Library to add more handicap parking spots

When the public library near Robert Urbancik's home in Smithtown closed for renovations earlier this year, he checked out the new Nesconset library on Smithtown Boulevard.

He found a spacious parking lot that serves both the library and a town park, both of which opened in June. But when Urbancik pulled close to the library, he found only two parking stalls reserved for the disabled. Both were taken.

"The last 12 times I've been there, eight times I couldn't park there," said Urbancik, 59, who has pain from a bad knee and a thoracic herniated disc. "When someone leaves, someone pulls in. You just can't get a spot."

After Urbancik and other residents complained, Smithtown town and library officials decided to add at least two more handicap spots to the lot, which can hold 214 vehicles.

"We're working with the town to find a solution," Smithtown Public Library director Robert Lusak said.

The Nesconset lot shared by the library and the town parks department has a total of six spaces reserved for the disabled. But four are near an entrance to the park's walking and running track, about 100 yards from the library.

To visitors such as Kenneth Buxbaum, 71, of Smithtown, the library appears to have only two slots for handicap parking.

"It just struck me as kind of weird," Buxbaum said. "I assume that there are going to be more than two people a day who want to go there."

Federal guidelines mandate that a parking lot of that size should have seven handicapped spots, said Peter Hans, senior planner in the town planning department. But because the park and library were developed in phases, parking for the facilities may have been inadvertently -- and incorrectly -- considered separately, causing a shortage of spots for the disabled, he said.

Hans said the lot will have at least eight spots for the disabled when two spaces are added by mid-October. "You'll have four near the main entrance of the library and four more near the entrance to the playground," Hans said.

Lusak said traffic at the Nesconset branch -- one of four in Smithtown's public library system -- may be higher because it is about twice as big as the branch's previous location in rented space at a shopping mall across the street. The branch also is being used by visitors who live closer to the Smithtown and Kings Park branches, which are closed for renovations.

"We were going to monitor the situation and see if we need more handicapped spots," Lusak said.