Riverhead board advances revised 94-room Petrocelli hotel plan

A bigger, more hospitality-heavy Petrocelli hotel is now headed toward a June hearing, and the real question for Riverhead is whether downtown gets more foot traffic or a larger development burden on East Main Street.

The revised plan calls for a 94-room, five-story hotel at 117-127 E. Main St., up from the earlier 76-room version, and it removes the 12 condominiums that had been part of the proposal. In their place, the fifth floor is now designed as 14 suites with balconies or terraces, keeping the project squarely in hotel use under Hilton’s Tapestry boutique brand.

The building would total 69,738 square feet on an approximately half-acre site in the heart of downtown. It also would include a 116-seat restaurant with bar and outdoor terrace, a coffee shop, nearly 2,900 square feet of retail space, a hotel lounge and fitness facilities. That mix is meant to draw guests and spending to Main Street, the Town Square area and the East End Arts campus, while also concentrating more activity, height and demand for curb space in one of Riverhead’s most visible redevelopment blocks.

The Riverhead Town Board gave the plan a favorable first look on May 14, enough to send it toward a public hearing on the special permit and site plan application set for June 10 at 6 p.m. The applicant is also seeking a foundation permit so work could begin soon after approvals are secured, and a separate application has been filed with the Riverhead Industrial Development Agency. The hotel has been in development for eight years.

The project sits inside the broader Riverhead Town Square redevelopment, where the Town Board unanimously declared J. Petrocelli Riverhead Town Square LLC qualified and eligible in August 2025. In March 2026, the Planning Board approved lot line changes needed to create a unified parcel for the hotel and a separate parcel for the public town square. Riverhead also held a groundbreaking for the larger Town Square project on Dec. 12, 2025.

The town says that broader effort carries $32.6 million in backing, including $24,123,369 in federal RAISE funds, $4.2 million from the state Downtown Revitalization Initiative, $400,000 in Brownfield Opportunity Area funds, $3.2 million in state funds through Empire State Development, $500,000 through New York State Parks and Historic Preservation, $2.4 million in Suffolk County Jumpstart funds and $97,500 in Suffolk County Downtown Revitalization funds. The town also acquired 127 East Main St. through eminent domain for $170,000 after a settlement with the owner, and the wider project has already included demolition of blighted buildings across from the Suffolk Theater.

Supporters say the latest design still fits the downtown revitalization environmental review already completed for the area, because the commercial portion remains generally similar to what had been analyzed before. The unresolved issue is whether the new plan truly answers the earlier objections about scale, transparency and how much public review should happen before major redevelopment decisions are locked in. Joseph Petrocelli has said the momentum has to continue because, in his words, if the town stops now, it may never turn Riverhead around.