The Riverhead Town Board misappropriated at least $207,000 of
taxpayers’ funds for its share of a law suit that was inherently partisan.It joined with seven other Republican
controlled political entities to attempt to reverse in Federal court a New Y
ork State law that ended odd year elections of local governments.Republican Party committees are lead
plaintiffs without paying anything toward the $1.656 million to date in legal
fees and costs
On June 10th, as reported by Denise Civiletti in the
Riverhead Local, Riverhead and the other towns simultaneously withdrew from the
case.Withdrawal was never discussed
publicly by the Town Board.We await an
explanation from the Town Attorney about whether his action was legally,
politically or morally motivated.
Both parties surround their positions with noble rhetoric
about democracy and participation but have an obviouspolitical self-interest. Democrats who control the State
government believe accurately that they do better when more people vote in even
year elections. Republicans prefer that fewer of the right people vote, a persistent
goal of the Trump Administration.
One can be on
either side of the election date issue but recognize the institutionalized
corruption of misuse of public funds.Riverhead
should insist that the presumably Republican law firm (Brewer, Attorneys &
Counselors) should fully reimburse the town.Or we should bill the Republican town committee for the $207,000.At least registered Democrats and
Independents ought to get a rebate on our taxes.
Dear Supervisor, Members of the Board and Town Clerk,
I see that you are moving ahead with the Petrocelli hotel at
Tuesday’s Board meeting. Needless to say I plan to speak against the
resolution approving a special permit and site plan.
In order to avoid the confusion at the hearing, I am
attaching three photos that I wish to show during my remarks. Please
confirm that will be possible. I am requesting “equal time” for the many
slides shown by hotel proponents during the hearing because I was not afforded
the same opportunity. I need these slides to illustrate the dramatic cost
of letting Pertocelli take over half of the town square.
Current rendering (Suffolk Theater at top)
ChatGPT version with hotel (approximate proportions)
ChatGPT version with no hotel
Please clarify how this resolution relates to the
closing. Will that require a later resolution with the sale price and
other financial arrangements?
I gather that you decided that you can proceed this far
without action by the IDA. I remain concerned that the language of the
Master Developer agreement makes a favorable decision by the IDA a foregone
conclusion. What will happen if the IDA acts independently and
rejects Petrocelli’s old school corporate blackmail? King rooms in his
Hyatt hotel run $600 daily during the high season. Presumably the price
will be higher in the more fashionable Peconic hotel and he hardly needs the
extra benefit to his profit line of tax forgiveness subsidized by taxpayers and
the school system.
There are some operational questions that I hope you can
answer at this meeting:
1. When and why did the
Town agree to substitution of extra luxury hotel rooms for
condominiums? Why did you give preference to eighteen transient
seasonal hotel rooms over provision of twelve long term upper end housing
units with parking?
2. Are you still giving
parking places for out of town hotel guests priority over local clients
for the Suffolk Theater, Maximus Gym, Robert James Salon and Goldbergs who
will face long walks with limited lighting.
3. How do you practically
avoid traffic disrupting U turns on East Main Street by hotel guests
coming from the east and north?
My larger conceptual questions remain:
1) Have you asked Mr.
Petrocelli to construct a model so that you can fairly evaluate the impact
of a five story hotel on the historic Suffolk Theater and East End Arts
Council buildings?
2) Have you honestly
considered whether removing the hotel from the Town Square better honors
“furtherance of the goal to create a public gathering space with
pedestrian connectivity and open vistas from Main Street to the Peconic
River”?
3) Are you uncomfortable
that no bid contracts and insider dealing create the appearance of a
Riverhead version of the corruption in Washington associated with the
destruction of the East Wing of the White House, the construction of a new
ball room and the reflecting pool debacle?
I have little hope that the carry-on members who dominate
the Board will change their minds about this out of control project. But
I do encourage the Supervisor to recall his skepticism about the hotel when he
was a candidate. Voters in November may consider attitudes about
diminution of the Town Square relevant to their choice.
