To help spruce up storefronts, Babylon Village adds facade improvement board

The Village of Babylon has created a facade improvement board that will disperse grants to business owners to spruce up their buildings.

The board’s five members will each get paid $1,000 annually to make site inspections and meet monthly to discuss applications from business owners for matching grants to be distributed for facade upgrades. The board will evaluate the proposed work, select which owners get the grants and their amounts, Mayor Mary Adams said during a public hearing Tuesday night.

The grants will be funded through a “downtown business improvement fee” that the village collects from developers who are creating new retail space in the village, Adams said. The fee is $2 per square foot, she said.

The grants can be used for a host of improvements, Adams said, ranging from new awnings and flowerpots to power washing. Businesses that apply for the grants must have permission from the property owners to do the work, said trustee Jeff Szabo, who said he will work with the new board in an advisory role.

The village’s architectural review board also will weigh in to make sure the work is in line with Babylon’s aesthetic, Adams said.

The grants are intended to help the downtown business district, “especially those stores and shops that have been in business for years,” she said, adding that the improvement board “doesn’t have $20,000 that they’re going to hand out.”

Adams told Newsday that the fund currently has just over $3,600.

The paid facade board replaces a previous volunteer committee, Adams said. The board members, appointed to three-year terms by Adams, are chairman Charles Torres, Peter Buser, Carrie O’Farrell, Tom Vitale and Ken Rogers.

Adams told Newsday that she chose the members due to their expertise in design, architecture, construction and business.

Torres has a background in business, design and management, Adams said. Buser’s expertise is in construction and planning design, she said.

O’Farrell is a senior partner and manager of the environmental resource and wetlands assessment division at Nelson Pope Voorhis in Melville, according to the company’s website. Vitale is president of the village’s chamber of commerce and director of the Babylon Public Library.

Torres, Buser and O’Farrell did not return requests for comment while Vitale was unavailable.

Rogers, who is a developer, is the only member of the volunteer committee to be appointed to the board, according to Adams.

Several years ago, Rogers took heat from community members after demolishing two historic buildings at Main Street and Mansfield Road: the Selah Smith Carll House, which was built circa 1826, in 2018, and the adjacent South Side Signal Building, circa 1869, in 2019. A two-story building and parking were built in their place.

Rogers had told Newsday he hoped to salvage the latter building and sought a historical preservation designation from the state but was denied. He said without that designation, it didn’t make financial sense to try to preserve the building.

Reached Thursday, Rogers told Newsday that he feels the program will benefit the village as a whole.

"I think it’s great that we can keep a look at the downtown and see if there are any areas that need to be addressed," he said.

The volunteer committee had waded through about a dozen applications for matching grants, of which one was given out last year for $500 to the Good Hair Day salon, Adams said.

Owner Crystal Freyer told Newsday that she had been planning to do a small upgrade to the front of her business when she heard about the grants. She said the overall work, which included a new awning and painting, cost $2,800, but the $500 from the village “was still helpful.”

Freyer said she feels the improvements have “made the space more welcoming from the street” and that she has been receiving compliments from patrons.

“I think it’s been helpful,” she said. “It was also something I wanted to do for a while and the opportunity seemed like a good time.” 

By Denise M. Bonilla

denise.bonilla@newsday.comdenisebonilla

Denise Bonilla has worked at Newsday since 2003 and covers the Town of Babylon, including the villages of Lindenhurst and Amityville.