street. The move will give the organization more than three times the amount of office space than it has at its current headquarters in the second story offices of the East Lawn building, where it has less than 400 square feet of office space.

Riverhead town has provided second-story offices in the building to CAP rent-free since 1989, but the building is now for sale by the town with two prospective buyers. With the building’s future uncertain, and an opportunity for occupancy right next-door, CAP has opted to move to the new location.

“Fortunately, the New York State Office of Alcohol and Substance Abuse Services recognized that we’re doing good work here, and that we need to expand,” Scocozza said. “So they increased our funding, which has allowed us to move.

“The town has been very generous to us,” she added. “But with all things considered, it’s a good time to move.”

The town provides rent-free space, maintenance, heat and electricity for the handful of tenants occupying the historic building. One of them is a town officer, the Riverhead town historian. Also housed at East Lawn, in addition to CAP, are the Riverhead Chamber of Commerce and the Riverhead Housing Development Corp., a nonprofit agency that administers the federal Housing and Urban Development agency’s Housing Choice voucher program in the Town of Riverhead.

Town officials have been talking about selling the circa 1850 historic building for several years. Riverhead purchased it in 1984 from the developer of the adjacent office complex, who had intended to tear it down to make way for another office building. The town restored the building and converted it to office space for use by the town historian and several community groups, including CAP, which began taking occupancy in 1988, the year it was also designated a town landmark.

But the building has fallen into serious disrepair — its painted exterior siding is peeling and its single-pane windows have cracked or missing glazing, allowing cold air and sometimes even water to infiltrate the building. The town can’t afford new windows or even the paint job because there’s lead paint that needs to be remediated, according to Supervisor Sean Walter.

The town has twice issued requests for proposals from prospective purchasers. It has been reviewing two proposals submitted in response to its most recent RFP. The building’s tenants do not know when they might be required to move.

One tenant is town historian Georgette Case, who has been telling the town board for years that the need to move the historian’s office is beyond urgent. The office has a collection of original documents and materials dating back to the late 1700s, when Riverhead Town seceded from Southold.  The historic materials should be stored in a climate-controlled environment, Case says.  Councilman James Wooten talked about moving the historian into the Second Street firehouse, which the town instead sold to a developer. He then said he was exploring buying or leasing the free-standing building across from Town Hall on Howell Avenue for the historian’s office.  That building was  subsequently occupied by a new hair salon.

CAP’s new space is currently undergoing renovations. Scocozza expects CAP to be moved in and operating in the new offices by the end of June.