$2 million to help rebuild long-awaited Smithtown marina; work set to begin in 2023
Councilman Tom McCarthy at the town's Roger Balducci Marine Facility on Long Beach Road on Dec. 23. Workers plan to rebuild the facility, including replacing bulkheading at the parking lot, McCarthy said. Credit: Danielle Silverman
The southern portion of the Smithtown marina is scheduled for a long-awaited rebuild in 2023, town officials said.
Workers will replace bulkheading at the parking lot, stabilize floating docks, update electrical equipment and also could add a handful of new slips at the Roger Balducci Marine Facility on Long Beach Road, said Councilman Tom McCarthy, who once worked there as a marine patrolman for the town.
The $2 million project would be funded under the proposed 2023-2026 capital spending program approved by the town board Dec. 14. Boaters would pay the cost of a bond issue through their marina user fees, McCarthy said.
The southern portion of the 185-slip, 180-mooring marina was last rehabilitated about 40 years ago. The northern portion, closer to Long Beach Road, had its last rehab about 20 years ago.
"It’s no different than your house — you get to a point in time where you’ve got to start doing substantial rebuilding and repairs," McCarthy said.
The work is unlikely to substantially relieve demand for slip space at the town marina, a problem for many municipal marinas on Long Island because their rates tend to be cheaper than those at commercial facilities.
At the Smithtown marina, where town residents can rent slips for $60 per foot per vessel, with a minimum $1,200 per year fee, 2,276 names are on the wait list for slips, according to the town clerk’s office.
The length of that list has yielded wait times reminiscent of the wait for a Lada automobile in the heyday of the Soviet Union. It takes 20 to 25 years to get a slip, Deputy Town Clerk Susan DeHaven said, and "you can’t just pass it on from family member to family member" over generations. The wait list for a mooring has just 33 names, but boaters need a small vessel to reach the buoy.
Because of the space shortage, many boaters keep their vessels at home and launch from town boat ramps, adding to the traffic burden on roads of the town villages, McCarthy said.
Town officials expect to receive in 2022 the results of a consultant’s study on expanding slip availability, he said.
The town also will fund a dredging study for the channel outside Stony Brook Harbor next year. Dredging, which would be overseen by Suffolk County, could make it easier for recreational boaters and town Bay Constables based at the marina to reach Long Island Sound at low tide. David Barnes, the town's Environment and Waterways director, has said any work could be several years off because of the complicated permitting process.
Edward Eschmann, a pharmacist who is number two on the waiting list, said he put his name down when his son was four or five; decades later, he is a grandfather, "looking forward" to the improvements and fishing on the bay.
Anthony Guardino, a lawyer who lives in Smithtown and has kept his walkaround cuddy at one of the marina's south slips for about five years, said that some of the dock planks had begun to splinter, and last summer a water line serving the slips broke, though workers fixed it quickly.
"It's great news that the facility's going to be renovated," he said. "It needs it."
Nicholas Spangler is a general assignment reporter and has worked at Newsday since 2010.
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Watch live: Gov. Hochul state of the state address Gov. Kathy Hochul's speech will lay out her legislative agenda for the year and is expected to focus largely on affordability — a rallying cry heading into an election year.
