But what is the actual plan for that circle?

There is none.

That's why officials from the state, the county and the towns of Riverhead and Southampton are planning to meet on Aug. 26 to begin the process of coming up with one.

Riverhead Town's East Main Street urban renewal plan update says in its environmental impact study that the Riverside traffic circle would need to be either widened to two lanes or replaced with a traffic light to accommodate all future development projects in downtown Riverhead.

Most notable of those projects would be Apollo Real Estate Advisor's three-phase proposal for downtown, which would include a multiplex and hotel in the former Woolworth building, which they own, in its first phase, and, for its second and third phases, two five-story buildings totaling 296,100 square feet and containing a total of 158 condos on the south side of Main Street, on property Apollo doesn't yet own.

Future projects also include proposed hotels on the property adjacent to Atlantis Marine World and on the site of the former Ben Franklin Crafts building. All these plans assume that all current downtown vacancies will be filled.

Apollo's Kevin Davis told the Town Board recently that for the second and third project phases to work, the Flanders Road traffic circle would need to be reconfigured and Peconic Avenue would need to be realigned to meet Roanoke Avenue.

Riverhead officials say the second and third phases of Apollo's project are at best years away from actually happening. But Riverhead Town isn't alone in planning big things for the area. Southampton Town's recently released Riverside hamlet study also has its eyes on the traffic circle.

That study says the circle has "significant traffic and safety concerns" and that "a long-term strategy to address the capacity and safety deficiencies associated with the existing circle would be to reconstruct a modern roundabout in its place and eliminate one of the five approaches. The roundabout would require a two-lane circulating roadway."

Eliminating one of the five approaches (six, if you count Woodhull Avenue) would involve combining two of the approaches into one, the hamlet study says,

Unlike Riverhead's plan, which is in response to several actual project applications, Southampton's Riverside hamlet study is more of a master plan, suggesting types of uses the community would like to see. In particular, town officials, working with the community and some property owners, have been trying to create a Riverside "downtown" hamlet area on the former Flanders drive-in site.

Bill Hillman, chief engineer of Suffolk County's Department of Public Works, says his department has only read about the various plans for the circle in newspapers and suggested the meeting of the four government entities.

It's not clear who has jurisdiction over the circle, he said, since Nugent Drive and Peconic, Lake and Riverleigh avenues are county roads, while Flanders Road is a state road and Woodhull Avenue is a Southampton Town road.

He said the county usually maintains the circle, since it has the most roads approaching it.

"It's extremely confusing," he said.

Mr. Hillman said any plans for the circle are "very, very preliminary."

"It's on our radar, but we have no plans at the moment. We'd like to make it a priority because we know there are capacity issues there," he said.

"The county requested that all four entities get together to see how we all want to approach it, since all four entities have a vested interest in the circle," Mr. Hillman said.

The DPW last year unveiled a plan to make the Roanoke Avenue traffic circle in Riverhead into a two-lane roundabout. That work is slated to begin next year. Mr. Hillman said the difference between a circle and a roundabout is in the angles at which cars approach the intersection.

tgannon@timesreview.com

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