Residents express concerns over noise at hearing for Dimon Estate expansion

A proposal to build a 6,045-square-foot dining and catering room addition to Dimon Estate, formerly known as Jamesport Manor Inn, met with mostly opposition from residents at a hearing before the Riverhead Town Board Tuesday afternoon. 

The proposed addition would be to an existing restaurant and would include a covered patio area and related site improvements on an approximately 136,344-square-foot parcel at 370 Manor Lane in Jamesport.

The facility is located in an Agricultural Protection Zone. 

Numerous speakers, as well as several letter writers, expressed concerns to the Town Board that the existing restaurant already creates too much noise.

“Even though our residence is approximately 4,000 feet away from the site, over the past several years, the enjoyment of our property has been negatively impacted on numerous occasions by events held at the Dimon Estate location, due to the level of noise from amplified music and voices during hosted events,” Herricks Lane residents Daniel Gontcharenko and John Daidone wrote in a letter to the town. 

“Our family continues to be extremely concerned about the wedding/event activities, past and future, that are being held at Jamesport Manor/Dimon Estate over on Manor Lane,” wrote Dawn Fulcher-DeVito of Manor Lane. 

Charles Cuddy, the attorney for the Dimon Estate, said the property is a “preexisting” site, meaning the proposed expansion is permissible under current zoning. 

“In the town code, after [Zoning Board of Appeals] hearings, both in 2004 and in 2022, there was a determination that this accessory use is a permitted accessory use,” Mr. Cuddy said. “That’s the reason we’re here, because what we are doing is expanding the dining facility and the catering hall and making it a single unit.” 

Mr. Cuddy said the area in question was previously enclosed with a tent “and produced a considerable amount of sound.”

He said they renovations are intended to keep noise to a minimum. 

He said the Great Rock golf course in Wading River did the same thing Dimon Estate is proposing. 

“They built an additional 6,000 square feet in their interior and now they have very little problems” with sound, he said. 

The Town Board held the hearing open for written comment through June 21.