John McAuliff
Riverhead Watch
Rolling Woods
The evolving and growing
hotel
April 2022
August 2025
August 2026
the Master Developer Agreement for the Town Square, which
propose the construction of a five (5)-story 69,738 sq. ft. gross floor area 94-room hotel, which includes retail
spaces, a restaurant, cafe, hotel common spaces and amenities, as well as nine (9) parking stalls on
the lowest level,
********************************************
Message to an IDA member
August 2, 2026
There is nothing on the IDA website or the Town posting of
meetings about an IDA session on August 3 or an agenda. Aren’t both required
for an official meeting of a public agency?
I did review the video record and all I can find is that on
December 16, 2025 when the IDA accepted a resolution to approve the
Petrocelli application In the words of the chair, “It’s simply accepting
the application; and the resolution clearly states that we are not making any
determinations or approvals at this point in time. Simply that we are
going to engage in reviewing the application.” Another member
said that there had been agreement, presumably, in private discussion, to bring
them in “as soon as practicable so they can review the most recent plan…to hear
the latest … so maybe we’ll try to do that at the next meeting.”
However, in the only three subsequent meetings (January,
February and March of 2026) there is no reference to the Petrocelli
application. Is it fair to conclude that no action has taken place of any
kind?
Given the seriousness of the issues involved, I assume the
IDA will take up the Petrocelli application with rigorous due diligence and
will consider:
1) Procedural
problems: no bid contract, inside deal, limited transparency, lack
of public consultation about use of half of the town square for a hotel
2) Long term irreversible
impact on the architecture and character of downtown
3) Alienation of public
parkland for private profit
4)The cost of the project ($35.1 million) and of tax forgiveness (sales and use tax, mortgage recording tax and real property tax exemptions with a Payment in Lieu of Taxes)
5) The effect on the school
budget
6) Impact on community
housing stock of turning 12 condominiums into 18 transient hotel rooms
7) Damage to existing
businesses of denying convenient parking to their established clientele in
order to satisfy hotel requirements
8) Financial viability and
funding of the project with or without IDA subsidy
I look forward to learning on Monday or at a subsequent
meeting how IDA plans to proceed.
Full
Submission for June 10 hearing on Peconic Hotel
by John McAuliff
It will not surprise you that I urge the Town Board to reject
Mr. Petrocelli’s special permit and site plan applications.My skepticism has only increased as we arrive
at this penultimate stage.I have come
to think of this hotel as Riverhead’s version of the Trump ballroom, too big,
too flashy and an insult to our heritage. The destruction of Craft’d is
not as consequential as the demolition of the East Wing, but the arrogant
spirit is analogous.
There are two reasons I urge you to stop this runaway train:
1)The
process that brings us to tonight has been badly flawed
2)The hotel
will have a terrible impact on the Town Square and downtown Riverhead
First, I have detailed in my submission to the Master
Developer Qualified and Eligible hearing and the eminent domain hearing for
Craft’d, the four year process in which the board and the director of
development decided without real public discussion the key question of whether
the people of Riverhead, instead of “open vistas from Main Street to the
Peconic River”, wanted another five story box separating Main Street from
the Peconic River.Suffice to say, a
hotel was not part of, in fact contrary to, the extensive civic discussions of
the Pattern Book and the Comprehensive Plan.
Although not legally required, it is significant that at no
stage was a public competitive bid process utilized.Instead insiders talked to insiders.By the time decisions were made, the hotel
was presented as a fait accompli justified by the advice of a hired
consultant.The closed system of one
party small town politics made a significant campaign donor the only game in
town.Tonight we will be told that the
agenda is narrow and implementational.The public may raise deeper questions, but there is little reason to
believe they will be heard or affect the decision.
The expressed goal in resolution 399 adopted on August 4,
2020, was “creation of a public gathering space with pedestrian connectivity
and open vistas from Main Street to the Peconic River, together with
encouragement and pursuit of private financing, public and private
partnership(s), federal, state and local funding, subsidies and capital grants
to design and construct commercial and retail uses compatible with public space
all consistent with the urban renewal policies and goals recited above”.
