Full Transcript
Thank you. [transcription gap] First up today will be matters sort of surrounding the possible sale of real property. Nope, sorry. I'm on the wrong page. Open session will be matters surrounding possible indoor sports facility at Veterans Memorial Park and that's with Bob Kern. You guys want to come up? Sure.
Yeah. Have a seat right at the table. One here, one there. Thank you. Yeah, I'm sorry. Good morning. My name is Peter Ballard. Hi. My name is Justin Potenza. Nice to meet you gentlemen. Pleasure. We do have printouts of this. Excellent. You can, well, explain what you want to do and Justin will put stuff up on the screen when you're ready. Yeah, sure. I mean, it's been a couple of years now. It's been working with Bob. Some of the other- And you're working with Ken, originally with Troy from the beginning, right? Right. Well, you're from- You haven't worked with me? No, no, with Troy. Okay. They were working, you know, with- Okay. They were working with me. They were working with me. Okay. So, you were aware of this project way back, right? Yeah, I think the last we spoke was about a year ago. You guys were gonna, the recreation asked you to do a qualified and eligible by hearing. No, we never, we didn't, because they're gonna donate, so that's not gonna be necessary, but that was- It's absolutely necessary. It's required by law. So, you have to do it. So, at any rate, I'll let you guys go ahead. Go ahead. So, as I was indicating, it's been a couple of years. We've been progressing through that. We've been through that time here to talk about creating a space, a sports facility. Veterans Memorial Park is phenomenal, as we all know, currently with the baseball and the pickleball, the walking areas, the dog walks now. They have, obviously, the paintball in existence. So, great area, has the fields and the space for outdoor soccer and lacrosse, which really is something that I've been talking to Bob and then creating potentially an indoor facility. I think which we all- We all can attest to Long Island is in high demand, especially from the November to April seasons. So, where we're situated in Riverhead, being centralized with the North Fork and the South Fork, there are no indoor facilities besides the YMCA in Southampton. So, you have a massive demand for soccer and lacrosse in particular that stretches all the way to Queens. That's where we're seeing a lot of traveling done as the higher age and the better teams, I should say, from the travel exists. So, to create a spot here at the Fork would answer a lot of the demand, create a phenomenal facility that already is in existence, just take it to the next level. And what we're looking at is a dome, it's a bubble. It's inflated by air, it has an AV system. So, it's got air chambers. So, what it does is the chambers are perpetuated by the AV system that hold it up, inflate it. It'll be heated or put in a So, what it does is the chambers are perpetuated by the AV system that hold it up, inflate it. It'll be heated or inflated. It'll be heated or cooled by that depending on the time of the year. So, that also does two things. Obviously, it inflates it and then it keeps the temperature regulated, which is great on both aspects. I could see four politicians standing out here just blowing into a tube and keeping it inflated. I mean, I've got tons of hot air coming. Yeah, exactly. We could use that from Washington, no question right now, all things considered. I think a lot more than four though. But yeah, so in that sense, the company that the dome in particular I've been working for is, you know, the company that the dome in particular I've been working for is, you know, the the company that the dome in particular I've been working for is, you know, the dome in particular I've been working for is, you know, the company that the dome in particular I've been working for is, you know, ASATI. They started in the 1950s as a government, you know, building for aerospace. Kind of like, you know, covering up a lot of our facilities throughout the country. Then they've gone residential. I think like in the late 70s, early 80s. The CEO, in fact, was wanting to create a dome for his own tennis court. And that's kind of where it, you know, got rolled off. So now, there's domes throughout the country that they use for sports complexes on the professional level. For football in particular. And then all the way through college. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. [transcription gap] are rolled off. So now there's domes throughout the country that they use for sports complexes on the professional level, for football in particular, and then all the way through colleges. And then just from the recreation from other towns that we've seen throughout the country. This one in particular is Capelli Sports Center that we're looking at up here on the upper left that you guys have. I apologize. Is this a facility that you own? No, it's not that I own. It's Asadi built the dome so I'm using it as an example of what we look to utilize here. It's a 100,000 square foot facility so inside you have a full size soccer field. From this aerial that you guys are looking at you can see the dome itself. You can see the larger building. That's the entrance building that they have for concessions, for any sporting goods that they have. They have I think also kind of like a party guest room for events. And things of that nature. Restrooms are in there. You can enter through that. There's also emergency exits throughout. But that's the main entrance that we would look to create similar to this depiction. The two smaller, darker objects you're seeing, that's the generator and HVACs in the backside that would run and pump the air through the system. If we go to the next slide, I think it kind of brings us inside. Thank you. So that shows the full size regulation soccer field. Then within that soccer field you can create quadrants. So what they've done is they've taken it down to four fields within. So you can play soccer, lacrosse, they have field hockey, sometimes they're doing football depending on the seasons, but with a regulation size soccer field it enables the ability to break it down to four to actually eat quadrants depending on how we want to look and utilize it from a usage perspective. So that's the first thing. Then the second thing is the basketball courts. So you can see on the right hand side, they have two full size basketball courts. The basketball courts are aligned to be utilized for basketball, pickleball, tennis, volleyball, and futsal. So with that being said, pickleball is a massive sport taking over. So you can get four pickleball courts on that right now, which is unique. Volleyball, I've been kind of feeling that out and that's obviously a lot larger than I realized with regards to the high school. So I'm going to go back to the basketball courts. I'm going to go back to the basketball courts. I'll head over to head over to head over to head over to head over to head over to head over to head over to [transcription gap] of the research and then you know obviously you know you have the tennis or basketball and basketball you know speaks to itself also there are five lanes on the backside for batting cages so that would be the full you know complex in itself indoor or then outside off the backside of the field part of what the conversation I'm having with Bob at Parks and Rec would be to create one potentially two but we can definitely get one depending on the size outdoor soccer field that we would create and donate to Riverhead Park and Rec along with the parking lots that would be needed for this you know we'd also be building utilizing not only for the dome but also for the rest of the park and the usage that you know because of all the activity that this is creating and everything that currently existence right now that I know the parking is I've been out there it's phenomenal with the weekends with the the biking and everything the pads but it's become so crazy when you have you know baseball fields on the cross being utilized so you know parking is a necessity to create more regardless but again this was like an overall depiction of a complex in New Jersey called Capelli Sports Center that has the indoor dome and then outdoor soccer fields so we're looking at you know really pretty much mimicking this you know with minor tweaks here and there probably with the like the indoor building like the entrance building would be like the minor tweak but looking at that facility on a whole and then creating that soccer field as I mentioned outdoor maybe to well I'm a big lacrosse fan okay great and obviously Notre Dame just won the national championship with several kids from Long Island on their team Adelphi just won Division two champ men's championship again a lot of Long Island kids on the team Long Island has a hotbed for the team. Long Island has a hotbed for the team. There is a huge need for lacrosse from November to March, April, where there's just no place indoors to play. That alone will keep you busy, I'm sure, because tournaments can run all winter long. If you're a lacrosse parent, you know you're traveling all over the East Coast for tournaments on travel teams and everything else. You could host tournaments here. There's a whole, just for lacrosse alone. Now you throw in soccer, which soccer is a growing sport. It's the number one sport in the world. This ideally would be a great fit for the town of Redhead, and it would be a great fit for the whole mecca of East and Long Island, for sure. I don't think you nailed it on ahead any better than that. To be perfectly candid, we're from Ward-Melville area. I grew up in Garden City initially until I was 11 years old. These are hotbeds, as you mentioned, for just lacrosse. Looking at the lacrosse. It's 30,000 kids currently playing along out. Soccer, and again, I played soccer growing up. I'm not as piped in as I am in lacrosse, but there's 70,000 kids playing soccer right now along out from K to 12. The numbers are massive. As you've alluded to, though, the need is astronomical. It is. Where we're located, though, you're talking about the men's lacrosse. West Hampton girls lacrosse is a powerhouse. They're putting girls at Northeastern. North Carolina, it's a powerhouse. They have nowhere to go. It's unreal, the touch that we can have in this location on the fork. I agree with you. I just got to throw a little plug in. Our own community service director's daughter plays at Maryland. Tremendous. Playing at Riverhead and Riverhead's putting kids all over the place. We can choose Maryland, too. Absolutely. Great. It's exciting on all fronts. I think it's one of the things that we have kids that are... I'm playing in the lacrosse right now. We're seeing what goes on. I'm seeing friends and family traveling to Queens, what they need to get to places. So, yeah, we've done some of the research. We know kind of the numbers. And what we're looking to create for the town of Riverhead is not only these fields, indoor and outdoor, but I'm talking to Bob and as I'm talking to you guys with regards to the pickleball, you see things like let's create something for the town of Riverhead where the residents get a membership or a card where they have entrance. They have access at a discounted level. We can look to work the facility, whether it's pickleball or it's yoga or whatever it is on the off hours. Because as we're talking, we know the kids are in school from 9 to 3. So the demand is 3 to 10, 3 to 9 for those off hours besides the weekends. What goes on during the day? And that's where I want to work with the town and try to create events or things for town residents. Like a community center. Yeah. Right. Have you run this by the... Rec Advisory Committee? Oh, yeah. Oh, no. Yeah, I've had meetings over the last two years with everybody. In numerous times. Frank, it's gone by Frank Mancini for water. He's fine. He's gone to engineering. They're fine with electric needs. And, yeah. Fire marshal. We've dealt with... And the fire marshal as well. That was a concern about water. We've all looked at the fire marshal. In fact, the fire marshal knows somebody, I think, at this facility, Capelli. Yes. And he... He has a counterpart down there who he called. And he already talked about what his requirement would be for this structure. Right? And getting around. So, yeah. In order to get to this stage, we've spoken to everybody to make sure everything was in order. He moved forward. So, what is the requirements from the fire marshal? What are you putting in? Well, that... Right now, what the fire marshal is looking at, in first glance, he wants a dirt road all the way around this facility. That's what he needs. That's what he's talking about. Because he's spoken with his counterpart down at Capelli. And that's where we are right now. For fire hydrants. What about fire hydrants and so forth? He has not mentioned fire hydrants at all. And, again, this is... We're at the beginning stage. Right? Mm-hmm. He's expressed to me more recently that he's requiring for any development up there to put fire hydrants in the facility off of Route 25. You're putting a fire hydrant at the hockey? Yes. That's what he's demanding that they're doing. Okay. No. That's... That's good. Because there's water on... What's that? 25? Yeah. So, you know, it is what it is. You know, I mean, that's great. Are you putting in sewer? Again, that was a conversation that we haven't gotten