EDITORIAL: Curtains could rise for Riverhead's Suffolk Theatre

The news for downtown Riverhead seems to be better these days, and we rejoice - conditionally. When it comes to Riverhead, it's always best to keep in mind the wisdom of Yogi Berra: "It ain't over till it's over."

The good news involves the Suffolk Theatre, which opened in 1933 as a movie theater and closed in 1987, a victim of multiplexes. Its renovation, snarled too long in litigation, seems to be moving again. The latest target for opening is 2012. If that happens, it would have taken a mere 18 years from the time Riverhead bought the former movie house in 1994, and only seven since Robert Castaldi bought it from the town in 2005. Call it Riverhead Standard Time.

One of Castaldi's beefs with the town was conflicts with Riverhead's chosen master developer for downtown, Apollo Real Estate Advisors. Now Apollo is out of the picture, and Supervisor Sean Walter is talking to other developers. So there's no reason why Castaldi can't go ahead and turn this theater into a buzz-building venue for live performances.

In the 2009 campaign, Walter talked about speeding up development. If he can finally raise the curtain on this project and make it a revitalization cornerstone, he'll have given an applause-worthy performance. Look at how well renovated theaters are doing in downtowns such as Patchogue and Northport, and you'll have an idea how much this one can mean to a town that really needs some good news. hN