There was no hint of a hotel in the resolution or of
reselling part of the land until after Mr. Petrocelli proposed informally his
two building hotel and condo project fifteen months later, October 18,
2021. It is clear from the original town announcement seven months
earlier, March 22, 2021, and even from the first description by the director of
development six months after Petrocelli’s proposal, April 14, 2022, that the
Sigal Craft’d building would be modified but not replaced. The town square was
initially conceived as a singular concept to provide open vistas with several
public and potentially private functions within it. The argument
that was later introduced of hotel rooms being the most remunerative private
space made the assumption that the goal was financial gain, even if that were
at the cost of public utility. If that choice was debated
privately, the public was not informed.
Second, the character of the hotel has evolved.In 2022 it was to be four stories, compatible
with the pattern book.Then it became
five stories with 76 hotel rooms and twelve condominiums on the top floor. At least condominiums brought the benefit of
upper range housing for long term downtown residents. Instead they have added 18
rooms for additional transient visitors.
The hotel takes as much space as the Town Square, it will
occupy 18,480 square feet vs 19,939 sq ft for the town square. Its
five modern stories overwhelm and dominate the three story art deco Suffolk
Theater.It hides the historic 19th
century buildings of the East End Arts Council and blocks sunlight to its
galleries.The amphitheater will not be
visible from Main Street.
“Parking for
guests/patrons will be provided at designated offsite location(s) in accordance
with the Master Developer Agreement. These spaces will be located behind the
Suffolk Theater and eventually be carried over to the First Street Parking
Garage once the garage is completed”
Presumably those are reserved spaces. Will they be
located right behind the theater or at the far end of the lot, the north and
west sections? Who has priority for convenience, the patrons of the
Suffolk, Maximus Gym, Robert James Salon and Goldberg’s deli or transient hotel
visitors?
Hotel guests coming directly from the LIE will line up at
the hotel entrance on the south side of Main Street, hopefully without needing
to double park.Folks coming from the
east via routes 105 and 25, or coming south on Roanoke who are required to turn
east before Main Street, will be driving west and have to make a U turn across
traffic to access the hotel.
The premise that a luxury hotel with a fancy restaurant will
lead many families to stay in town after a visit to the aquarium is
dubious.The Science Center that the Board is also
determined to destroy for private profit provides a far better motive to walk
down Main Street.An East End Arts
Council whose historic buildings are not hidden between Summerwind and the
hotel is also a bigger aesthetic draw.Local
restaurants are hoping that hotel clients will become their customers, but Mr.
Petrocelli is not likely to welcome that loss of business from in house facilities.
And there is also a legal question.Mr. Russo tonight referred several times to
the hotel adjoining the “town park”.He
is correct with the clear implication that the property where the hotel is
being built was taken from the same town park.That should require special procedures under New York State law about
the alienation of public park land to private owners.
Finally, there is a different path still available if you
have the vision and courage to take it.I asked to show slides just as did proponents for the hotel but was
denied equal opportunity.So the best I
can do is show this expensive color print.(attached below for the record)
My point is that as a rank amateur I was able to create with
ChatGPT attractive alternatives for a Town Square without a hotel that is far
more resident friendly.I suspect that
if you polled the people of Riverhead, many would prefer that option, which
corresponds better to the original goal, “open vistas from Main Street to the
Peconic River”
Submitted by John McAuliff, Roanoke Landing, Riverhead
Riverhead Watchjmcauliff@gmail.com
For
additional reference
“Underlying Problems of the Town Square Hotel”
Responses to October 23, 2025 Town Board Work Session
Denunciation of Critics
“Submissions to the Q & E for Joseph Petrocelli”https://saveepcal.blogspot.com/2025/08/submissions-on-q-e-for-petrocelli.html
Appendix of
three pictures with annotation
This is as close as I could come to the existing features on
ChatGPT.Proportions are wrong and the
buildings are notional but it provides a good sense of community space..