to. The bathroom facility... There's five locations where they can have... The site is approved for five bathrooms. Correct. So that right now, there's one in hockey. You know, this can be two. And I'm not sure... And the baseball, if you move that trailer down there, whether they're going to do accessible, that's three, which leaves two open. That's what it leaves down there. So you're going to build bathrooms up there? Correct. Okay. It's part of the building. Yes. Yeah, correct. I was looking at self-containing units, like Fuji systems, depending on what is... But the sewage was not tied into any main or any conversation of that nature, no. And you're bringing in electric? Well, the electric's there, but yeah, I'd be bringing it in. The electric currently is at capacity. So what's in there is currently at capacity. Yeah, Ken said he would bring in a separate line and the electric's available. Good. So you'd have to bring in an offer of 25. Did you participate in the study that's ongoing right now? No. Yes, you did. You don't know you did, but you did. I'll tell you how, because... He doesn't know if he participated. Well, he doesn't... Well, what happened was, in order for me to vote on the study, right, I submitted this plan to Evan. Okay? And through Dawn. So there was... I'm aware of this. Okay. I appreciate that. Yeah, I'm sorry that I wasn't aware. Sorry I didn't tell you. Now, talk about the finances. So you're going to purchase this bubble. You're going to install it, the parking lot, the electric, and then when you're done, you're donating it to the town of Riverhead? The idea right now, which, again, has contractually not been finalized, is to build the facility, as you've indicated, and then there is a timeline to eventually donate it to the town, correct? Okay. So are you planning on owning it in the beginning? You're looking... Like, what... Tell me what is your plan on it. So that's... You haven't done the legal stuff yet. Yeah, we haven't gotten into that. So in order for you to build anything on it and to maintain ownership, first you have to go to the alienation of parkland, right? So you've got to get approval from the state of New York in order to build on parkland. So you need to get approval through that. And if you plan on at least owning it in any partial beginning, then you need to go through a qualified knowledgeable hearing, and then you have to apply to the CDA to show your finances that you have the ability to build this in its entirety and all the infrastructure that goes with it. But then the goal is, like, are you looking to purchase... Because I don't know that you can purchase any parkland we can't sell. So I think you just have to do it through a managerial program. So you'll have to, like, build a structure, donate it to the town. That's what we did with the ice rink, donate the entire facility. So, like, we own that ice rink. That's our facility. And then we separate... You have a managerial contract with Peconic, and they manage it and run the facility. Is that what you're looking to duplicate? Or do you feel that you need to own this project? I think it's a very different approach here. Yeah, those are definitely different approaches. I think it's a matter of, you know, contractually seeing, you know, everything on paper. It's hard for me to sit here and say, ideally, what I'm looking to do. I'm willing to work with everyone, which is what I've been doing for two years. You know, I've obviously been asked and answered everything that you guys have wanted. So... In order to give you that answer, I'd like to see, you know, a formalized contract to understand where, you know, it best suits Town Riverhead and it best suits us. I can't sit here and depict, this is definitively what I want to do, when I don't really understand the full layout yet, contractually, of the whole obligation. Have you built any of these projects anyplace else? Or what's your experience? I mean, I am a builder. I'm a home builder. So I've been building residential for 14 years now. So, you know, I have a construction background. Predominantly in residential. Something like this. I've worked with, you know, two commercial companies, you know, and large electrical companies and things of that nature. But nothing, you know, of this size yet. But again, Asadi, the company does everything. So my job is to build the foundation, which is not a problem, considering my background. And then Asadi does everything from top to bottom after that is done. So they're the ones that have, you know, the engineering, the construction component. And they've built, I think it's 178 of these now throughout the country. So. It's a new dome, a reconditioned one. It's a new dome, brand new dome. 25 year life. What's an approximate build out on something like this, money wise? If you're looking at the whole soup to knots, six million. And that includes, and you're going to. That's the building. Yep. Like the concession building, let's call it. The dome, the parking lots, the fields. Locker rooms involved anywhere here? In there, yes. That's yeah. And the incorrect. And yes, in the bathroom should be locker rooms. Correct. But again, you know, the nice thing about Asadi is we can, I can stagger, meaning I can build like the soccer component of it and then do the basketball the next year and the baseball, you know, the actual batting cages, you know, and then the entrance building. We could just have an entrance like a normal one coming off the parking lot in the beginning and then create the building later on too. Depends on how we want. We want to look at it, you know, and see what kind of like our footprint would be. In terms of that financial, about $6 million that you have upfront. Yeah. Pay for that. I have. No reason why there's no reclamation from a bank loan or anything like that. There's no reason to be on parkland. So you have to have the full amount put down and correct. Correct.
Ultimate plan at the end of the. At the end of the vision fields outside the dome. Right? I mean, you have the space currently for this is this was, you know, their facility capelli's right? They have the indoor and then five fields. You know, we have the ability to put one regulation soccer field right now. Just dimensionally. If we were to fill in some of like the area that gets before the woods, we could get to win right now. There's just there's a lot of undulations in that field. So we could. Defend right now. There's no question. We got one. I think we can get eventually get to and then, you know, again, like capelli, they have them all over the place. Like your baseball, you know, would be, you know, a distance. But if we decided to create soccer fields or outdoor fields elsewhere, you have the land, you know, and that's that's the beauty of it. So for soccer tournaments or lacrosse tournaments, that's the real game changer for areas, right? As you're alluding to earlier, you need a minimum of six fields. You just, you know, in order. To do it. Right. So, you know, that would be a number, you know, be great to grow to or get to the lands there. It's just a matter of how we work with parking. Right to access that access that excuse me, which I think is attainable. It's just, you know, timelines and understanding kind of like where everyone is because parking rec who we've met with numerous times, you know, they have a beautiful idea of the land in that line of what it was with. I think that survey or that that that kind of creation was in the early 2000s. So. Things need to be kind of updated. That was what we were working on getting done. So group. Peter, I know I talked to you about once you go through the contract, the contractual part of this, this, if you ordered this today, it would be a year, right? To get it installed. Yeah, I would, I would say 14 months to be to be honest. It's eight to nine months for the generators. That's that's the biggest hold up right now. That is the hold up and then it's the installation is two to three months and everything. So that's the last thing that's done. So that like they'll have the fabric, they'll have the dome, they'll have the mesh membrane, they'll have everything there. It's the generator. So say you're nine months in the generators comfortably talking three months. That's a year. I say 14 just due to the fact of, you know, then the parking lots working with the turf interior. That's probably a safe number. So it's 12 to 14. It's right in that right in that that range generators are electric. Yeah. So power outage. Backup generator. That's what the dome inflate. That's correct. So it'll keep it inflated from what I'm told on that size. It's an hour and a half till it starts to get down to a dangerous level. So evacuation of things from a safety perspective are there, but you have the backup generators. Correct. Can I ask you a question? You said a Saudi builder. What now? What's that? It's Capella makes the job. Yeah. Who's the builder? Sorry. Sorry for the clarification. A Saudi ASA TI. That is the dome company. They are the ones who actually make. The dome. They're the ones who will do doing the installation. Everything from top to bottom. Capella was a location in New Jersey. So that's just a complex that I was referencing for visuals and, you know, better understanding of what we're looking at. Okay. Sorry. Yeah. Have you inquired anything in New York State with the alienation of Parkland? Is that something that you guys are going to cover the legal recourse and unlike to pursue that with New York State? We haven't gone the route of the alienation of Parkland. Maybe Bob, you can attest to this better than me. It's just due to the fact that we were looking. We were also looking at. We were also looking at. Yeah. We were also looking at the potential. We haven't gone down, you know, real deep with Eric. He wanted to do the work session first. But there's a swath of land up here. There's Parkland. And you can put the first line on, Justin. First and last, I think. We're going to build right above the hockey dome on the CDA land. The bottom corner. See that bottom? Yeah. See that bottom that sort of hatched out there? Yeah. That's Parkland. And it's that pizza. It's a pie shape there. Is, you know. That's town land. Zone recreational. That's not Parkland. Parkland stops at the ice rink. That CDA. That's CDA land there, right? Correct. So we were looking. You know, one of the potential things we looked at was taking that square footage and swapping it. With the Parkland. Right? And making that CDA land. That was one thing. Or just go through the alienation of parks. The other thing is I have a call in to Evan to see, you know, from Evan's expertise. Because public-private partnerships are being done all over Nassau County and other places. Because obviously towns can't afford to do this. Right? So I'm looking for some guidance from Evan as well. Okay. Who does this for a living. With public-private partnerships. Evan is from where? Where's Evan from? He's our guide consultant on the entire build out of, you know, adding additional acres to Veterans Park. He's our consultant. And that's, you know. But again, the request was to come to a work session because the scope has changed. And that's where we are now. And then we'll address all the legal issues. And see where we go from there. Gives a great opportunity in the winter for the tournaments. Fills our hotels. That might be more vacant in the wintertime. Absolutely. As opposed to the summer. And it's a perfect midway between Boston and New England. So how many, like, how many lacrosse fields inside this at one time? Is it like two fields? Like the size of it? With that size it would be one full-size lacrosse field. But tournaments currently run 7 v 7. And 9 v 9. So on that you can get two fields on 9 v 9. And you can get three to four on a 7 v 7. That's the whole key to success is the tournament side of things. So they can fit three to four? Three to four games at a time? Correct. