Downtown Riverhead is getting a half-million dollar boost from New York State by way of a grant to revitalize the area.
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Tag: revitalization
The enormous revitalization project in Riverside will negatively impact not only the hamlet but the surrounding communities. Here are some concerns we must address before the project is passed: (more…)
A show of hands on Monday night for ‘Riverside Rediscovered,’ the name of the project to revitalize the hamlet. (Credit: Tim Gannon)
And the winner is… “Riverside Rediscovered.”
That’s the name attendees at Monday’s Flanders, Riverside and Northampton Community Association chose for the upcoming effort to revitalize Riverside, which has long been one of the more impoverished and crime-ridden hamlets in the county. (more…)
BARBARAELLEN KOCH PHOTO | East Main Street looking west near the theater.
To the editor:
I take exception to the “downtown Riverhead” references as expressed by Mike Roth of the Wading River Chamber of Commerce in last week’s feature article about Wading River’s ailing business district. Mr. Roth’s references that after years of decline, Wading River is “all of a sudden downtown Riverhead” and that the “worst case scenario is status quo, nothing moves on and it becomes another downtown Riverhead” are way off base.
These negative connotations may have applied to Riverhead’s downtown a few short years ago, however they do not apply at all today. Our downtown is now an example of successful downtown revitalization with over 15 new businesses opened up or planning to open soon. I have been here all of my life and have seen many attempts to turn our downtown around that did not take hold, however it is unmistakable that this time, downtown Riverhead’s revitalization is for real.
It is becoming a more vibrant and safe place to live, work and play as a result of the efforts of Supervisor Sean Walter, the Town Board, the Business Improvement District, Industrial Development Agency, the town’s community development office and the residents and businesses here. I have strolled through downtown many evenings to see people fishing and eating dinner along the riverfront and enjoying Grangebel Park, once a drug haven, now a wonderful park where people say hello to each other as they walk by.
Downtown Riverhead is back, it is safe and it is becoming a successful destination that no longer deserves or is representative of its past negative perceptions similar to those expressed by Mr. Roth.
Martin Sendlewsi, Riverhead
Editor’s note: Mr. Sendlewski is a partner in the Summerwind Square complex and sits on the downtown Business Improvement District board of directors.
“Come Alive, Riverside.”
If you’ve driven down Flanders Road recently, you’ve probably seen signs on telephone poles with that slogan.
The signs are the work of a newly-formed nonprofit group called the Riverside Revitalization Committee, and reviving Riverside — considered one of the most economically depressed hamlets not only in Southampton Town but in all Suffolk County, according to the Census — is its goal.
“The corporation was organized due to the need for a local neighborhood association to address the concerns of the residents, in order to revitalize the Riverside community in areas of housing development, family outreach and improvement, economic development and any other social adverse conditions that will require our attention,” said John Parker, a Riverside property owner who has decades of community-building experience in Brooklyn. He is helping to organize the group.
Unlike the well-established Flanders, Riverside and Northampton Community Association, the Riverside Revitalization Committee is concentrating solely on the hamlet of Riverside, with a special interest in the particularly depressed Old Quogue Road, which runs north-south through the hamlet. “That’s the target,” Mr. Parker said in an interview.
And while FRNCA is more of a civic association, Mr. Parker said the Riverside committee will focus more on things like obtaining grants or donations to help residents of the area improve their neighborhood.
Mr. Parker said the group has formed a small steering committee comprising himself and several Riverside residents.
Mr. Parker runs a family-owned construction business called D. Parker and Sons, which is based in Port Jefferson and is 99 years old. But he also has vast experience in neighborhood revitalization projects in Brooklyn dating from the 1960s through the 1980s.
He was field supervisor in the Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation in 1968, a federally funded program that did home improvement and exterior renovations on more than 1,000 homes in that section of Brooklyn. Mr. Parker said he had direct responsibility for the training of more than 450 unemployed or underemployed, local residents in the crafts of painting, carpentry, masonry, ironworks, and various other construction trades.
“These trainees were supervised by local skilled tradesman, and the project had an office of about six to eight people and a budget of more than $6 million,” he said. “The special impact program was successful.”
Mr. Parker was also treasurer and executive board member in a program called Williamsburg Industrial Neighborhood Development corporation, which worked with New York City government and helped train and employ more than 5,000 local residents, he said. The program received federal, state and city funding.
In addition, he was president of the Flatbush-St. Mark’s-Carlton Avenue Block Association for 10 years, during which association members came together to refurbish and revitalize homes in their neighborhood.
“It was not dependent on government funding,” Mr. Parker said. “It was just a block association that wanted to improve their community and they just went in and made things happen by unifying people.”
The association covered an area of at least 10 blocks, he said.
“Today, those houses are going from anywhere from $1.5 million to $2 million,” Mr. Parker said. “And they originally were purchased in the 1960s and 1970s for no more than $30,000 average.”
Mr. Parker is hoping that similar projects can happen in Riverside.
“Riverside has undergone a real benign neglect attitude for many years,” he said.
Mr. Parker said he first got involved in Riverside about three years ago, when he was called to the area to help someone who was going through a difficult time.
“Every now and then, I would take a ride out there, and it seemed like these people needed help, and since I had the background and the time, I thought maybe I could provide that for them,” he said.
Around this time, his knees began to bother him, and it became difficult to get around the two-story Setauket house he lived in at the time. So he bought a piece of land on Old Quogue Road with the thought of building a one-story house there, in which he planned to live. He still hasn’t built the house, but he said, “the more I went out there, the more I saw deterioration and neglect, and then, that old community activism in me just started to come alive.”
Mr. Parker said the Riverside Revitalization Committee is still in its beginning stages and hasn’t decided yet what specific projects to undertake.
He said they plan to work much with FRNCA, and they hope to secure a meeting date at the Flanders Community Center so they can send out notices to as many residents as possible and call a meeting to introduce their organization.
“I don’t want to be the leader,” Mr. Parker said. “I’m just organizing.”
FRNCA president Brad Bender says he’s looking forward to working with Mr. Parker and the new group.
“He’s worked in other communities and had great success,” Mr. Bender said. “He has a laundry list of accomplishments.”
Mr. Bender agreed that Riverside, Flanders and Northampton, three hamlets in Southampton Town often considered to be part of Riverhead, mainly because they are in the Riverhead School District, have traditionally been ignored by Southampton Town government. “We’re the community everyone drives by on their way to somewhere else,” he said. “It would be nice to be the place they stop at.”
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