Riverhead’s problems the stuff of myth

The Greeks had their Minotaur, a bull-headed beast who dwelt at the center of the Labyrinth. Every once in a while some tender young citizens would be sent in to be eaten. That’s the way they rolled back then.

We’re much more modern. Our version of the Labyrinth is downtown Riverhead and the Minotaur is all the empty storefronts, recently estimated at a depressing 80 percent of the whole. Instead of youths, we send in supervisors to be sacrificed occasionally.

The latest to be dispatched was Phil Cardinale, who served in Riverhead’s top spot for three terms before he was vanquished by Sean Walter in the recent election. “The fall of downtown” was a key battle cry of the Walter campaign and it resonated.

Of course there were other issues at play as well, and other mythologies too. For instance, the fourth-term curse. This is a malady that’s brought down many a pol over the years, from Southampton Supervisor Skip Heaney to Southold Supervisor Jean Cochran to Congressman Michael Forbes, then of Riverhead. Also falling victim was U.S. Senator Tom Daschle of South Dakota, where there have been so many fourth-term Senate failures that they have a special name for it, “Karl’s Curse,” which is another story.

There are lots of reasons for the fourth-term jinx. The main one is this: The friction of the first three has usually sharpened enough knives to bring almost anybody down.

Now it’s Walter’s turn to take a stab at the bull-headed beast. He used his inaugural address to declare war.

“The complaining and crying about downtown ends today,” vowed the newly minted supervisor, as quoted by The News-Review. “We cannot and I will not accept failure as an option. We are going to dramatically change downtown for the better. Not with futuristic plans that sit on artists’ easels but with a real approach that brings businesspeople, capital sources and creativity together, and allows government to act as a facilitator, not a roadblock.”

That easels remark was a sharp stab at Cardinale, who had such high hopes for the gaudy $500 million Apollo Real Estate Advisors downtown renaissance plan, of which not a stick got built. In a candidates’ forum in October, Walter charged, “Apollo, in my opinion, is the death knell of downtown Riverhead.” (Earlier in the campaign, citing the 2001 failure to transform the Suffolk Theatre into a performing arts center, he said, “That event precipitated the fall of downtown.”)

Whatever killed the place, he made it clear it was all Cardinale’s fault. How will Walter do it differently? How can we know that he won’t be just the latest supervisor thrown to the Minotaur?

Here’s Walter’s plan, as announced at his inauguration: “We will renew downtown the old-fashioned way, with open green spaces and by encouraging the arts, fostering the history of our downtown and creating a reason for people to come downtown.”

Well, good luck with that.

Walter isn’t going into this battle alone; he’ll be backed by an all-Republican town board. Maybe unanimity will help, but political coloration hasn’t made any difference to the Minotaur in the past. Cardinale, a Democrat, had his Apollo (speaking of Greek mythology). A decade before him came Republican Supervisor Jim Stark, under whom Route 58’s Tanger Outlets arrived. And if that mega-mall wasn’t enough, a Tanger food court was eventually (somehow) allowed, eliminating the last flimsy reason for the northern hordes to venture downtown.

In between were Independent Vinnie Villella and Republican Bob Kozakiewicz. Villella campaigned to save downtown and then, once elected, promptly closed his downtown shoe store. Another morsel for the Minotaur.

The point is that downtown Riverhead is a beast of a problem that’s proven itself impervious to everything, especially words hurled by politicians. Despite the new supervisor’s ridicule of easels, it’s going to take some solid plans launched by bold investors. Things like the 101-room Hyatt Palace hotel to be built beside Atlantis Marine World Aquarium, a brave venture now backed by a $2.4 million state grant.

Eventually something like that, along with a global economy no longer in crisis, will start the long-awaited downtown Riverhead renaissance. And whoever’s sitting in the supervisor’s chair will get credit for being the hero who slew the Minotaur.


Long Island Business News / January 20, 2010