This is a more imaginative version produced by ChatGPT
This is the current Petrocelli plan.Note that the three story art deco Suffolk
Theater is completely overshadowed by the massive modern five story hotel box and
the historic buildings of the East End Arts Council are hidden.The amphitheater will not be visible from
Main Street.
Study the pictures and decide which best illustrates
the kind of Town Square most appropriate as a permanent defining fixture of
Riverhead.Tell the Town Board how you
feel.The Supervisor announced the hearing
record will remain open until June 20th, but to be safe send your
e-mail submission by Friday, June 19th.
Produced by ChatGPT.Images are conceptual, including of the
Science Center, the Arts Council and the Suffolk Theater. Proportions are wrong, but this approach offers
a community oriented alternative to using public land for private profit.Tell the Board and the Master Developer the
kind of Town Square you want before it’s too late. Townclerk@townofriverheadny.gov
Riverhead Watch jmcauliff@gmail.com
Other concepts
The current Board/Petrocelli design
Suffolk Theater and Town Square overwhelmed!
East End Arts Council historic buildings hidden!
For more
visuals and the Greenport alternative, click here https://tinyurl.com/newtownsquare
When New York state passed its ambitious Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act in 2019, Brooklyn-based NineDot Energy saw an opportunity. The state needed to establish a 70 percent renewable-sourced grid over the next decade to meet a net zero-emission goal and the startup figured it was poised to be part of the solution.
NineDot was already working on fuel cells and moving toward developing small battery systems capable of storing thousands of hours of electricity, ideal for neighborhoods or single businesses.
“New York City is a really important market—a really hard nut to crack—and one that was really rewarding in terms of building something great,” Adam Cohen, one of the startup’s founders, said of his early hopes. Years into the effort, Cohen and other energy developers–small and large—are still trying to find their best model to boost the city’s needs and their own bottom lines.
Businesses face a wide set of challenges in creating more storage, including financing, applying for local permits, working with a regional grid operator or utility depending on the size and ambition of their project, and wrangling with delays caused by grid reviews.
Since 2019, 6,193 battery storage projects have been installed in New York state, according to data collected by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA). In total, the state has an energy storage capacity of around 445 megawatts. According to the nonprofit that manages New York state’s electricity grid, the New York Independent System Operator (NYISO), one megawatt of electricity is enough to power anywhere between 800 and 1,000 homes at a time.
The development of renewable energy projects is central to the state’s climate goals of reducing emissions from fossil fuels. Solar and wind power are planned to develop in tandem with battery storage so excess energy can be saved while nature provides wind or sun. Battery storage is meant to help ease any shortfall.
Most of New York’s electricity demand is downstate, in and below the Hudson Valley. But real estate is limited and expensive across the region, and opposition to big energy projects, which can power at least 20,000 homes at a time, can be vociferous—and successful. In many communities, large or utility-scale projects face local government reviews and application processes to join a regional grid that can take years.
Cohen’s company has been pursuing and winning contracts to provide smaller, neighborhood-sized battery systems. For example, it is developing two battery storage systems to power neighborhoods in Staten Island. Each battery system can provide a capacity of 4.9 megawatts, a fraction of what a large-scale project has to offer but with some advantages for dense city environs. The unit takes up much less space than a regional system.
On a hot summer day, NineDot’s two systems in Staten Island can supply power to an estimated 9,800 city households for four hours, the equivalent of 9.8 megawatts, according to a city press statement about the NineDot deal.
Cohen’s batteries, located within New York City, also need to connect to a local utility. In the city, this utility is usually Con Edison, which gives small developers a cost estimate for their grid connection. For large developers, that cost estimate is given by the larger state grid operator, the NYISO.
Between the permitting process, the process of connecting to the grid, the financing process and the customer acquisition process, Cohen said he has been surprised at how much work it took to get these projects off the ground. And he wasn’t naive about the risks. He had some experience in developing alternative energy resources in the city.
