Riverhead to sue in bid to reclaim historic Vail-Leavitt Music Hall

Riverhead officials are planning litigation in an effort to reclaim possession of a historic theater that needs repairs as part of an overall plan to revitalize the downtown.

The Vail-Leavitt Music Hall is a performance venue on Peconic Avenue that opened in 1881 and currently hosts comedy shows, children's theater events and local rock and jazz bands.

The roof has damage from Superstorm Sandy and the hall also needs electrical repairs, the removal of seats in its upper hall and fixes to a back wall and a hardwood dance floor, according to Council for the Vail-Leavitt Music Hall, Inc. — the nonprofit that runs it.

William Miller, the nonprofit's president, said an estimate showed the structural work would cost $300,000 but an engineer's report provided to the town shows that while the hall "needs some TLC" that "it's not in bad shape at all."

Miller said he hopes Riverhead town board members will be open to some kind of compromise and added that the nonprofit has "another business plan in front of the town looking to see if they are willing to come up with any assistance to help us do things."

But if the town pushes forward with a court case, the nonprofit will fight and "look for support to drive the case as far as we can," Miller said.

Last week Riverhead’s Town Board voted 5-0 to initiate litigation against the nonprofit to try to take back the property, which is on the National Register of Historic Places.

“We have every intention of making it part of the town square and revitalizing the theater,” Riverhead Supervisor Yvette Aguiar said in an interview. “It’s a cultural institution, it’s very important that we have culture downtown and that’s where we are right now.”

The Vail and Leavitt families transferred ownership of the building to the town in the early 1980s.

In 1982, the nonprofit acquired the property from the town, with the nonprofit using a $40,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to pay the town for the acquisition.

However, a stipulation in the deed allows the town to recover the property if it hasn't been used for “educational, recreational or any other cultural purpose” or in the event “that the historical character of the property was not properly maintained," according to the May 17 town board resolution about initiating litigation.

Aguiar said that within the last year the town sent letters to the nonprofit seeking to regain control of the property and to repair it to make it “a functional cultural institution” for the new town square.

However, the supervisor said the nonprofit hasn't been cooperating, leaving the town to resort to litigation.

Miller said the nonprofit will wait and see how far the litigation process goes and will continue to fill the hall's event schedule into the summer “while doing repairs we can do as and when we may.”