Riverhead plans to raise East End Arts campus, expand downtown vision

Riverhead’s downtown overhaul is set to bring East End Arts up to street level, turning the long-low campus on East Main Street into a centerpiece of the town’s broader Town Square plan. The move would keep the historic buildings in place, but reconfigure them so they are more visible, accessible and useful for a downtown that officials say should generate more foot traffic and spillover business.

The Town of Riverhead says East End Arts sits at 131 and 133 East Main Street on town-owned property and is a vital component of the downtown economy. Dawn Thomas, the town’s community development, planning and building administrator, has said the goal is to get the buildings out of the flood-prone low area and onto Main Street so they are protected as historic resources. East End Arts Executive Director Wendy Weiss has described the plan as a way to preserve the campus while adapting it for long-term use.

The concept is still evolving. Final design work and construction drawings will not be prepared until the town selects an engineering firm through a request for proposals. Even so, the implications are significant for Riverhead merchants and residents who have watched the town square project become one of the East End’s most consequential redevelopment efforts, with public money, private investment and historic preservation all tied together in one package.

The financial backing is substantial. Town officials have said the project is supported by $24,123,369 in federal RAISE funds, $4.2 million in DRI funds, $400,000 in Brownfield Opportunity Area funds, $3.2 million in state funds, $500,000 from New York State Parks and Historic Preservation, $2.4 million in Suffolk County Jumpstart funds and $97,500 in Suffolk County Downtown Revitalization funds. Together, that is nearly $35 million aimed at reconnecting Main Street to the Peconic River and reshaping the core of downtown Riverhead.

The East End Arts site has been part of Riverhead’s redevelopment thinking for years. The East Main Street Urban Renewal Plan was adopted on October 19, 1993 to address deteriorating buildings, poor access, parking and redevelopment barriers along the corridor. More recently, Riverhead News-Review reported that the Benjamin House at 141 Main St., which predates 1870, and the Davis Corwin House at 133 Main St., which dates to the 1840s, would be moved and brought up to sidewalk level. Those buildings sit about 10 feet below the sidewalk now.

East End Arts already shifted its school and offices to 206 Griffing Ave. in September 2025, next to Town Hall, while keeping its Fine Arts Gallery at 133 East Main St. through the end of 2025. The organization said the temporary move made its school, music and office space first-floor and fully wheelchair-accessible, while allowing construction to proceed on the Main Street campus.

The broader Town Square plan, formally marked by a December 12, 2025 groundbreaking, also calls for landscaped green space, an amphitheater, a public playground, walkways, a boutique hotel and mixed-use commercial space. A 2024 public information session around the amphitheater showed how much Riverhead is expecting from the project, with themes centered on dynamic, vibrant, active, unity and community. For East Main Street, the question now is whether the arts campus becomes the cultural anchor officials promised, and whether that anchor pulls more people, and more spending, into downtown Riverhead.