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Correct. Absolutely. And I agree with you. The tournaments are crucial. I think, you know, as I was indicating earlier, the outdoor is something that if it's crucial, it's something that if it's created at Veterans would be phenomenal. I mean, you have such a great space there. And, you know, given the land, you know, as we're looking at here, there's a lot of land that right now is untouched. So, you know, in working together, I think there's a lot of great things that can be done in the next, you know, three, four, five years with opening up some of that for, you know, for soccer fields, lacrosse fields, any outdoor that we're talking about. But from a tournament perspective, the biggest thing you need is parking, right? That's where the issues line in from a safety perspective. And this park right now is choked by parking. So that's always one thing I've been trying to talk to Bob about, been trying to work with, you know, that is my creation in the sense of I've never really, you know, minded where the location of this was. As you were talking about the alienation, I was happy from day one to be anywhere. It was just the parking. I've always said from a safety perspective, my concerns were always the parking. I've always said from a safety perspective, my concerns were always the parking. And I think that's what I've been trying to do. My concerns were parking. So as long as we can address the parking, understand we're looking at November to April. It's dark. Right. So the lighting is crucial. Safety is crucial with weather. And parking is everything. And that's what I think we've highlighted here with that location. Now, if it has to move due to alienation working with the town, that's okay. But parking is what we really need to address. I think it's a great location in terms of like it's what... It's... [transcription gap] Right now, it's... [transcription gap] ...Utilized... [transcription gap] as opposed to you raising the funds putting it now you're ready to go and then you apply for alienation i mean it could take a year for alienation department to get approval i mean you looks like you might be waiting a year for the dome to be manufactured so i think if you coincide and you do everything together you know in terms of getting your approval and then ordering the dome or whatever you know i don't know whether you know but it can be done but but it's a process i'm just asking you have you then begun that process in any way or any inquiries to the state we we looked into you know the prior project of the ice rink and and we applied for the state and quite honestly their their response was was very vague initially um and they said that they would need a significant amount of time to consider the project as well as they would allow you know a private entity to to work even in a managerial aspect on parkland you know if it was if it was given to the town and it was town run town operated that's different that's what town parks are for right but um in terms of uh having an outside entity come in you know that's when the alienation department we then we perceived we even pursued things with the attorney general's office because we were trying to get a um a ruling from her saying that you know i don't see any for you know any reasons that and and she did respond and refuse to give that ruling that's saying she was all about to come through the state of new york so that you know that kind of and when we get when we heard that yeah that's when we said all right we need to find another location right because they had the dome it was a little different unique they already own the dome and you can't you can only store it for such a period of time before it begins to start sticking together and it loses its quality and it's not you know you know so they had already purchased the dome and they were like we need to build now and we can't go through the year-long process they would have loved to have been up on route 25 where it's more significant more view and you know it's the past vibes but they didn't have the time because they already had the dome and they didn't want to store it for a year so that was a little different. So you know one of the things that i had mentioned to you so when they build an indoor hockey rink i said this dome is going to be you know empty and and i said we can express that he would like to do indoor soccer on the cross and you said that's perfect because the be you're going to create a demand and having all the demands there you're going to create a location you build a table there's no question we could have three of them and they're going to be used. I mean exactly the demand is you know it's exponential there's no question it's just and that's what i alluded to it's a matter of how we figure this out how we get this done it and i'm confident it can be done it just yeah it just takes time no no question but what what Bob is correct is that i think that the the ice rink is has been very successful and i think it's going to be looking to moving you know to a more brick and mortar style building and then there's going to be upgrades and so forth to sewer and electrical and all those things that still have to be brought in and then i think then the answer is yes that that dome will always remain standing that is our facility it's owned by the town so when they move into a brick and mortar building we have that bubble there it could coincide with your activities in terms of like you know um you can have you know a volleyball tournament you can have you know multiple games going on in one and multiple games going on the other and then there's a championship weekend because it it is our structure yeah presumably that would be the same you know we haven't really clarified as what you know what's going on in the middle so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so a competition with the dome oh absolutely not i mean look the more the merrier but that's part of the whole sports complex because they're going to come back and they're going to be telling us it is lacrosse or it's basketball it's football so you know that's the whole that's why we spent seventy thousand dollars on a sports complex study for them to come back and go here's the best thing you can you can conceive it but the initial beginnings of the study said this this is this is this is premier land because of the two ferry locations and and the ability of tournaments i mean i grew up going to play my games up in massachusetts and i'm going traveling around and and soccer my brothers they were all you know they were going to connecticut and north island for soccer tournaments things like that um how about people start traveling south with us you know but it's like and our community directors you know she's been going back and forth to maryland for lacrosse tournaments all that time with her kids and so forth it's a pretty good thing to do and i think it's a pretty good thing to do and i think it's a pretty good thing to do and i think it's a pretty good thing to do and i think it's a pretty good thing to do their location it's it's it's easy accessible off of williams flight parkway you know it's accessible by right so their initial consultant was like this is this is great now we we're going to prove towards what it should be so there's no question about building a bubble but you'll learn what what's the most successful path in terms of the sport that's that's going to be maybe a multitude of sports right probably the parents will need a bigger car to keep hockey hockey equipment in the trunk for the kid and then the lacrosse equipment because a lot of hockey players play lacrosse right and they lacrosse right and they cross you know cross over the lines of both sports and you know it's a good problem to have very nice yeah very true and as you're talking about earlier with the hotels i mean we have it you know it's great yeah oh yeah and the vineyards everything's here to make a weekend out of it for people coming you know from connecticut or from mass to come over you know it affords so much it's just one of the things that i think you know as we talk about in the these tests show you need minimum of six fields outdoor to run a tournament it's just how it has to work most of these tournaments they have two locations so if you did like something at stotsky and you did it here you know at memorial you could have that ability to run you know four fields at stotsky six here and now you're really taking it to the next level um you know you break up age brackets you could break up you know different you know girls boys whatever it might be to work that in you know that's how you really take this location and put the flag down and say as we've all alluded to every memorial day somebody goes to a tournament hershey you know the connecticut it's it's the same thing they have labored at columbus day weekend it's always a tournament this could be the spot for not only suffolk but bringing people in from outside and for lacrosse it would be a no-brainer because we don't have to make the signs and bring you know the advertisement and this is long island lacrosse is here you know we have to do a little pushing for soccer but lacrosse is here no question about it they will come i'm just gonna see what i like also is the fact that the lacrosse season is november to april no that's the season when there's no you can't play outside because it's oh oh oh so it's so they play so their tournaments in that time yeah sure so the beautiful thing about that is that helps our economy off season oh yeah yeah right and i mean that's you know that's why you know hotels are basically empty so that really helps the riverhead of california economy and you know i like that a lot um you know i'm going to just say and i'll be going to have to visit when you're out here on one sunday um strawberry fields and matatuck which just goes straight down sound avenue and you'll see with the demand for soccer it started out lacrosse too they play lacrosse yeah like nothing now it is huge they do tournaments there every year yeah i remember in high school we would come to greenport they have a huge outdoor lacrosse for the high school absolutely and that was 20 years ago so and lacrosse was still very popular but it's nowhere near what and on the east end it was still in its kind of and it was infancy 20 years ago yeah 20 years ago there was at least i would say 2000 people that was packed yeah yeah great my son played out there yeah okay the only thing is that i would ask and if you what you consider is that if like in terms of alienation of parkland i think it is a it is an immense legal amount and i would like to see see qualified and eligible by application be filled out that you did showing that the time you have give the funds available to pursue this project before we have our legal department invest an enormous amount of time in the process of it yeah I mean that from so from our standpoint in regards to the funds we have capital investors that we've been working with they're you know interested in the project they've been from inception which is now over two years that I've been dealing with it it's one of the things that you know I know you guys are indicating but you know from what I do and what I've done it you know everything is reputational based right so I you know I have a situation where you know Bob has asked me you know we have 197 lacrosse teams that we work with in Long Island you know that you know stretch out from the travel from the Express to 91 and yellowjack and so forth I know everybody all right so I can type that in in a second but I'm you know I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to do that but I'm not sure if I'm not about to go and say to people I need your signatures or I need you guys to sign something when I don't know where I stand I keep coming to the means that keep coming coming coming I need to understand where we're gonna be it seems like everyone wants to do it I'm ready to do it from the funds perspective I have ten investors right besides the two of us the money's there but I'm not going to sit there and show money that's not getting interest on returns because that's how my guys work when I don't have a clear head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head I think the agreement's next. The agreement, you have to, you know, I'm sorry to interrupt you, but the next step, according to when I spoke to the attorneys, we'll sit down with the attorney, and you guys have to agree to what you're going to, you know, what it's going to be, and then you move on from there. It needs to get more formalized, and the Q&E is going to be definitely a necessity in the process because we don't want to invest time of our employees in it, too, but the funds aren't there if you're not capable of pulling it off. Right, but they're going to donate it like the hockey did, right? And the hockey has cost us a fortune. They donated a dome without a fee. They still had to show us they had monies available to construct the dome and everything else. We still had to do the Q&E. No, I know, but I think that they need to look at it and agree. If they can't agree on something, then they can't even move on. Right, no, I understand that. No, no, then you would do the Q&E. I think it's a great project. I think there's a huge need for it. I don't think you would have a problem getting your return back. No, no question about it. But there are hurdles with the state that, as Ken said, you know, it's going to be time-consuming, but I think the sooner we come together and start to get some sort of an agreement, the faster you can get sorted and move ahead. Yeah, again, I mean, I think the conversations that we had were avoiding the alienation by, you know, during the lockdowns. Yeah. And the land swap, if that's not feasible. Again, you still have to go in the alienation of park land in order to do a land swap. You can't just take it upon yourself to go, I'm going to give you land someplace else. You've still got to go through the state. That could be part of your offer, you know, to them, but they're still saying this is deemed park land. Regardless. So, you know, if you're going to use it for that and you're giving it something else, you're still going to have to show that to the state of New York in order for them to approve it. Understood. And we've understood that. But at the same time, the process I was told was not as long as going through the alienation if there was a swap. If you're telling me it is, then that's a different conversation then. So I haven't started. It's longer or shorter. Right. I just don't know that. I haven't started the alienation process because as we talked a year ago and you alluded to it being a year, that was a process that we said, let's not get into the weeds on that if we're going to look to do the swap, which wouldn't be as long. If it is, then OK, then we should start