East End Arts Council moves operations to Annex building

East End Arts Council moved operations to Riverhead Town’s Annex Building at 206 Griffing Ave., Riverhead, ahead of the Town Square project. There will be a ribbon cutting ceremony Monday, Sept. 15, at 11 a.m.

“So the town offered this building as an alternative space for us to relocate to while all of the construction is happening on our campus,” said Wendy Weiss, executive director of EEAC. “I worked closely with the town throughout the process, and they’ve been great community partners. They subsidized the move, so it didn’t have to be a big financial burden on East [End] Arts Council.”

The annex building was part of the town hall purchase in 2022. This space will allow the arts school, recording studio and administration offices to be housed in one building. The gallery will remain open through early 2026 for the annual members show. This gives EEAC time to find another gallery space in or around Riverhead.

“We hope to be able to find a new fine art gallery space in or around Main Street, because this building does not have like exhibition space, but it’s great for the school and the recording studio and the administrative offices,” said Ms. Weiss.

The downtown revitalization requires raising the gallery and school to sidewalk level. It also means some buildings will be rearranged and reoriented. This will protect the buildings from flooding and better incorporate them into the overall project.

“The gallery building is going to be moved a bit to the east to allow for a fire lane access between it and the hotel. Then the carriage house building is going to be flipped around and placed behind the school building, and the Fresh Pond Schoolhouse building will likely be placed behind the gallery building,” Ms. Weiss explained. “The entire campus will have fill to create a slope that leads down toward the river, and at the base of the campus will become an amphitheater, which will also help in the water collection.”

The construction also affected this year’s Endless Summer Soiree, which was moved to Saturday, Sept. 13, and is being hosted by Strong’s Marine in Mattituck.

“That is our biggest private fundraising event of the year. It’s crucial to us, maybe even more so … due to the changes that have been happening with the move and disruption operations and everything. It’s nice to see the community come forward to support things and understand,” said Ms. Weiss.

It is possible the Mosaic Festival, which takes place in May, will also be affected.

“We shut the streets down, and everyone does art in the street. We use the town square space for things like that, so we’ll have to [ask the] developers for more precise timelining of whether or not that will need to be relocated. That will be determined later,” said Ms. Weiss.

Overall, the outlook has shifted to optimism, and the move to the annex building is part of that equation.

“We are definitely looking at this as an opportunity. At the beginning, it felt very intimidating, but we quickly came together as a team,” said Ms. Weiss. “We are looking at things as opportunities, rather than challenges. We’ve really embraced it all and look forward to what’s to come.”