Citing complaints, Town Supervisor Sean Walter is pushing to see the Open Arms Care Center move its volunteer soup kitchen out of Riverhead train station, where it feeds the area's hungry.
He's also calling on Maureen's Haven, which runs a sheltering program for the East End's homeless, to stop picking up people at the station.
"We have a tremendous problem at the train station," Mr. Walter said at a Town Board session last week. "We need to ask Open Arms not to use it as a soup kitchen. We've gotten so many complaints about it from people getting off the railroad. It's not the image we want to portray."
The town leases the 100-year-old train station from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority for free, on the condition that it be occupied. The MTA hasn't used the building as a train station since 1972. The town, in turn, subleased the station to Open Arms in January, also for free. The lease expires June 21.
It's not clear if Mr. Walter has the support of the entire Town Board to not renew the lease, at least until alternative sites are found.
One Town Board member, John Dunleavy, favors keeping the nonprofit groups operating at the train station.
"I feel sorry for these people," Mr. Dunleavy said. "A lot of them are good people in unfortunate situations."
Town Board members Jodi Giglio and George Gabrielsen both said they wouldn't support moving Open Arms and Maureen's Haven until the town first finds a new location for them.
"We have an obligation to everybody in town, including the poor," Mr. Gabrielsen said.
"I have always been a proponent of feeding the hungry," said Councilman Jim Wooten, though he agreed with Mr. Walter that the groups should find another spot in town.
"It never is a pretty picture," Mr. Wooten said. "I understand the image and perception that this has on the Railroad Avenue corridor, and the town's desire to change that. I feel a different location that's more appropriate and one that doesn't lend itself to misperceptions has to be found."
Mr. Walter said the town may want to explore having a police department substation at the train station, especially if the town is able to acquire the armory building on Route 58 for use as a new police headquarters and justice court. A substation would give the police a presence closer to downtown.
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority recently proposed eliminating passenger train service on the North Fork, except on weekends in the summer.
Open Arms was booted from First Congregational Church of Riverhead in early 2009 after 14 years of running a daily soup kitchen for the needy there. The church said it wanted to lease the space to other programs.
Open Arms then signed the sublease with the town and moved into the Riverhead train station building. Instead of soup, it began serving prepackaged foods such as sandwiches and hot chocolate, because there are no cooking facilities at the train station, said Zona Stroy, the group's chairperson.
"We usually serve about 100 people per day, which is about the same as we served at the church," Ms. Stroy said. The numbers are higher in the winter, she said.
Ms. Stroy said town officials have not contacted her directly about moving.
As for Maureen's Haven, its volunteers pick up homeless people at the Riverhead train station at 5 p.m. each night during the winter and take them to local churches to sleep.
Dennis Yuen, the program director at Peconic Community Council, which runs Maureen's Haven, said he'd spoken with Mr. Walter twice about relocating the pickup point from the train station. He said he doesn't believe the town can require them to move, although he acknowledged that "the town can try to discourage" the use of the station.
"In my opinion, we're doing a public service to people in need of shelter and to the Town of Riverhead," he said.
"It's a cold-weather program, mainly to keep these people alive," Mr. Yuen said. "I'm just looking forward to finishing the next couple of weeks."
The program runs from Nov. 1 through April 1, so it only has a few more weeks to go.
He said some of the alternative locations suggested by the town, such as the Henry Pfeifer Community Center in Calverton, are too far removed from the rest of the East End. Town officials have suggested the County Center in Riverside, but it doesn't have an overhead shelter, he said.
Maureen's Haven also picks up homeless at the Hampton Bays LIRR station.
About 30 churches participate in the program, and while it normally helps about 200 individuals each winter, the numbers climbed to about 325 this season, Mr. Yuen said. Many of the people served by the program are local North Fork and South Fork residents who have run into difficulties because of the economy, he said.
Mr. Walter said the town would work with Open Arms and Maureen's Haven to find other locations for their programs.
Still, Mr. Dunleavy said, it's a misconception that the homeless are causing problems around the station.
The people who use the soup kitchen are very polite, he said, and are not the ones who hang out at the train station all day. He said people who take a bus from the station to Southampton in search of work often come back by noon if they are unable to get work. They hang out all day and are cause for unease and tension in the area, he said.
He questioned whether the town would have the authority to ask Maureen's Haven to move, because the station is a public bus stop.