ASAP. Clearly, wasting time or monetary is not the issue for me or for anything you guys need to see. It's just a matter of getting a contract that we can agree on, answering your question about, you know, is this going to be leased? Is this going to be donated? This is what I need to see. Right. I need to have my investors, everybody understand what we're doing and then fundamentally going to the next level of if I need to, you know, pay for the alienation process. Fine. It's just, it's just a matter of, is that land that we've talked about comfortable for everybody? Is that where the X is going to be drawn? That's what I was trying to work with Park and Rec for the last year to come to an agreement of where does it best suit, you know, Veterans Memorial? This was a location that we all came up with. If it works with everybody, then boom, we have that done, checked. Let's look to the contract. Then let's look to the alienation. That's how I see it. So we're not wasting anybody's time, but I understand if it's a year, I'd rather get the ball rolling. And as you're talking about coinciding, I'm not going to coincide with a $6 million build until I have my ducks in a row, right? I mean, I'm not getting guys money for a two year deal right now that it sounds like when they're not going to get anything back for two years. It's not how business works. Like this utopian idea of donating something and the town running it and the state running it. Leticia James saying that to you guys, that's crazy, right? Like who would ever do that? You can still incorporate, collect the funds from others and then invest your funds as a corporation. And then upon construction, release those funds, right? So again, you know, from the world that I'm in, you know, which has been the finance world and everything else, it's not how people like to hold their funds and move money, right? They put it to a project. That's where the money is going to be. That's where it's locked up to incorporate the funds and may not have a direction on something else for the next two years. It just doesn't work in business that way. So, this is the project. This is the money that I have slotted. But the understanding has to be, okay, we have the X, we have the contract agreed. Now it's the alienation, if that's the case. So I know I have a timeline and I can go to these guys and talk. But two years now, I've been dealing, trying to figure out where I am, trying to figure out what goes on. And I have these investors. They're not going to put money up until I have something that is agreed upon by everybody. I'm not there, right? Clearly. So I keep moving forward with you guys. And you don't have to necessarily have the funds in an account. In your qualifying note, you can simply list and each of those investors would list their, provide their own financial status. I mean, that's not a problem at all. Ann Marie, could you come up maybe and just... Ann Marie's our deputy town attorney. Hi, Ann Marie. How are you? She's somewhat familiar with this process. I did that once. So my first comment is, when you started out, and Councilman Rothwald was asking you a question, you stated you weren't sure if you were looking to buy property, lease property, or license property. So it really begins with you. Because if you're looking to purchase, then legally, there are certain requirements. If it's a license agreement, it's going to be something else. Where you want to put it, that's going to be somewhere else. When you talk about swapping land, the town would not legally go through the state process of swapping its own land for another piece of its own land. When you talk about swapping land to replenish an alienation, that's when a private entity takes public park land and installs it in a public park land. And then you have to do that. And that's when you talk about swapping land. And then you have to do that. [transcription gap] And in turn, gives back to the municipal entity different lands that the town board would deem suitable. So this isn't a land swap. So that should be like off the table. What it really is, and the direction and how it moves forward, is you deciding, are you looking to purchase property, lease property, license property? And then we would move from there. And then, myself, Eric, could give very clear direction. Well, I appreciate that designation. Again, for me, and from the beginning to answer your question, it's never been an issue of buying, leasing, or licensing. It's been a matter of where this location can best be suited for the town. And with that being said, what we've found is that there is parkland, state parkland, that was up before that was open and empty. And then there's town riverhead land that I was told, which was the bottom of the swap that I was indicating. Again, understanding what you're saying, private to public, I was told we're swapping state parkland from town. So the town of Riverhead is donating that to the state of New York on the parkland side. That's what I was told was the swap. No, no. Okay, so let's dump the swap. That's like a double loss for the town. Yeah. No. Well, a double loss, you're not being utilized the land at all right now. But we own the land. This is what was discussed. The last time. Okay. That's probably something must have got lost or confused because that doesn't make sense. Right. So let's forget about the land swap. Let's just go to where it is now and donate. So can you show me on that? Getting back to your buying, leasing or licensing, it's not for me, it's where it works for the location. And then if it's town of Riverhead land, then we're talking about a lease, right? If it's parkland. No, it's parkland. It could be a sale. Yeah. It depends what land, where the land. No, no, no. It depends. I haven't seen where you're looking to locate. Is it here? Yeah. That's where we were talking about locating. That was state land. It's not state land. It's town land. This is all parkland. It's parkland. It's town land. It's parkland. It's not state. We were told that it was state and that this was town. And then we're going to swap. This entire parcel is town of Riverhead, own land. Some of it. It's zoned parkland. And then the rear portion that you're looking at is zoned for recreational use. But it's all town of Riverhead land. This area here. So why did you not go in front? Because we already deemed it as parkland. Correct. So it only could be used for park facilities, not for private entities. That's what a town park is. So you can't, a private entity can't go into a town park and build a structure and start. Even if the private entity is giving you the structure and they're managing it, you still can't do it. Yeah. You can't have a little private entity working off of parkland. You can't do it. Because public-private partnership. So what, just to explain to you, just, and I won't belabor the point. This entire piece of land owned by the town of Riverhead, don't quote me on the exact acreage, 92 acres. 92. 64 acres of it, the town had accepted federal and state funding for park improvements. When it did that, in all the plans it submitted for the funding, it identified this 64 acre piece. And we accepted the money and we made improvements utilizing the money. It's dedicated parkland. The additional acreage was added on at the time the town was considering a subdivision plan. Monies. Grant monies. And the property was not, have not been applied to the remainder of the property. So the alienation comes in. This is, probably would be, a terrific site. But it would require alienation legislation. And the town, I don't believe, would look to convey this property to you because it doesn't make sense to, you know, to the town. Right. [transcription gap] Right. [transcription gap] Right. [transcription gap] Right. [transcription gap] Right. [transcription gap] Right. [transcription gap] Right. Right. [transcription gap] Right. Right. Right. [transcription gap] Right. [transcription gap] under state law as the swap. So this piece here would require alienation, and you would require, quote, some type of license agreement with a benefit to the town, a commitment, a financial commitment, and proof of financial wherewithal to actually build this out and put in the necessary improvements. Like you said, one of the big issues is going to be parking. And we live and learn every time we do a project. We learn with Pekanakaki that there are water demands, hydro demands, parking demands. And you yourself, the way you describe, this probably would be a very, you know, utilized high-demand facility. So those improvements would have to go along with it. So those... No, I'm sorry. Continue. No, those are the things that you would have to talk about. And we have. And we're fully aware of the need for the water, as we've indicated, with the parking, as I've indicated. And those are the things we would build that we've agreed to do. So that's all. It comes down to, which I keep, I think, bringing back is to where this facility goes. And then the steps are, as you're indicating, it's an alienation, which that was the process now we have to go to. From the leasing perspective, buying, it was always talked about as a lease. It was never talked about as a buy. It was always talked about us leasing the land from the town once this swap, which doesn't exist... Well, it's going to be a license. A license agreement for the lease of the management rights. So that's what we're looking at. Yeah. It's going to be a complete license agreement. We're not going to lease you this land. No, I know you're not leasing me the land, but I... We have to own it. You do own it. Right. There's no contesting that. We have to own the structure. So anything that you put there becomes the property of the town of Ripley. Correct. And then you are giving a license agreement to operate your facility for X number of years. Correct. You may choose to sign a 20-year lease operating agreement. So you're not leasing. You're building it. You're saying, here's the keys. Yep. This is your facility. We own it. But we don't have the stamping to manage it, to run it. So now you would... Your proposal simultaneously, you'd be saying, I want to put together a license agreement where I can run this facility for the town of Riverhead for the next 25 years. Whatever... And you're going to have to deliver concrete benefits to the residents of the town of Riverhead. Which we've already said earlier. He's already stated that, so you missed that. No, but yeah, I mean, from your perspective of like water parking, the benefits, all of this stuff's been addressed. Over the years, the dome, purchasing, leasing, managing, all been addressed over the years. Licensing. Sorry, licensing. It's a matter of where and how we get it done. It comes down to that. Okay, but up until I started, I didn't know if you were purchasing... No, it's going to be a license agreement. You came in... It sounds like, honestly, you guys need to set up an appointment with the town attorney's office. That's exactly what I said. That's what Eric wants to do. Yeah. I mean, he brought it to us, which you needed to do. We needed to come to a work session. But I think for you to get to where you need to be, you need to sit down with them and have a discussion, a hard discussion about how it can be done. Perfect. Okay. Thank you. I would love to see it. Yeah. It's an excellent location, it's an excellent spot. The feasibility is there. It's just there has to be... You've got to process. You've got to go through the necessary stuff. We can't sit here and go, yeah, yeah, go... And if you go... You've got to get clearance. Because we've used grant... And if you go... You've got to go through the necessary stuff. And that's... Because we've used grant money to build a parking road, a bike trail, and once you've applied that grant money in there, that's... We couldn't... That's how it's deemed as park land. Understood. And you can't use that grant money for a private ed there. Understood. And what would be really beneficial, if you go online, New York State Department of Parks, Historic, they'll give you... You can click on alienation, and it'll give you an outline of the factors they consider in the park. And the factors, the hurdles, which give you a clear description of what you must deliver to the municipality and the residents. And the reason why I think it could be successful over time is that it's currently unutilized park land. And that's the difference. So you're not building this on top of pre-existing baseball fields. It's not unutilized land. And that's going to be stated in your application to the state. Okay. And just so you know, Eric asked for this to go to a work session, and the next step is to sit with him. Yeah, that's the next perfect session. And with that, I put a call in to Evan, our consultant. Who's Evan, our consultant? He's doing... He's not our consultant. He's consulting... Go ahead. You take... He's doing a sports complex study. Oh, a study. He's doing a study. He's not a consultant. No. Okay. He's doing a study. A study for the town. And he is familiar with... He's doing a study. [transcription gap] But he's not familiar with public-private partnerships. I don't think... I mean, for me, I've seen them in Nassau County. They're doing them all over the place now because... I'm a biopub. You know this. So... Pretty famous. I've got a call in to him to try to get some guidance from him on other public-private things. I've