What downtown needs: Democratic candidates take walking tour to highlight issues

Each week, thousands of people pass the crumbling, boarded-up shell of the former Courthouse Restaurant on Griffing Avenue.

It stands at the corner of Railroad Avenue, the frequent site of muggings and other violent crime, and next to the Suffolk County Supreme Court, where lawyers, jurors and defendants from all over the county come for trials every weekday.

Last week, the town executed a search warrant at the former restaurant to see if its condition merits demolition, six months after serving a demand on the owners of the building requiring repairs and cleanup.

But the Democratic slate of town board candidates argued today that the town’s lengthy inaction on this and many other pressing issues is the true barrier that’s stalled downtown Riverhead revitalization.

“Six months ago, [the town board] acknowledged that this building was a public safety hazard,” council candidate Neil Krupnick, said at a press conference in front of former restaurant today. “The roof is collapsing. The building is infested with rats. What took them so long to address this?”

“This is our town,” said Laura Jens-Smith, who is also running for town board on the Democratic ticket. “We should be proud of where we’re living.”

Jens-Smith, Krupnick and Anthony Coates,  the Democratic nominee for town supervisor, took a walking tour with reporters downtown this afternoon to talk about what they would do differently on Main Street should they win election.

Railroad Avenue police substation. “There’s no reason the train station can’t be turned into a police substation,” Coates said. “In Port Jefferson they put a police substation right downtown in a high crime area. They stuck a blue light and a police car there and it made all the difference in the world.”

Coates said out-of-town visitors arriving in Riverhead by train looking for “wine country” are greeted instead with “a paint-peeling ‘Riverhead’ sign with a vodka bottle sitting next to it, with urine all over the place, with cabs which probably don’t have the proper permits.”

“This town should be ashamed that they’ve allowed an area that’s so obviously sketchy to exist this way for so long,” Krupnick said.

Stricter enforcement of town code. Jens-Smith argued that it’s important to crack down on town code violations, like the dilapidated former Courthouse restaurant, as soon as they happen.

“We would need to look at which code violations are affecting the community most,” Jens-Smith said. “We’d have to coordinate with the town code enforcement and make sure they’re being followed up on.”

She said she would request reports from the town code enforcement department to better understand why some code violations persist. “We’d need to look at the challenges that we’re meeting,” she said. “Is it difficult from the businesses? Is it something with a particular code? Maybe we really need to look at the code and how it’s being enforced.”

Krupnick added that “people falling asleep on sidewalks” and “urinating in the gutters” should not be tolerated. “We want everybody to be able to enjoy downtown,” he said. “Not just people who need a place to go to the bathroom.”

Security cameras downtown. “For 14 years, we’ve talked about having security cameras downtown,” Coates said. “And for all of these years we’ve stood at a standstill.”

He said images from security cameras at a nearby business  were used to help make an arrest in the armed robberies last month at Barth’s Drug Store and Uncle Joe’s Pizzeria. (Riverhead Police have not made a statement about security camera images used in the investigation.)

“Imagine how many crimes we could solve if we had security cameras all over,” Coates said. “These things cost pennies now. Why can’t we get it done? It’s a simple fix.”

Main Street storefront facades and signs. The candidates all agreed that the recent renovations to the facade of Digger’s Ales N’ Eats look “beautiful.” Acquiring grant money to re-facade the exteriors of many downtown buildings, they said, would bring new life to Main Street.

“You want people to look around and think, ‘This is a place I want to walk around,’” Jens-Smith said. “‘This is a place I want to shop and eat and visit with my family.’ They’re not going to think that with the way some of these buildings look right now.”

Though some buildings, such as the former Swezey’s building, would be the target of the candidates’ stricter stance toward code enforcement, they said others could benefit from grant money to give their exteriors a facelift.

“A few have done it on their own because they’re a little more profitable,” Coates said. “But what about the new folks who are just kicking off?”

Traffic cop at Roanoke and Peconic Avenue intersection. As the candidates stopped at the corner of Roanoke Avenue and Main Street, several cars rounding the corner came up on the curb. At least one instance of traffic gridlock caused by vehicles “blocking the box” occurred.

As a car stuck in the Peconic Avenue and Main Street intersection went into reverse to avoid blocking traffic, Coates said, “This corner is a nightmare.”

A traffic cop positioned at this intersection could write tickets to keep vehicles from “blocking the box,” Coates said. “This cut-through is used by emergency vehicles,” he said. “It can be very dangerous for them, especially if they can’t get through.”

He also added that vehicles sitting in traffic at the intersection playing loud music detract from the image the town is hoping to promote. “You don’t want people from the aquarium pushing around their baby strollers when you have reverberating car windows and vulgar lyrics coming out of cars,” he said.

A cop “knocking on windows and writing tickets” would take care of this problem, Coates said. “If the word gets out that you can disrespect this town, people will disrespect it,” he said. “We have to let people know they can’t get away with that kind of thing.”

Incumbents respond. Incumbent Supervisor Sean Walter, who lost the Republication committee’s nod for re-election at its May 26 convention and is now looking to wage a primary campaign to wrest the nomination from the committee’s choice, incumbent Councilwoman Jodi Giglio, said his approach to downtown revitalization has been “somewhat different” than that of his predecessor, Phil Cardinale. Cardinale would have the town’s code enforcement team write tickets “for everything under the sun,” Walter said. “I don’t think that works. The proof is we really had nothing major happen over the years while we were doing that,” he said. It just gets property owners “aggravated” and, “after spending  tens of thousands of dollars on litigation to defend themselves in court, how willing are they going to be to work with the town?”

Walter pointed to litigation between the town and Suffolk Theater owner Bob Castaldi that he said “stalled everything.” Walter settled the ongoing litigation soon after taking office. That suit was not a code enforcement action, however, but a suit brought by Castaldi who accused the town of dragging its feet issuing permits after it signed a “master developer” agreement with a NYC real estate development company.

“If you’re beating someone up in court, do you really think they’re going to be willing to work with the town and pour money into revitalizing it?” Walter asked.

The supervisor said he has “a very good working relationship with Shelly Gordon,” principal in Riverhead Enterprises, which owns several large vacant properties on East Main Street, though he acknowledged the pace at which the sale of those buildings has progressed has been sometimes frustrating.

“In 2010 80 percent of the buildings on Main Street were vacant. I’d say it’s about 20 percent today,” Walter said. “In a couple years Main Street is going to be booming and no one will ever say another word about it.”

Contacted for comment, Giglio replied with a brief text message that read:

“I suspect that Coates and I agree on one thing: Sean Walter has not done the job he was elected to do. I think the town needs leadership and a supervisor with public- and private-sector experience.  As a business leader, I’ve set goals, met deadlines and made payroll. It’s that acumen that our taxpayers and downtown business owners deserve.”

Councilman James Wooten said, “Everything comes with a price tag. We are trying to do the best we can with the limited resources we have — resources that keep shrinking.”

He said Main Street “has come a long way” from what it was 20 years or so ago. “Maybe Tony Coates and his team weren’t here long enough to know. But the conditions and reputation of downtown Riverhead were very, very negative,” Wooten said.

Wooten said he believes the town should exercise its power of eminent domain to acquire derelict structures on Main Street, which he’d like to see demolished to create a village square and greenspace. “I proposed a plan for that in 2009 and the people now on this board objected. Everybody screamed ‘property rights.’

“Well, the people who live here have rights, too,” Wooten said.