Heritage on Main will add 165 apartments to Riverhead's East...

Heritage on Main will add 165 apartments to Riverhead's East Main Street when construction is completed in mid-2027. Credit: Tangram 3DS

Heatherwood Luxury Rentals kicked off construction on a 165-unit mixed-use apartment building on East Main Street in Riverhead, advancing a project nine years in the making.

Heritage on Main, between Main Street and the Peconic riverfront, will be the latest element of Riverhead's downtown revitalization when the building opens to tenants in summer 2027, according to Heatherwood.

The $82 million project will provide new housing options for young people looking to move out of their parents' homes and for seniors interested in shedding the responsibility of maintaining their own properties, Riverhead Town Supervisor Tim Hubbard said in an interview.

"That is a huge piece of the revitalization puzzle that we currently have going on here in the Town of Riverhead," Hubbard said.

WHAT NEWSDAY FOUND

  • Heatherwood Luxury Rentals has started construction on 165 apartments on East Main Street in Riverhead. 
  • The apartments will support the area's downtown revitalization, said Town Supervisor Tim Hubbard.
  • The site has been a vacant lot since 2016 when a former Sears building was demolished. 

The building will include 52 studios, 80 one-bedroom units and 33 two-bedroom units, according to project plans, as well as 3,500 square feet of ground-floor retail space. It will have a fitness center, remote work spaces and a rooftop terrace overlooking the river, Heatherwood said.

The developer believes there will be strong demand for the apartments as younger Long Islanders struggle to afford single-family homes, said Sean Sallie, Heatherwood's senior director of planning and development.

"The unaffordability of single-family homes in the region just makes the demand for multi-family living that much greater," Sallie said.

Sallie declined to share potential rents for the units, noting that pricing will depend on market conditions when the building opens.

A previous developer first pitched a mixed-use building on the site in 2016, and Heatherwood took over the project in 2023, Sallie said. For decades, the site was home to a Sears, which occupied a building that was demolished in 2016. 

"It's been a vacant lot and it's right in the middle of the downtown," Sallie said. 

The Town of Riverhead Industrial Development Agency granted the project a roughly $2.9 million sales tax exemption and a nearly $358,000 mortgage recording tax exemption, according to filings with the IDA.

The developer and the IDA entered into a 16-year payment in lieu of taxes (PILOT) agreement in which  the property will pay about $2.75 million, or $171,915 a year on average, until it begins paying the full taxes in the 2041-42 tax year.

All units in the building will be rented at market rate, and the Riverhead IDA did not require any units to meet affordability standards as part of the PILOT agreements. The average asking rent in eastern Suffolk County for a one-bedroom apartment is $2,442, according to data from property data firm CoStar. The firm's data data includes professionally managed buildings and excludes affordable housing developments and senior housing. Buildings with fewer than five units are also excluded.

Boost for downtown

Hubbard said he hopes the new tenants will boost local businesses and help Riverhead's downtown thrive in the same vein as seen in Patchogue, Farmingdale and Huntington.

"Your downtowns need to be supported by not only the residents of the town, but the people who actually live downtown," he said. "That will help our main street come back alive again."

Riverhead's downtown revitalization efforts have been supported by a $24 million federal grant secured last year and $10 million in state funding awarded in 2022, Hubbard said.

The new units will benefit from Riverhead's Town Square project across from The Suffolk theater, where the Long Island Science Center plans to relocate. That project also includes plans for retail, restaurants, a park, a public amphitheater, a boutique hotel and condos, Hubbard said.

Heritage on Main will sit next door to Riverview Lofts, a 115-unit built in 2020 by Georgica Green Ventures, in which all tenants must meet income eligibility criteria to lease an apartment. Elsewhere on East Main Street, The Shipyard, a 36-unit building, opened in 2022. Online listings show rents ranging from $3,100 for a one-bedroom unit to $4,300 for a two-bedroom unit. 

Riverhead has been more receptive to new housing than some other Long Island communities and has done a good job integrating apartments into its downtown alongside parks and other public spaces, said Eric Alexander, director of downtown planning organization Vision Long Island.

The new apartments will benefit longstanding Main Street businesses and support new ones, he said.

"It will keep feet on the street, and they'll have people spending money right in their community," Alexander said.

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