gotten some contracts that were done in Manhasset, for example, just to look at. But we'll meet... We'll set up a meeting to meet with Eric. Okay. All right? That's the next step. The non-consultant. No. No. But he's doing a study. He's doing a study. But he's doing a study. but we'll meet we'll set up a meeting to meet with Eric okay no no Eric is the attorney no Eric no Evan is the study guy I know Eric Evan's the study guy Evan's the guy you're going to be leasing from no he's not no I'm teasing oh my god Eric's the guy that he's gonna fix your car he does own a body work too it's a great idea no no I know we've been working to it so we'll get it we'll get it done I think you waited six you were asked to wait six months when we first started to see how the alienation of parks went with the hockey and that fell through and right you know so hey and what worst case scenario we have a lot of property well that's that's that's the thing too Emory you know as I'm saying I don't everyone's talking about all this stuff and I'm saying I don't want to do it I don't want to do it I don't want to do it so I didn't do it so I didn't do it so I didn't do it so I didn't do it so I do it so I didn't do it so I didn't do it so I didn't do it so I didn't do it so I want it to be up there. I'm not looking at it like we're selling something up there. I don't, it doesn't matter where we go. I mean, look at the water park that, you know, that Eric has made. These guys, it doesn't matter where they are. You don't see it from the road. People come all day long. It doesn't matter. It's the demand. This could be five miles inland and not seeing people are going to come. Like, I'm not selling the scene off of 25. That's one of the first questions that I said to you is, did you participate in the study? Because the second phase of the study is where it comes into town, private entity partnerships, so government and private partnerships, agreements. And they are going to make recommendations. And if you participate in that study, you could have said, well, we want to be one of your entities because they are going to come back and say, you should build football fields. You should build lacrosse fields. You should build a racetrack. And you do those things and you say, I want to be one of those entities. And if the EPCOW sale doesn't go through. And we know it didn't go through, but if we win our legal cases and that's put behind us, I mean, I think there's a number of people on this board that support development from that 7,000-foot runway all the way up to Veterans Memorial Park. And then that may be a prize land for you and you don't have to worry about parks and alienation. You can build off of the runway. Sites would be part of the whole build-out of the sports complex study that's been there. Yeah, that's a beautiful upside. Except for the fact that... We are in a lawsuit, which could last five years. If you want to wait for that to be over... That's for him to decide. Well, not so... No, no, no. Clearly. But then you could buy the land if you waited and went to the legal... And you say, I want to buy it. I'm not going to make decisions for them because how I met him, I didn't know Peter, was a real estate person called me and said, this guy's looking for land to do this. And it was shortly after I had met with Ken and the hockey people. And I... I thought this would be great to bring that... To bring this all together into Veterans Park, which did a study in 2004. And here we are in 2024, 20 years later. And, you know, hockey was put in last year. So, you know, I'm not into... We got tons of studies that we've paid for that are on the shelves doing nothing. But... All right, we'll meet with Eric. Let's just... Let's not convolute this all and, you know... That's the plan. All right. I'm not... I just wanted to kind of have the conversation. I appreciate you guys taking the time because we haven't all met. Obviously, I've met Ken before, but, you know, I appreciate you taking the time. So we have it on the table and we understand. And thank you for the clarifications on the alienations. You want to reach out at any point. You want to sit down outside of this. I'll gladly sit down and kind of tell you what we've learned so far. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I appreciate that greatly, taking the time. I mean, I'll tell you, three years ago, I didn't know anything about alienation parkland. No, I know. I can't even study it. Yeah, I know. No. Your knowledge is... You know, so vast in regards to it and it's, you know, huge right now. So if you are willing to do that, I can't thank you enough. That would be great. Yeah. Great job. Thank you very much. Thank you, gentlemen. Joanne knows Kevin. Yeah. Who's doing the consulting study. No. No. Thank you, guys. Thank you. Nice to meet you. You too. I think Kevin goes out with Jane. Yeah, sir. I think Jane's driving him. All right. Next up, we have matters surrounding Cornell shellfish community. Aquaculture, restoration, and education. Hello. Care. Okay. Come on up. Denise. Yes. Lead off with this. All right. Amanda Hannafin from Cornell Cooperative Extension is here to talk to us. How are you? Good. How are you? Good. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you all too. Yeah, I'm Amanda. I'm with Cornell Cooperative. I'm a shellfish educator. I'm just going to ask you to speak up louder because the voice is soft and the microphones aren't going to hear you. You're going to have to just speak into the mic. Sure. No problem. I'm a shellfish educator with Cornell Cooperative Extension, and right now we are trying to expand our shellfish care program. Care. You can go to the next slide. It stands for community, aquaculture, restoration, and education. Go to the next slide. Sorry. Do I have a ... Can I click through? Just speak up louder so he hears you. Yeah. You talk to him. He's listening. Sorry. Sorry. So what our objectives are is to increase awareness and educational aspects for oyster restoration on our local ecosystem with our community members, and we want to provide an opportunity for hands-on volunteer experience with restoration work for town members and students, anybody who wants to come get involved. What we do is we plant oysters in uncertified waters. Basically, these waters are impaired, and we're trying to clean them, and oysters are a great natural ... Filter. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And our ultimate goal from this is to create oyster reefs that act as spawner sanctuaries. So you can go to the next slide. These are our current locations. Right now, we're very west of Suffolk focused. Our first site was at Gold Star. We're at Gold Star Battalion Beach in Huntington. And since then, that was back in 2022, since then, we have expanded to multiple yacht clubs along the South Shore and the North Shore, and we're in the process of creating more public sites for people to come visit because these private yacht clubs, they're not open to community members. Only their own members are allowed to join this program. You can go to the next slide. So what we use is called Spad on Shell. It's a piece of recycled clam, oyster, just any type of shellfish shell. And what we do is we set baby oysters on them, and these become building blocks of oyster reefs. So they start very, very small, and they grow into that only after a couple months, really. Where is your facility that you're doing that at the beginning stages? So that facility is out in South Hold. It's our Cornell's hatchery out there. They specialize in Spad on Shell. Okay. And these are not commercially desirable. People who do it for commercial purposes, they like single set oysters. Better luck. You can put them out on some ice and it looks pretty with lemons and people love them, but people don't really like these. And since they're put in uncertified water bodies, they're not up for human consumption. Right. Okay. So this is a map of the uncertified water bodies in the town of Riverhead. Where we are proposing is at East Creek Marina. It is an uncertified water area. You can go to the next slide. So what we would be doing is we would be putting this Spad on Shell in these modified milk crates that we create. And we hang them with eye bolts off of the docks. Okay. And they're suspended in the water with rope. And about every week, every two weeks, however often the community members want to do this, they come in. They lift them up. We clean them. Do a whole process. And within a couple months, the entire... We fill a very shallow layer. By the end of the summer, it's absolutely bursting, basically. They grow really, really fast. And then where do you go with them? Is that the next step? Yeah. So... Yeah. So our... Yeah. Our next step would be to move them to a reef this summer. If we are able to do it this summer, we probably wouldn't be able to put it in a reef in East Creek just with permitting through the DEC. But that would be an ultimate goal is to have an oyster reef there. So to be able to plant them on there for artificial and natural recruitment. So... For the purpose of cleaning the water. Exactly. Yes. So... And it doesn't look very intrusive at all. This is it? It would hang off a dock? It would hang off a dock. This is actually an example of a public site out in Huntington right now. It's run by the Huntington Rotary Club. Our site, we would want to have it run solely by Cornell Cooperative members. But this is an example of what we want it to kind of look like. You know, with the tent, people are set up. You know, they have water. There's hoses to spray down the oysters to clean them. Kids really like to get involved in this. So what we would do is we would have volunteers come. And they would come in. Every Saturday. Every other Saturday. However popular it is. Would really depend on the demand. And have people clean them. And collect data. So that we can measure the oysters length. And then see how much spat is on each piece of shell. Which I'll show you pictures of that later. So you can kind of get a better understanding of what that looks like. Are you using the seawater to clean them? Or are you just pumping it right out. Or are you using a freshwater line. Either one would work. Honestly. We just. we need either a freshwater hookup or we could use a pumping system to clean them off. So we started this in 2021, and the pilot tests were done to see if this actually worked, if the oysters actually grew. And they started out with 10 mil crates to test it and monitor their growth and survival throughout the summer. And this is what it looked like. So in June, you can see on the shell, all those little brown specks are baby oysters that have set on the shell. And then by September, they're, you know. That's a lot of growth. Yeah, they grow really fast. It's shocking. That's why it's so much fun to involve the community in it, because, you know, at first, for the first couple weeks, they just look like, you know, shells with little dots on them. And then you really see them just absolutely take off over the summer. And it's really cool to see. So, yeah, by the end of 2021, the oysters were almost two inches, two full inches in length. So, yeah, they grow really, really quickly. And, Amanda, how long is the season? When does it start? So we would ideally start setting up in June and then having the volunteers come July and August. It's easier over the summer. You know, sometimes we like to do Friday. Sometimes we do Saturday. You know, kids are out of school. They can come have an activity to do. We would like to learn about the environment, learn about oyster restoration. And we would end in September. And September is when we would have our diver plant all of the oysters onto whatever reef we would have set up for the time. So you'd ready right away this June to go out, like, immediately? I mean, it's not that much set up. We wouldn't be opposed. Just a little spit on the shell. Yeah, exactly. Like, we would just need to, like, install some eye bolts into the, into the... into the marina docks. And it wouldn't interrupt boaters because we would do it on the sides where the boaters wouldn't be parking. And David Lassard even said that he would be willing to let us hang some milk crates off of his docks out there. And he has electrical he would be willing to help us use. He's already, you know, been very supportive, which is... He does our... Clams. Clams. Clam seed program. He and his brother have done that for years. And... Yeah. They're great supporters of the day, so... Yeah. He actually, he used to work for Cornell. Oh, okay. Which is cool. I didn't know that until we got on the phone with him. But, so he seemed very supportive of this, which would be really helpful. So, yeah. Nature's filters. Exactly. I mean, that's what it comes down to. Exactly. That's nice. Yeah. So, this is the average growth that we saw over the year 2022. So, from July 1st to September 10th, we saw that the oysters, oysters grew from a little over five millimeters to almost 45 millimeters. So, it's, you know, they grow so fast. It's pretty cool. That's the nitrates. Yeah. Yeah. Oh my gosh. They just take off. That's how they grow. Yeah, exactly. Unfortunately. Mm-hmm. Go to the next slide, please. Yeah. So, this is our 2022 to 2024 expansion. Every year, we have added new yacht clubs. Every year, they have, you know, increased their crate numbers, the number of crates that we have. Yeah. [transcription gap] Yeah. !
