It had yet to be determined how that structure would be funded.

In May, Apollo also said it anticipated submitting a site plan for the Woolworth site in early June. Those plans also have changed.

"We are still in the process of refining our plans for the building and are hopeful that we will be submitting site plans in the fourth quarter of 2008," Mr. Davis said Monday.

Supervisor Phil Cardinale said he has spoken to Apollo representatives and has been told they've had difficulty convincing a movie theater company to come to Riverhead.

"It's not looking positive for a movie theater," he said. "The hard part is convincing them to come to a town with 32,000 population. We're hoping they will realize that there are a lot more people outside Riverhead who would come to a theater here."

He said Apollo has been working with a hotel franchisee which could possibly lead to having a domed catering facility and a spa at the site, in addition to a hotel. At least it's been discussed.

There have been a number of attempts to bring a multiplex to Riverhead over the years, but none has succeeded. Apollo's is one of two pending proposals to bring a multiplex to town. Vintage Group is hoping to have a multiplex, apartments and a parking garage on Railroad Avenue, although it still needs to acquire all the property across from the railroad station to do so.

While Apollo could have submitted a site plan, the Town Board could not have approved it prior to the approval of an East Main Street Urban Renewal Plan Update that was begun two years ago and funded up front by Apollo as part of a master developer agreement it signed with the town.

That agreement gave Apollo the exclusive right to negotiate with the town on the acquisition of town-owned land, but the company has since dropped most of its plans to develop on town land. It originally sought to build on the town's riverfront parking lot, but later decided to try to buy privately owned property on the south side of Main Street instead and build there. Apollo has asked the town to acquire that land by condemnation and then sell it to them.

The master developer agreement also called for Apollo to pay the up-front costs of the study, which Mr. Cardinale said will be about $800,000. The study will act as an environmental impact study for Apollo and any other developer whose project requires such a study, eliminating the need for individual studies for each project. Those developers would later reimburse Apollo through a formula based on square footage. Mr. Cardinale said payments would be made to the town, not to Apollo, and that the town had kept records of how much has been spent on the study.

The Town Board is expected to adopt the urban renewal plan update Tuesday, Mr. Cardinale said, although he said there currently are no applications in a position to take advantage of that approval. He said Apollo is done spending money on the study.

Atlantis Marine World's proposed hotel and a proposed hotel at the former Ben Franklin Crafts site are the two projects most likely to be able to take advantage of the urban renewal plan, he said, but neither is set for approval yet.

Mr. Cardinale said that once the plan is adopted, he will advise the Town Board to end the master development agreement with Apollo within 30 days. He said he'd also like to set a 30-day deadline for Apollo to decide what it will do on the south side of Main Street.

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