County Picks New Vendor For Meschutt, Cupsogue Beaches

The Suffolk County Parks Department has selected a new vendor to run the concession stands at Meschutt Beach in Hampton Bays and Cupsogue Beach County Park on the westernmost end of Dune Road.

J&B Restaurant Partners of Holbrook, which already runs concessions at Robert Moses State Park in Babylon and Jones Beach in Wantagh, had its $8.9 million bid accepted late last month, allowing it to run the stands at both East End beaches, as well as the one at Smith Point County Park in Shirley.

The agreement, which is still pending, will be valid for 10 years, according to Kerry Albee, customer service supervisor for the Suffolk County Parks Department.

“We anticipate that they will be in place in time for the concessions to be open for Memorial Day,” Ms. Albee said this week.

Known as Tiki Joe’s, the new concession stands will offer food, cocktails and live music, according to the company’s social media pages.

Representatives of J&B Restaurant Partners, which was founded in 1997, did not immediately return calls. The company also operates 25 Friendly’s locations across Long Island.

The selection process, prompted after the prior operator of the concession stands at Meschutt and Cupsogue beaches pleaded guilty to tax evasion, was halted last month when Suffolk County Comptroller John Kennedy Jr. demanded that he be allowed to perform a performance audit of the bidding process. Mr. Kennedy was the person who discovered the fraud, committed over several years, when Frederick Marsilio of Nesconset ran the former Beach Hut concessions.

According to Doug Segall, a spokesperson for Mr. Kennedy, “the comptroller, by stipulation, allowed the award by Parks for the beach contracts without the performance audit simply due to the fact that all deliberative sessions were complete and there was nothing left to audit.”

Mr. Segall added that representatives from Mr. Kennedy’s office observed the bid approval, which was performed by Park Department officials.