excited really involved the yacht clubs have been increasing their crates every year because they have you know on the days where you know it's like the junior sailing team can't go out because it's crappy weather they come over and they just clean the oysters and like learn more about them and people like it too because what they pull it up a lot of times there's like eels in it there's blue crabs there's all types of fish sea bass and it's really cool for people to see like they really like learning about the ecosystem and it brings that natural recruitment of these species that you know wouldn't normally come to that area are now there because of these crates and the oysters maybe with all this happening over time maybe our scallops might start to come back because of the cleaning yeah exactly so yeah this is a good first step to something like that exactly what do you typically make the artificial resale like so like like in the in the next year or so yeah so yeah that's a good first step to something like that exactly what do you typically make the artificial resale like so like in the in the next phase so I think yeah our we build our reefs solely from this bat yeah yeah we don't use anything like artificial technically we have what we do is we get recycled shell and we cure it for at least six months to make sure all the bacteria is dead and then we use that to set the oyster larvae on and they do that out in South Hold where do you get the oyster larvae from we produce they produce it at South Hold they spawn the oysters that they get they'll go out and collect oysters naturally they bring them to the hatchery they condition them with certain food for about six to eight weeks and then they spawn them and create their own babies and then set them on to these oyster shells or clam shells whatever yeah whatever we can get our hands on really yeah it's really interesting to get going in June in the like a resolution yeah yeah so our goal would have in Riverhead would be to set this site up at East Creek Marina and basically have it mostly run by volunteers like I would be there to help run everything we could get some dock leaders people in the community who become official Cornell Cooperative volunteers to help run the site as well and then we can get some of our !
we would absolutely love if the town would help in any capacity because we need about five thousand dollars to start this project up but it's not necessary like we'll be doing a lot of our own so I think Dawn is here right so we have CBGB money and we can ask Dawn what the process is to to apply for that okay that would be great Dawn they eat she also we're June 4th like is our next town board meeting so is this something we can add a resolution to it to get her going yeah well we can ratify it and let her get going yeah okay Dawn absolutely you know I don't know if CBG money qualifies for this project but you want to no no low to moderate income area only these are poor oysters [transcription gap] it's nothing it's basic it's basic okay I just downtown Riverhead there's no pearls in these oysters okay there's no pearls in these oysters there's more there's more because they get them off the docks at like the way the way that CBGB could be used is if as a not-for-profit they apply for funding next year as one of our public service groups okay then that's one way you could do it but other any other money that we have is low to moderate income area only so it's like Polish Town Stotsky Park in downtown that's literally it throughout the town well I don't know if you had heard the other part Amanda was talking about how it's part of an education program yeah how it's part of an educational tool that they'll be teaching everybody so maybe in that regard the public service group yeah the public service group you know you have a lot of competition for that funding so you have a lot you know but there's not a ton of it right the most that that's available is probably between five and eight thousand dollars annually but but it's something yeah it's something they only need five you can use the other three for something else yeah if everyone buys t-shirts have you spoken to the ROTC at all about you know being volunteers I haven't but I I've spoken to them. I haven't spoken to them but I you know once we get a little bit further they were actually going to be some of the members that I reached out to to come as you know do volunteer work there what if we did it off the docks downtown but it's low income it's got to be for part of the pedestrian improvements it's it's a limited fund you know capital improvements things like that are helpful to us. I get it I just it's a limited fund you know capital improvements things like that are helpful to us. yeah [transcription gap] so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so In the future, if you'd ever want to consider doing a restoration project there, though, rib muscles are amazing at cleaning water like that. What type of muscles? Ribbed muscles. Ribbed. We actually have a project right now out in Bergen Basin in New York City that we're going to be doing this summer. It's a basin that's right near the airport. It is extremely impaired. So much bacteria. They're going to be planting a huge, huge area of rib muscles out there to clean that water. Because clams and oysters are a little bit more sensitive. Rib muscles are very hardy and people don't like to eat them. They're not very commercially valuable. So if you ever want a project for the future. Sounds good. I appreciate it. Yeah. Very good. Can we just go back to my question of how we're going to handle the... Beach permit parking? Is there... Because you're saying that volunteers are going to be coming in. Yes. Do people need permits to park in that parking lot? Yes. Okay. Gotcha. We can set that up with the recreation department. We will give you a placard that can be distributed to the volunteers to be able to go in there. That would be great. Great. Okay. I don't want anybody to get a ticket. I know. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Me either. Especially if they're coming to help. Right. Right. Yeah. So. But, yeah, we just want to have, like, a public site to help, you know, educate the community about this stuff. And a lot of people find it really, really interesting. They want to come down and bring their family. Yeah. And, you know, up in Huntington at the public site, they have so many volunteers a week. And they age range from ages 6 to 75 or 76 or something. Like, people really like this program. So. I like. I like how enthusiastic you are about it. Oh, thanks. You just, like, light up as you're talking about it. This program is kind of my baby. So I'm trying to, like, expand it a little bit more. Good for you. And so. And it's exciting. It's fun. It's fun work for me to go out on docks all day and clean oysters. You know, that's a good job. I'll come down and help. Oh, thanks. We appreciate that. I live right around the corner. Awesome. Perfect. I think we can help you with, like, a fundraising event, too, or something like that. Well, I was going to mention. Yeah. How we got involved with each other, too, is with. The Cornell Cooperative Extension, when I went there. Yeah. And it was about the fresh seafood. Yeah. And everybody was asking for help. And we're going to be having them. The fresh seafood are going to be part of the country fair. Yes. That, by Townscape, in October. So you can participate in that, as well. That would be great. We'd love to set up a booth there. I mentioned to you the Tara McClintock. Yesterday, we had a meeting. Oh, great. So. And I have cards, her cards, to give you, as well. Perfect. So we'll definitely help you out in that regard, too. That could help you fundraising. That would be great. That would be great. Great. Perfect. Yeah. So, really, all we need from you is permission to use the dock, the sleds for people, you know, who are volunteers, to make sure that they can access the lawn. Uh-oh. Uh-oh. Here comes the problem. So. We're going to need a license. License. Yes. Yes. It's a little harmless. Here comes the hammer. And in that. And believe me. Yeah. We just completed one. Yeah. For oysters. Yeah. Yeah. So. It's a quick template. Quick turnaround. But it even provides for the parking restrictions and the use of our parking permits. It's all, like, already done. It's a quick. It'll be quick. Cool. Yeah. It'll be quick. Let's do this so we can get it started. And even if we have to ratify it before the next board meeting. Yep. Because the time is of essence with you to get it sorted. Yeah. And so the clarification, you're looking to put it in the area with the boat stock. Yes. Okay. They would be hanging off of the marina. Got it. Yeah. Perfect. And we. We do handle the permits with the DEC. We will need to apply. As soon as I get your permission. Yep. We will immediately apply to the DEC for a permit to grow oysters in that. Perfect. In that area. Great. Yeah. So that's done. It's a quick turnaround time for us. Great. Perfect. Okay. Excellent. Great. That's easy. And do you want to give Amanda your number so that she can contact you about the contract? Thank you. I'll roll it out. Perfect. Thank you. Oh, yeah. Can you go to the next slide, please? So. Oh. I kind of. I kind of went over this already, but our benefits is public education and awareness. That is our primary goal. But, you know, an amazing secondary goal is cleaning the water, recruitment of natural species to the area, and providing ecosystem services such as spawning grounds, not just for oysters, but for fin fish. They come lay their eggs on there. And it provides a safe spot for them to grow, improve water quality, and we just want to expand our network on Long Island for this type of restoration work. We really want to have a partnership with the town where we're doing this, you know, coming up with more ideas for other restoration work we can do is to make it a cleaner, healthier environment for everybody. Because Riverhead is, you know, unfortunately to say, not the healthiest area in terms of water quality. So this could really, really help. Great. Go to the next slide, please. And this is a picture of our oyster reef that is out in Huntington at Gold Star Beach right now. This has been built for the past three years. And our reef is doing