Cohen’s first energy project in the city was to develop fuel cells—devices that generate electricity by feeding hydrogen and oxygen to two different electrodes. The hydrogen molecules are then separated into protons and electrons, and the electrons pass through an outside circuit—producing electricity. This electricity is then sold on the grid.
Tesla batteries are installed at NineDot Energy’s battery storage project in Staten Island. Credit: NineDot Energy
Though Cohen’s company was successful in developing a five megawatt fuel cell project in the Bronx—which became operational in August 2022—NineDot Energy quickly pivoted to developing battery storage systems to take advantage of the state’s program. But Cohen found the development process, similar to that of fuel cells, to be very complicated in the connection stage.
“We didn’t know what we didn’t know at the time,” Cohen said about his leap into fuel cell development.
“It doesn’t take years to physically build the project. It just takes years to develop it because of all the checkpoints… You can’t just make it happen,” Cohen said.
A Costly Endeavor—But State Policies Are Helping
The installation of the actual batteries can be one of the easier parts of the process. Juggling bureaucracies and demands for permits from the state and local authorities, buying or leasing land, negotiations with grid operators or utility companies and, sometimes, environmental reviews all take time.
Even experienced big developers say the upfront costs, and the wait for a connection assessment, are unpredictable. Kolin Loveless, the senior director of development at Key Capture Energy, a large-scale battery storage developer that has projects in the Hudson Valley and plans to build on Long Island, said the bottom line is paramount.
“We want to know that the project is going to make money and what it’s going to make over the next 20 years,” he said.“It’s a very heavy capital decision….you want to know that investment is definitely going to pay off over time.”
To encourage large-scale battery storage, the NYSERDA created a Bulk Energy Storage Program, which was approved by the Public Service Commission in June 2024 to help the state meet its goal of six gigawatts of battery storage by 2030. Key Capture Energy plansto participate in this program.
NYSERDA also announced this year that another $5 million in funding was available for proposals for energy storage development in New York. The deadline for applications is in July. Key Capture has benefited from earlier funding under the state’s Market Acceleration Bridge Incentive (MABI) and has two storage systems, outside Albany and Buffalo, now in operation.
NineDot too has found government incentives for its smaller operations. For small-scale energy providers there is the New York Green Bank, a division of the NYSERDA. The green bank acts as a classic lender and is committed to spending $200 million by the end of this year on sustainable infrastructure. NineDot received a total of $50 million in financing through the program between 2023 and 2024.
The Game of “Interconnection Cost Chicken”
Connecting to the grid is crucial. According to Loveless, Key Capture Energy, like many others, has faced backlogs in connecting to the grid. Once developers have secured land for a project, they enter an interconnection queue, essentially a waiting line to get a cost estimate to connect to the grid.
The mechanism is controlled by the NYISO. The operator studies the project in-depth, along with grid capabilities. The process can take years and has become a source of ire amid criticism of the pace of the energy transition.
An aerial view of a battery storage facility construction site adjacent to the Town of Brookhaven’s municipal garage located in Patchogue, N.Y., on Dec. 7, 2024. Credit: John Paraskevas/Newsday RM via Getty Images
Nationally, U.S. grid systems have increasingly large interconnection backlogs. According to a 2023 report by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, “the typical project built in 2022 took 5 years from the interconnection request to commercial operations, compared to three years in 2015 and [less than] two years in 2008.”
In an attempt to speed interconnection, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission issued an order in 2023 which mandated a “cluster study” approach to interconnection. Instead of studying projects one at a time, the FERC said, the grid operators should evaluate clusters of projects.
Loveless’s company has battery storage projects in the current New York cluster study, and there are 240 projects in total being assessed. Key Capture Energy is still awaiting the cost of interconnection as are dozens of other developers, he said. If the charge is too high, projects are swiftly dropped. Loveless describes the wait as akin to a game of “interconnection cost chicken.”
