Eye to the East: Agri-Park Opens in Riverhead

Throughout the week, we do our best to offer you local news that hits close to home. With a wide network of Patch sites across Long Island, we thought we'd also make available a round-up of news from our East End sites.

Riverhead Town Supervisor Sean Walter is seeing red.

Walter, who is on vacation, blasted Marty Johnson, CEO and founder of the Long Island Motorsports Associaton, in a phone interview on Thursday. Walter said that a recent tape leaked to the Riverhead News Review, on which Walter allegedly says he would try to quietly approve drag racing at Enterprise Park at Calverton, could slam the brakes on any future drag racing discussions.

Walter said plans for the future at EPCAL currently being considered include a racing country club, where members would pay to join and race on a quarter mile track. "It would be no different than a golf club," Walter said. "That's what we're studying."

Members of the heard feedback from the public Monday night on a new law proposed to tighten regulations on rental units — a law created in order to prevent potentially dangerous situations from overcrowding, according to village trustees.

But the proposed law as it is now written, at 20 pages in length, is overbearing and dangerous in itself, said former Greenport Mayor Dave Kapell at Monday’s public hearing.

“With all due respect, whoever drafted this law did not realize how much of a severe hardship this would be on our immigrant population,” Kapell said. “I’m sure that this is not intended to be bad, but ultimately, this is deciding who gets to live in Greenport and who does not — but in reality different human beings come here to make a living and hold up our community, and this cuts into the very character of the village."

Surrounded by fresh corn and other fruits of the East End summer harvest, elected officials gathered for a ribbon cutting of a new agricultural food processing facility that they say will open the doors of opportunity for local farmers competing in an international market.

The ceremony came after a gathering held at the site in June, when John King, owner of J. Kings Food Service Professionals, Inc., a food service company,  2711 Sound Ave., the 108,000 square foot site of the former Blackman Plumbing Supply business.