really, really well. It has natural recruitment on top of all of the spat that we have put on it. And it's doing amazing. We're seeing so much starfish, all types of fin fish. Manta shrimp, which are really, really sensitive species. They can't live in polluted water. So it just goes to show that it really actually is helping. That's great. Yeah. Yeah. Now, what stops a commercial oyster person from going through and with dredges and pulling these up? Are they marked? I mean, do the people know where they are so they won't accidentally dredge them up? So we're putting them in uncertified water only. Oh, so they can't. So they can't go. They can't go fishing there at all. So if somebody comes up with those or you see somebody with those, we know they were. Yeah, exactly. Fortune in uncertified waters. Yeah. And they might get toxic shellfish in return if they try to eat them anyway. So that's on that. But anyway, one thing we were concerned about, I don't know how big of a problem it could be, but each of these crates, you know, they're not cheap and they do grow out to have, you know, hundreds of oysters in each one. We are. The only thing we are concerned about is possible theft of our crates along the docks. I would not put it past people to come up and try to steal an oyster crate. We were hoping to get it behind a locked gate or to, I know that this is a public marina, so that might be kind of difficult in the sense, but I was just wondering if anybody had any ideas about that. Can you do like floating? Can you do a floating dock out there a little bit less likely? We can do a floating dock. We wouldn't be able to set that up this summer, but we couldn't for next summer and have our own, what's called a Fluxy system underneath there. We have several Fluxys down there. We are installing cameras there as well. Oh, you are? Okay. Maybe. Maybe. Yeah, we're looking at that. Gotcha. Okay, great. It's not, I would, you know, rather put them out and have this program get going and see what happens and hope nothing happens like that. I will say that place is pretty well manned down there over the summer. A lot of people just hang out on their boats and they kind of do a good job of policing that area down themselves. Okay, that's good. I wouldn't say it's a high risk area for somebody to come take them. Right. Okay, that makes sense. And wouldn't they get sick from the oysters anyway? Yeah. They tried to eat them. We would know who took it. Exactly. Is there a sign up or anything that lets people know that they are not for consumption? We can put a sign up there. That might be a good idea. Yeah, exactly. I know. Like these are potentially poisonous. Yeah. If you try to eat them. Yeah, absolutely. We can put a sign up and make sure that people know that this is for solely restoration purposes. And I feel like, you know, 99 out of 100 people would leave that alone. Right. So. Or leave them alone after the first time. Yeah, exactly. Learn their lesson. Very good. So, yeah, that's great. Thank you for coming in. This is very enlightening. Oh, thank you. I appreciate you all hearing me out and hopefully we can get it going and up and running. This summer. Have you all out there with hoses? Great. Cornell does some amazing things. I mean, a whole gamut of things. We talked about this before. Yeah. It's amazing. All the work they do and all the different areas they touch on. It's a lot. We thank you for that. Oh, thank you. This is great. This is a home run. Awesome. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Thank you. You got it. Thank you. Okay. Next up, we have matters surrounding proposed amphitheater. Designs with Dawn Thomas. Is Dawn here? Is Dawn here? Our entire design team for the amphitheater is on Zoom. Good. Good. Good, good, good. Patiently. Where's the rest of your team? They're not coming up? You know what? You don't need them? I don't. The camera's shot. You don't even need me.
Look, they're coming up.
Wow. That's huge. That's huge. It's a big amphitheater. Not big.
Okay, Dawn. You want to start it off? Sure. So, as you know, we have retained Skolnick Architecture to do our amphitheater design and including that project has been funded by the, the design has been funded by the New York State Department of State through our BOA grant. And, um. Um. We did an RFP. We retained this firm and included in the firm, included in the group is a part, is a market, market study to evaluate to make sure that the amphitheater is right sized for our community considering all of the other surrounding communities. So, um, Lee is the head of the firm. I know they wanted to put, uh, keep you apprised of where their progress is. So, that's what they're here to do today. Okay. And, and respecting the board's time, Dawn, about how much time should we allow for this presentation? How much time you need, David? Not too long. I, I think, I think you, you don't, you're not really limited. I think we, you know, we're, is, are there any appointments after us? Yes. Okay. Three more. Mm-hmm. Okay. So, um, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're. Okay. I think we can, I think we can get through it in, you know, 20 to 30, 20 to 25 minutes. Perfect. Okay. Yeah. I'd say a half hour at the most. Well, we'd like to start with HR and A. Um. As you mentioned, Dawn. Um. They've been doing a financial feasibility study. um related to the amphitheater and uh i think armand you're gonna yeah take it away thank you david uh my name is i'm an iris i'm a director at hr advisors and we are in charge of the market analysis and the financial feasibility aspects of the amphitheater and uh could you go to the first slide yeah so just to give you a sense of what we've done you conducted a detailed analysis of the market conditions and the venue benchmarks uh and under market conditions we look at the demographic conditions in the region around riverhead and a trends that might impact live entertainment preferences and we looked at also the venue benchmarks uh to get a sense of characteristics around the expected audience programming and ticketing and also venue design as well as the service area that visitation that other benchmarks in the region get and both of these are in form a demand analysis that we're currently conducting uh to assess the operational needs excuse me the revenue potential and uh overall feasibility of the amphitheater as well as governance options and all of these three pieces together lead to a set of recommendations on venue design programming revenue and expenses market so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so Asta, who will start with the venue benchmarks. We're going to skip the first section to save some time. But yeah, Asta, take it away, please. Thank you. So for benchmarking, we looked at three distinct sets of comparison groups to inform different elements of our recommendations. So we looked at major entertainment venues in the New York metro region. These include the Suffolk Theater, the Paramount Theater, Patch Hog Theater. So we looked at the data for these to get an indicator of local audience preferences. We also looked at travel patterns to these venues. But we wanted to note that this venue is going to look different from a lot of these major venues. So we made sure to also look at the other local outdoor venues in Long Island, so other band shells, other amphitheaters. And this helped us inform us more on venue design, potential programming mixes. And then lastly, we looked at other attractions in the Long Island area, specifically around Riverhead, including the aquarium. This, again, to understand who might come to a venue like this. And these maps are illustrating these three groups. So these are some of the major entertainment venues. Again, larger scale than what we're likely thinking here, but still illustrate the landscape. This here shows some of the major band shells and amphitheaters located in parks, mainly around Suffolk and Nassau County. And then we looked at some of the larger attractions in the area. May I jump in really quickly? So we are flashing all of these very quickly because of the time constraints.
And we'll send you the slides so you can take your time to look at these maps and the analysis that you conducted. Yeah, and please feel free to interrupt me if you want me to spend more time or have any questions. But moving into specific benchmarks, so to help us determine who might come to this venue, we took a look at the existing larger venues. And through a location-based data source, we were able to map. So we were able to map the location-based data source. And we were able to map the service area for these specific venues. So this is, think of this as a heat map. This shows where people are coming from to go to these individual theaters. So this reinforces kind of our hypothesis that we're mainly going to be serving Suffolk County, potentially eastern parts of Nassau, but mainly given people's existing habits, Nassau County. Sorry, Suffolk County. This map here is another view of that location. Yeah. So this is a map of the existing Nassau County. This is a detailed location data. We will have mapped daily visits to these individual theaters to see if there were any patterns. UC's Staler's Center for the Arts, kind of as an outlier, that's because it's linked to Stony Brook University. So there's some school calendar influence there. But largely, we saw a peak during the summer and a drop in the winter months. We also learned that the majority of visitation for the most part, most part is from people within 10 miles of the venue. There is a good share of people outside of 10 miles, especially when you get further off into the Hamptons, like Stephen Talkhouse and the Watermill Center. And even the Suffolk Theater has a good share of people beyond 10 miles. So that's something we kept in mind. And then looking at the Riverhead Amphitheater, which is, sorry, Riverhead Aquarium, which is very close to the site. We wanted to understand visitation here. We noticed that in 2023, there is a pretty big peak in the summer. But we also note that a lot of these visits are likely driven by school trips, etc. So here you can see a similar map that we did for the venues of where people are coming from. You can see that it's a lot more widespread. So this is probably due to school trips coming to the aquarium.
