Dream Nightclub Neighbors Upset About Noise Emanating From Business

It’s midnight, the rain has stopped and a low-hung moon teases retreating clouds over Shinnecock Bay. Through air still thick with moisture, Reggaeton’s unrelenting bass bounces.

A visitor to the Canal Road neighborhood in Hampton Bays on Saturday, June 19, hears the action on North Road long before seeing it on Canal Road. There, the roadway is clogged with cars queuing up for valet parking at the Dream nightclub — three vehicles across, jockeying for position and blocking passage.

Once past the valet parking line, the throng is visible. Dozens of young people, predominantly Latinx, are in a line from the club’s entrance stretching deep into the parking lot, almost the entire length of the building and beyond into the trees.

Up to the Sunrise Highway overpass, raucous laughter wafts, as does marijuana smoke.

From the east, cars pack the parking lot on North Road, vehicles on the grass in the yard and along the roadway, almost 20,000 square feet of cars. Scant yards away on North Road, a cadre of Southampton Town Police Community Response Unit SUVs wait in the shadows.

Within an hour, two arrests on drug charges and referrals to the State Liquor Authority had been implemented.

“This is dead,” neighbor Vincent Fattizzi said as Saturday night turned to Sunday morning.

The prior week, in better weather, there were cars all the way along Canal Road to the Meschutt Beach parking lot. All night long, he said, kids pull into the driveway shared among owners of cottages in a little compound on the other side of the bridge. If the loud music doesn’t keep you up, the driveway’s light sensors do.

Zoned for waterfront business, the Dream site has been home to a restaurant, bar, or nightclub since the 1970s. It’s a legally pre-existing nightclub, and has been for decades. Kenneth Kingsley has owned the property for 51 years, partnering first with Doug Murtha, and more recently with James Vlahadamis.

This week, Mr. Kingsley recalled taking over the Cruiser Club in 1970 and running it for 17 years. From then on, the nightclub was leased. Periodic complaints about noise have come to the fore, he acknowledged. “Over the years, there’s always somebody who will be unhappy. Houses around a nightclub, that’s naturally not a good mix,” he said.

Rosemary McGarry, whose home is next door to Dream, remembers cousins going to the Cruiser Club as teenagers. The two neighbors recalled changeover at the site, but somehow, owners of other bars there, like Dublin Over, China Club or Brazil, kept the festivities contained to their own property. “They weren’t rude like this,” Mr. Fattizzi said.

Suzanne Patterson, who also lives in the co-op compound, sleeps with earplugs. A resident of the area for 24 years, she said Dream’s predecessors have also been loud and wonders why they don’t receive noise violations: “Whatever became of the 11 p.m. ordinance? That’s a bunch of hooey.”

Landlord and local attorney Mr. Vlahadamis said several years ago town code enforcement officials arrived carrying noise monitors to check sound escaping from the site. An 18-wheeler tractor-trailer up on Sunrise Highway measured at more decibels than the music from the club, he said.

Acknowledging that over the years, neighbors have sporadically complained of noise, he said, “We’ve always made sure we were code compliant.” Mr. Vlahadamis pointed out that his family is part of the community in Hampton Bays. His tenants — and parents — Frank and Maria Vlahadamis were longtime owners of the Hampton Bays Diner before it closed in 2015.

“I bought air conditioners for my neighbors,” Mr. Kingsley said, listing one strategy to mitigate the noise impact for neighbors. Mr. Vlahadamis also recalled his father buying an A/C unit for another neighbor who complained of noise coming through her open windows on summer nights. They helped install it, too, he said. “They do their best, they really do,” he said of his tenants.

There hasn’t been a noise violation at Dream in over decade, Mr. Vlahadamis said, recalling that the club received one not long after it first opened in 2010.

Mr. Kingsley also bought the houses on the adjacent properties and additional parcels to ensure that parking was contained to a site he owned. He recalled that when the club first opened, there was parking all the way down Canal Road to the Meschutt County Park lot. Now, parking is prohibited after 1 a.m.

“We ask our neighbors to understand, they bought property next to a nightclub,” Mr. Vlahadamis said.

