Patchogue targets vacant, underperforming properties

A downtown lively with foot traffic where people live, shop and take advantage of public transportation at the nearby LIRR station. High-density development (such as condos) that feed pedestrians into the downtown and trigger businesses to locate there.

HOW THEY DID IT

Patchogue Mayor Paul Pontieri, in office since 2004, said the village has redeveloped by targeting vacant or underperforming properties for rebuilding and partnering with developers to build anew. TRITEC, an East Setauket developer leading a project to transform the shuttered Swezey department store, is redeveloping a nearby property as 56,000 square feet of retail and office space. The village bought the Patchogue Theatre in 1996 and renovated it with $7 million in federal and state grants. The old vaudeville theater and movie house, which had been closed for more than a decade, reopened as a performing arts center in 1998. It now draws 130,000 people every year. The village owns the building and runs it with a nonprofit theater board.

More than 200 housing units have risen in the last six years at condominiums such as Bay Village and Copper Beech Village. For the Copper Beech affordable-housing development, which consists of attached, two-bedroom units (costing $325,000 to $350,000), the county helped pay for land acquisitions for the 5-acre site. The village also changed zoning to allow for greater density there.

"They are fixing the sins of the past," said Eric Alexander, director of Vision Long Island, a nonprofit planning agency. "The sins of the past were redeveloping outside of the downtown center."

Membership in the local Chamber of Commerce has doubled to 400 since 2000, and the Main Street vacancy rate has fallen from about 50 percent in the mid-1990s to less than 20 percent today.

WHAT'S NEXT

The next big question concerns the future of the stalled Swezey redevelopment project, which originally called for a seven-story or higher hotel on the site of the department store that once anchored downtown. The developers said they are rethinking their plans because of the soft economy. Last weekend, a new Patchogue-Watch Hill Ferry Terminal opened, easing the way to Fire Island. It's expected to bring more people to downtown Patchogue. The $4.6-million terminal is twice the size of the old station and has an art gallery, bathrooms and public space.

Stalled for now is an extension of the village's river walk project, a half-mile walk the village built near the Patchogue River and ferry terminal. Pontieri has said the village plans to link the river walk to the terminal, LIRR station and waterfront, but a delay in getting promised federal funding has stymied what Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) has called the kind of 21st century project needed to keep young people on Long Island.

Even as Patchogue moves ahead, the changes downtown are not embraced by all. Former Mayor Edward Ihne laments, "Our beautiful river community is being turned into condos on the water." A busier downtown has brought growing pains, acknowledged Thomas Keegan, owner of the Brickhouse Brewery and Restaurant on West Main Street, while noting it has also brought more prosperity. Keegan said some residents have observed that Patchogue was never used to this kind of density. "And they are right," Keegan said. "But there has never been this many feet on the street."