Community

Celebrating the opening of Peconic Crossing in downtown Riverhead

New York’s lieutenant governor and the Suffolk County executive joined local officials Monday for a “ribbon cutting” to celebrate the opening of Peconic Crossing, a 45-unit affordable rental project in downtown Riverhead.

“The most important thing to keep a downtown alive, in my opinion, is to bring housing downtown,” Kathy Hochul said.

The tenants actually moved in at the beginning of August, according to Community Development Corporation of Long Island president Gwen O’Shea. County Executive Steve Bellone and Kevin Law of the Long Island Association also spoke.

The project, a joint venture of CDCLI and Conifer Realty, also gives preference to artists and people who were displaced by a storm, and it has an art gallery on the ground floor that is managed by East End Arts.

The introductory exhibit will feature work of a longtime, established painter, Gina Gilmour. He art has been exhibited in numerous exhibitions across the country.

“Since early childhood, art making has been for me a means of processing my experience; a way to celebrate and to mourn, to rail against the intolerable and to navigate the mysterious,” Ms. Gilmour said in a statement.

For more information, visit eastendarts.org.

Photo caption: Riverhead Supervisor Laura Jens-Smith speaks at a “ribbon cutting” ceremony Monday for Peconic Crossing. (Credit: Tim Gannon)

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