Alive on 25 coming to downtown Riverhead this July, August
The downtown Riverhead summer street festival based on Patchogue’s Alive After Five series finally has a name: Alive on 25.
The Patchogue event is a free summer street fair featuring six stages of live music and entertainment, vendors, children’s activities and other amusements and takes place twice a month, from 5 to 9 p.m. on Thursdays during July and August. A section of Patchogue’s Main Street is closed to traffic during the event.
Alive on 25, which is sponsored by the Downtown Riverhead Business Improvement District Management Association, will be similar, but will run on Thursdays the Patchogue event isn’t happening in July and August, so the two events can complement each other.
Riverhead’s event will kick off July 14 and continue July 28, Aug. 11 and Aug. 25. The BIDMA is planning to shut down Main Street from Griffing Avenue to Union Avenue for the four Thursdays, with the event running from 5 to 9:30 p.m. The road closures would start around 4:30 p.m.
BIDMA vice president Steve Shauger said the organization is now working to develop a logo and a web site for its much-anticipated new event.
He said the BIDMA has been working with the Greater Patchogue Chamber of Commerce, which has run the popular Patchogue event for the past 14 years.
“They’ve been very, very helpful in working with us,” he said.
Mr. Shauger said the BIDMA plans to meet with Riverhead Community Awareness Program to ensure that alcohol served at the event is restricted to “beer gardens” or pens, rather than allowing people to walk around with alcohol. There would be security guards in the beer gardens to check for identification and make sure people don’t take alcohol outside restricted areas, Mr. Shauger said.
The organizers also plan to require that anyone serving alcohol at the event has TIPS training, which stands for Training for Intervention Procedures, and teaches alcohol servers things like how to recognize when someone has had too much to drink.
The parking lots north and south of Main Street would be used strictly for parking, and will not have vendors, Mr. Shauger said. The county center parking lot may also be used, he said.
“In Patchogue, they get 25,000 people for this,” Riverhead Councilman John Dunleavy said. Officials said they don’t expect that many in Riverhead.
The BIDMA is continuing to work out the details of the event, officials said.
While the BIDMA is pursuing grants to help pay for the event, Mr. Shauger said they hope in the future it will be able to exist without the need for grants.
Top Caption: The scene at an Alive After Five event in Patchogue last summer. (Credit: Michael White, greaterpatchogue.com)
