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Goldberg’s Famous Bagels coming to downtown

FILE PHOTO | The former Woolworth building on East Main Street is undergoing a renovation.
FILE PHOTO | The former Woolworth building on East Main Street is undergoing a renovation.

Goldberg’s Famous Bagels will be a tenant in the former Woolworth building on East Main Street, which also will house a gym and apartments on the second floor.

The Riverhead Industrial Development Agency, which earlier this year granted tax incentives to property owner Woolworth Revitalization LLC for the overall restoration of the building, also must separately approve each tenant planned for the site.

On Monday, it voted 4-0, with one member absent, to approve Goldberg’s Famous Bagels as a tenant. Woolworth Revitalization LLC, a company headed by Michael Butler of Sag Harbor, purchased the 25,000-square-foot building from Apollo Real Estate Advisors for $2.2 million in February.

The building has been largely unoccupied since Woolworth left in 1997. Mr. Butler is planning to build 19 apartments on the second floor, along with the gym, called Ultimate on Main, on the ground floor and smaller stores fronting Main Street.

Goldberg’s Famous Bagels has 11 stores in New Jersey, as well as one store each in Southampton, East Hampton and Montauk, said Barry Brown, a representative for the applicant, at Monday’s IDA meeting.

The proposed Riverhead store would be in the same location that Bagel Lovers occupied for many years before moving to Osborn Avenue, but would be twice the size. The proposed Goldberg’s will have 16 seats, three employees and be open seven days a week from 6 a.m. to 4 p.m., Mr. Brown said. The bagels will be made on site.

“We’d like to be open by January,” he said. “I think it would be an asset for the town to get a good company like Goldberg’s,” said IDA member Lou Kalogeras in casting his vote.

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