Another Nile Rodgers music festival on the way
The board unanimously approved a chapter 90 application from Nile Rodgers Productions for a music, art and wine festival called “The Freak Out!” The festival will be held at Martha Clara Vineyards on August 4 and 5, which are a Tuesday and a Wednesday.
The festival will be an all-day event, scheduled from 9 a.m. to 11 p.m. There will be an expected daily attendance of 10,500 people.
No performing artists have been announced yet, though Peter Herman from Nile Rodgers Productions said the main event this year will feature 12 to 13 performers.
Nile Rodgers is a celebrity music producer who brought AVICII and others to Martha Clara in 2013. He has worked with many other popular artists in his career, including Daft Punk, Pharrell Williams, Disclosure and Sam Smith.
For more information about the event, see RiverheadLOCAL’s previous reporting on the festival’s application.
Sonoma Grill seeks OK for weekend music, dancing
The Sonoma Grill, a new restaurant opening later this month in the former RiverheadProject building, went before the town board at a public hearing yesterday to make its case for a tavern special permit that would allow it to have music and dancing on the weekends.
“There is no night life around here,” Matthew Demar, co-owner of the restaurant, said in a recent interview.
Demar explained to the board yesterday that the restaurant would close by midnight Sunday through Wednesday, and that the music and dancing granted by the special permit would be limited to Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights. On those nights, the restaurant would usually close around 2 a.m., he said.
“The property has screening on each end next to residential areas,” he told the board. “The music is entirely indoors. There will be no outdoor music, and none is going to be applied for. Everyone should be aware of that.
“The site is not going to change physically,” he added. “It’s going to stay just as it is.”
The music would either be two- or three-piece jazz bands or DJs, Demar said. There would be at least two security guards on premises at all times, he said.
He argued that the restaurant’s ability to have music and dancing on the weekends would “allow the site to be open all year long. As we know, the prior owner had a problem during the wintertime,” he said.
The public hearing will remain open for written comment until March 27.
In other action, the board approved:
- Flyboarding regulations were added to the Town Code after months of public hearings and debate. The regulations will restrict flyboarding operation to at least 300 feet away from shore, effectively pushing their use out of the river and into the Peconic Bay.
- Riverhead’s sixth annual Great Cardboard Boat Race will be held June 28 at noon in the downtown riverfront parking lot. The event has been wildly successful in past years, drawing thousands downtown to both watch and participate in the competition
- a resolution reconstituting the town’s Anti-Bias Task Force, a move inspired by a string of violent assaults on Hispanic men in downtown Riverhead recently. The committee was originally established in the early 1990s, but had been inactive for several years.
A public hearing on the United Riverhead Terminal’s proposed construction of two additional storage tanks at its Northville facility lasted more than three and a half hours last night. Community members packed out the room to express their opposition to the proposed plan. Full coverage available here.
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