After learning about the blocked roadway, the landlord said his tenant spoke with the valet company, and extra employees will be on hand in the future to ensure the road is kept clear.

An ad for the June 19 event on social media featured a rendering of a woman’s thong-clad rear end, proclaiming “Concurso de Yo Perro Sola” across the buttocks. “Yo Perro Sola” is a Reggaeton song by rapper and 2020 Latin Grammy Award winner Bad Bunny. It translates to: “I twerk alone.”

The June 19 event promised a simulcast with radio station La Fiesta 98.5, described on its Facebook page as “Long Island’s first and only radio station with a Tropical format catering to the Latinos in Suffolk County & Connecticut.”

Videos posted on the Dream Hamptons social media just before 2 o’clock Sunday morning showed the crowd dancing on an outdoor patio, under multicolor flashing spotlights, with siren sound effects added to the DJ’s music.

Community members say they sought help from local enforcement officials and were frustrated by a seeming lack of response. Mr. Kingsley theorized it wasn’t a lack of response on behalf of officials, it was a lack of violations.

“Dream has been on our radar,” Southampton Town Police Chief Steven Skrynecki affirmed. “And it continues to be.” He noted that no neighbors had come to him with complaints this year before The Press inquired. Mr. Vlahadamis said the same thing.

The law enforcement visit that Saturday night/Sunday morning included representatives of the Southampton Town fire marshal as well as officers looking for State Liquor Authority violations.

At approximately 12:40 a.m. on June 20, members of the Community Response Unit arrested two men in their mid-20s, one from Mastic and one from Shirley, and charged them each with third- and fourth-degree criminal possession of a controlled substance. Police say a subsequent search of the pair’s car produced plastic bags of cocaine, plus scales and baggies, adding two misdemeanor counts of criminal use of drug paraphernalia in the second degree to the pair’s tally.

Mr. Vlahadamis disputed the assertion by police that the pair were arrested in the Dream parking lot. There’s a valet company that parks every car at the club, he maintained; there’s no self-parking, and people don’t sit in their cars. He was told by staff they were in a car parked illegally on North Road.

According to Chief Skrynecki, SLA violations included: license not properly displayed, security not licensed, and intoxicated subjects requiring medical attention on premises. A referral was made to the SLA for operating a disorderly premise.

This is the second of that ilk this season. Mr. Vlahadamis said he has no knowledge of any SLA referrals this season. He said neither he, nor his tenants, were served with any SLA violations.

According to Chief Skrynecki the first disorderly premise complaint was referred to state officials following a domestic disturbance at Dream that led to a young woman jumping into the Shinnecock Canal in May. Mr. Vlahadamis said it was unclear whether the woman had been a customer at the club; the disturbance related to her believing her husband was inside with another woman.

Her rescue from the canal was chronicled in the May 27 edition of The Press.

That wasn’t the first time drama at Dream made the news. A 2010 Halloween Party at the club ended in a shootout that killed a security guard and sent an accused drug dealer to the hospital.

Carlo Petrusa, 64, of Riverside, died of gunshot wounds. The second man injured in the shootout, Shawn Badgett of Coram, was reportedly the promoter of the event and at the center of a major heroin ring responsible for supplying East End street dealers with millions of dollars worth of the deadly drug, according to then- Suffolk County District Attorney Thomas Spota. He was out on bail at the time of the shootings.

At the time of the shooting, Dream was leased to Frank Vlahadamas, according to Mr. Kingsley, and Mr. Petrusa was a dear friend.

According to town property records in 2017, Sue Murtha, wife of one time Southampton Village Mayor Doug Murtha, sold their interest in the property to Mr. Vlahadamis. Together, parcels comprise the triangle that fronts Canal Road and North Road.

“Every year there tends to be a bar or two where the owner is pushing the envelope,” Chief Skrynecki offered Monday morning following the weekend arrests. “When we find out, we pay close attention.”

Reflecting on 51 years owning the property, Mr. Kingsley said, “We had relationships and we knew everybody in the neighborhood, and we tried to appease them. “

“I can’t tell you the number of people who got married after meeting at the Cruiser Club,” he recalled. “It was a lot of fun. Nobody died, there were no fights, there were no problems … It was a very special time. I guess it was just a different world.”