“We’ll go through two iterations of interconnection cost chicken,” he said. The first connection charges are “pretty high” and some developers pull back. Months later, a revised connection charge is offered, he said. “That should be the final version.”
Interconnection costs are determined by the amount of upgrades and changes the electricity grid will need to accommodate another energy project. The developer is charged for such changes.
Smaller-scale battery storage, like NineDot Energy’s projects, don’t go through the independent system operator’s mechanisms to connect to the grid.
Instead, projects less than five megawatts go through the interconnection process with the local utility, which is managed by the Public Service Commission under the New York Standardized Interconnection Requirements.
This mechanism is much faster. The utility has to offer a cost estimate 60 business days after an application is submitted. NineDot Energy has gone through the interconnection process with Con Edison, the utility that serves most of New York City.
“[Con Edison] has 82 different substation network areas, and each of them are run slightly differently,” Cohen said. “Each of those have different interconnection processes and costs involved, and so you need to do this study to find out what the local infrastructure is and what it can handle.”
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Complications arise when Cohen’s company has to design strategies to connect to the local grid infrastructure. That often requires unique designs to accommodate the many different power networks that make up the city’s grid, he said.
Cohen said Con Edison is continually evolving its standards to accommodate companies like his but utilities can still underestimate the interconnection costs. This means the developers can be on the hook for more money than they might have planned for.
Permits and Local Opposition
Battery storage projects across downstate New York, particularly in New York City, also face increasing local opposition.
Local authorities in downstate small towns have enacted moratoriums on the development of battery storage systems, particularly in Long Island. Much of the local opposition comes from fears of a potential fire, like what happened earlier this year in Moss Landing in California, home to one of the world’s largest battery storage plants.
Flames and smoke rise from the Moss Landing Energy Storage Facility after a fire erupted on Jan. 16 in Monterey Bay, Calif. Credit: Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu via Getty Images
In Oyster Bay, officials have put in place a moratorium on battery storage, citing a need to update state fire codes and tighten regulation on how to store the commercial batteries. The delay was put in place after three different fires at battery storage sites in the state in 2023.
The Inter-Agency Fire Safety Working Group, made up of multiple state agencies, is reviewing safety standards for battery storage and developers said they expect final recommendations this summer.
Battery manufacturers face extensive onsite safety checks and the fire department has the authority to review and approve individual units.
“Not only are our sites reviewed for safety compliance, the individual modules and units that we’re installing have to be approved by the city—by the Fire Department,” Cohen said.
Despite this, community boards across the city face resident opposition to energy storage systems in their neighborhoods. In March, the Brooklyn Paper reported a community board meeting in East Brooklyn was “marked by shouting, heckling, and fears over potential risks” due to NineDot Energy’s plan to install a lithium battery storage system in the neighborhood.
A few weeks ago, dozens of residents in Staten Island demonstrated against a planned $300 million battery storage project, with some describing it in hyperbolic terms as a prospective “mini Chernobyl,” a reference to the meltdown of the nuclear plant in Russia in the 1980s.
In New York City, small battery storage systems can be constructed in commercial and manufacturing districts as-of-right—meaning they do not need a special permit. In December 2023, the city approved new zoning regulations that made it easier to build energy storage systems in residential neighborhoods, as long as they were less than 10,000 feet squared.
Cohen said NineDot Energy systems are still planned for manufacturing and commercial districts. The company will have 50 projects at some stage of development or construction or operation over the next year and a half, and has seven in operation today. The process is not easy but Cohen believes the clean energy transition is essential for the next generation of New Yorkers—and worth figuring out.
“We started out about almost 10 years ago now. We had, for the first two years… a number of employees you can count on one hand,” said Cohen, whose company now employs around 70 people. But he was, in a way, lucky to be there at the beginning. “When New York state, New York City and Con Edison were realizing the tremendous need for energy storage as part of the clean energy transition… We had a proof of concept and showed that the market worked.”
Correction: This story was updated Monday, June 30, to note that the New York Independent System Operator manages the state’s grid, rather than simply monitoring it.
