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Downtown road can be named for both Behr and Bissett

BARBARAELLEN KOCH PHOTO | Runners trek doen the unnamed road in Riverhead that could soon share a name with either Heidi Behr or James Bissett.
BARBARAELLEN KOCH PHOTO | Runners trek doen the unnamed road in Riverhead that could soon share a name with both Heidi Behr and James Bissett.

Councilman John Dunleavy says he has a Solomon-like solution to the debate over whether to name the riverfront drive in downtown Riverhead after Heidi Behr or Jim Bissett.

Do both.

There has been a movement recently to name the road leading along the Peconic River after Heidi Behr, the 23-year-old emergency medical technician from Riverhead who died in a May 2005 accident while she was volunteering with the Riverhead Volunteer Ambulance. That proposal calls for naming the road that runs perpendicular to the river from Peconic Avenue to McDermott Avenue after Ms. Behr.

[Previous Coverage: Will downtown road be named for Bissett or Behr?]

But the Riverhead Business Improvement District management association and the Parking District advisory committee had both previously voted for resolutions calling for the riverfront road to be named after Jim Bissett, the late co-founder of the Long Island Aquarium and Hyatt Hotel in downtown Riverhead.

Mr. Dunleavy, who could not be reached for comment in an article about this subject on Wednesday, said in an interview on Thursday morning that he has proposed naming only the unnamed road that runs in between the Subway store and the Salvation Army and goes west to McDermott Avenue after Ms. Bissett. That road, which is an entrance to the town’s parking lot by the Peconic River, also runs adjacent to the aquarium property.

The councilman said the section of the riverfront drive from McDermott Avenue west to Peconic Avenue can still be named after Ms. Behr, and then both would have a portion of the roadway named after them.

“There’s no controversy,” he said.

Supervisor Sean Walter said the Town Board will likely discuss the issue at its work session next week.

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