Now moving into ticketing and kind of programming elements, we looked at three different factors here while looking at local programming. So we wanted to understand how different genres bring in different amounts of revenue. It's kind of notable that the cheaper type of acts are affordable. So we wanted to understand how different genres bring in different amounts of revenue. So we wanted to understand how different genres bring in different amounts of revenue. So we looked at family entertainment and tribute acts versus jazz and comedy are generally more expensive. However, since our venue is likely to be smaller, we looked at specifically venues with capacity under 500 seats. And you can see the prices become a lot flatter for to average ticket price, which I think is relevant for this venue. We're likely to achieve ticket prices around here versus that broad range that we were seeing earlier. Just giving you a little bit of an idea of what the same range is, so you'll have full head room, full But for that, we looked at the local bandshells. And for the most part, local bandshells are putting on free events. We noticed that a few bandshells, like the Patchogue Bandshell at Shorefront Park has the Great South Bay Music Festival once a year, which is a ticketed event. However, when we looked around Long Island, for the most part, they were free events. They could be local concerts, cover bands, movie nights, or cultural events. And the number of events does vary, likely based on the amount of capacity we have to program. But we don't see a lot of ticketed events happening at these type of venues. So. And looking a little bit at design as well. These are, again, some of the bandshells and amphitheaters that we looked at. And we noticed that the more amenities, including like back of house parking availability, the more able to generate revenue the venue is. So going from the amphitheater Enhanced Bays to Patchogue, as you see, as you add more, Patchogue has a good amount of parking and a really big open lawn. And so we're looking at some of the things that we've been able to do. So we've got some of the So then moving on to demand quickly. For our site, we're taking into account the audience of Riverhead. Knowing that we want to make this a local venue. The site. And the nature of that. The outdoor nature. Where it's going to be located. And then again, where we fit in terms of the market. Like we said, this is likely to be a seasonal. Then you operating given the weather. We think maybe 16 to 22 weeks of usable time. And in terms of programming again, this depends on how much. Effort we want to put into programming this. So either one. Event per week. Or up to three. Or up to four. Or up to five. Which is. That's kind of the range we saw in the market. Types of programming. We probably think it's going to be 40%. Summer series type local bands. Movie nights, 40%. We think that there's potential for permitting this out to the community. And then there's potential. For a larger, maybe ticketed event. For, you know, there was a blues festival that used to be hosted in Riverhead, something like that. Being able to use the site. So. To do so. [transcription gap] and one to two showers and dressing rooms. So this is a minimum requirement. And if there's more space, we can also have some seating, bedding area, kitchen, and a practice area. On the loading setup, we will need one loading lane and with 23 truck lines and two or three dollies to move the equipment. They can be additional loading docks and loading lanes, but they are not required as such. Only for big artists, this might be a big, this can be a little bit problematic, but can be managed. In the front stage, so we need full blown electrics with crossovers, offstage lighting guides to guide people in the dark, speaker layouts and covered stage to protect the equipment from harsh weather, such as rains or snow. Then, and for, there can be some other additions, such as a flexible roof or screens and some premium seating options, especially for the ticketed events. But again, those are optional things here. Next slide.
So Asa already talked about the events that we see are possible. So this is just a summary of that. So in terms of major events, such as the National Regional Artists performing a tribute brand, we can have about one or more per year. Then there can be seasonal festivals like the Blues Music Festival. There can be Fourth of July Parade or the Lunar New Year Parade. And these can be about two to three per year. And then there can be local activities like a farmer's market, a wedding ceremony, or a high school convocation. And these, based on their number, intensity and the season, can be about two to three per month. Next slide. So this slide summarizes some of the revenue sources that are generally used for amphitheaters like this one and similar venues. So for more big artists events, they are more heavy on tickets, merchandise sales, and foods and beverages. And as we move towards the free events, there are more public funding sources, permits and donations that come into play. So just presenting some revenue mix options based on what programming, what programming might be possible here at the amphitheater. Next slide. In terms of expenses, so there would be a full-time staff. So there will be the amphitheater technical director, a sound technician, a lighting technician, and a managing crew of about four to five. And these staff can be shared with the Eastern Arts District. And then for each event that is hosted, there can be some temporary staff, such as box office staff, so staff head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head sponsor, those are the other expense categories. Next slide. So as I mentioned that marketing is generally the biggest expense for most live entertainment venues. So this also varies by ticketed events or non-ticketed events. So for ticketed events, there has to be a lot of investment in searching the artist. The artist may also charge a talent fee there and a lot has to be invested into the publicity of these events. But in terms of non-ticketed events, generally the venue can partner with some local or community organization who can take on most of the expenses and they can also do the searching for artists. Talent fee is generally not a big thing for non-ticketed events and the community or the other organization can also take on the publicity. So this is a way of letting go of some of these marketing expenses to the partnering organization. So this was our last slide. But we are happy to answer any questions if there are there. Thank you Arman. Back to you David. Alright, thank you. So at this point Lee Skolnick will be sharing our presentation. Alright, thank you everybody. So our job is kind of to pull all of these different pieces together. A great deal of our work is
Directed by the findings of HRNA. We're also working with Indigo River to deal with flooding issues and water collection issues on the site, but in addition to that We're looking at the various elements that are already planned for the site by that. I mean the town square of course East End Arts operations The new playground that is Anticipated to be developed the public plaza and how all these things fit together Of course, we also have the hotel coming up and some housing coming up to the east of our site So we're surrounded by a lot of different forces and we're trying to take the amphitheater and knit together a lot of different elements So that to the general public and the visitor it all feels like one consistent experience So parking is ! And you see our site highlighted there in red the next one is East End Arts, we're looking at helping them to configure their buildings In a way that is more conducive to their services There is a lot of land available there, but we want to bring them up closer to the street and the sidewalk because Some of these buildings are in danger of being flooded And we want to consolidate them at an elevation where they're safe and the East End Arts can continue to operate effectively This gives you a sense of the different elevations that we're talking about On the right of each you see the river and the depth, the estimated depth But you also see the annual chance of flood And the annual chance of flood is about 1.5 million square feet So we need to bring the buildings, both a 10 year flood and a 100 year flood We need to bring the buildings, the enclosed buildings, up closer to the street and the sidewalk in order to avoid them being inundated So this gives you a sense of the elements that I was just talking about You see the future town square in the middle there Post hotel to the east I'm sorry, I can't hear Lee, can you possibly speak up? We can barely hear you Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't know I'll speak it up, is that better? Yes It's as loud as it'll go on R&D Okay, thank you, thanks for letting me know You see to the north the proposed Suffolk Theatre development And to the north of that the anticipated parking structure As I said, the LISC potential site And then to our west, the LISC potential site To our west, the proposed hotel And to our east, the proposed Munch-Mick development So all of these things are impacting our design and our layout To go to the next one This was just some of the research we did on other bandshells and waterfront amphitheaters This one was pointed out to us by some of the East End Arts people As something that was perhaps akin to what they hoped to see And then I'm going to turn this over We did a bunch of stakeholder engagement sessions We're doing another one in a couple of weeks And I'm going to turn it over to Christina Who, with Joanne, led those sessions Hi everyone, I just want to make sure, can folks hear me okay? Yeah, as loud as you can talk would be great As loud as I can talk, okay. I'm going to shout it out So as part of the project, as LISC said Back in April, we did engage with community members And Don was great at organizing and helping us ensure that we had a nice diversity of people Including folks from businesses, East End Arts, Suffolk Theatre Representatives from potential users, such as the REC department, the IDA director, etc. And we also had some other people involved in the project. Folks from the school district So we had a nice mix of about 25 people And in two different sessions, we sort of gave them a background presentation And then asked them both to look at, look in field boards So I asked Daniela to just go through these a bit These were asked for just public comments So people could provide feedback And then we also asked them to look at the The The feedback that they had Positive, negative comments Was really to get a feel for what the community felt was the right design What things were preferable, what did they like or not like And then also really helped us understand how they envisioned the space being used during off hours, right? So, you know, HRNA has given us a great picture of what programmed events might look like But we really wanted to also understand what they were like And then also what is the vision for the space when there's not a programmed event going on So folks were given about 15 minutes to go around And using post-it notes, make comments on all of these different images We discussed some of the feedback And then folks responded to a survey And I would say the number one thing to take away from this When asked, you know, what What What do you want to see in this project in one word? The most common response was something dynamic, something vibrant, something active And on the flip side, the number one concern that people expressed was that it feel Kind of like a space where people might sleep overnight Or that there might be crime or loitering And those two things are very closely intertwined So we are looking at that closely as we move forward with the design How can we Encourage a lot of general usage as well as programmed usage? And then here you can see there are some really strong preferences in terms of overall design So there's a lot of preference for, you know, things that have kind of a wood or slatted appearance And things that create sort of a portal going towards the river And then if we go to the next page I would say amongst the other images Even though they were not presented together There was a clear direction from folks in the community to use this kind of combination of grass surfaces And then what we're calling hardscape So that could be wood, that could be pavers, that could be concrete But just creating kind of a nice mix of landscape space And clear pathways and clear tiers That could be easily navigated both in terms of accessibility By folks who are using a walker or a wheelchair Or who just might need more stroller You know, so creating easier access to some of these spaces And yeah, those were the big takeaways So that has influenced our design quite strongly And then we will re-present with the public in about two weeks So engaging again in community discussion and surveys Thank you, Christina So I'd like to talk about what impacted the design And we'll show you the design in just one moment One of them was the idea of creating something that was part of the landscape It was not a separate object that had to assert itself You know, there's a lot of things that are happening To clear headstones [transcription gap] background of our site, they reconfigured East End Arts buildings and you see in the foreground this new amphitheater and we can go into the components that impacted us or motivated us. So here one of them is we wanted to create a sense of continuity. As I said between the playground, the town square, the plaza and now the amphitheater in addition to the East End Arts plaza, we wanted to make sure that it didn't seem like a whole bunch of unrelated elements. So we were taking clues from the playground and plaza which is already under design, much more advanced by the landscape architects. And one of the things that they have included in their design or given character to their design is this idea of an undulating landscape, something that has a very naturalistic feel to it. And so this box that you see in the back line shows their area and now ours which have a very similar kind of landscape vocabulary or language to them. So that was one consideration. And now zooming in on it, you see that they are in plan these sort of small hills, these small rising areas that flank the formal part of the amphitheater. And so this is a very unique landscape. And so we have a lot of different kinds of landscape elements. So we have both normal seating, if you will, for about 200 to 300 people and then additional seating available on these landscape elements to take it up to maybe 500 or so people. We keep going. A number of the considerations that we took into account were that our site is really a connection between the town, which is the town square, and the landscape. And so we wanted to make sure that our site is a connection between the town and nature. So that it's a natural transition from hardscape and density to openness and fluidity. The next consideration is the ! The ! The ! The ! The ! The ! The ! The ! The ! The ! The ! The ! The !
of the 10 year variety. We've moved the buildings of East End Arts up to be same even in the 100 year variety. But the amphitheater itself, the water can collect in this, but it can also be drained away quite easily without compromising the amphitheater itself. Another consideration we thought was very important was when there are performances, we don't want to direct the sound to the new residential development to the north and east of us. So we located the stage in such a way that the sound would be...