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David Winzelberg //September 9, 2024//
After decades of neglect, Kings Park’s underperforming downtown is finally on the road to recovery. It’s been a long time coming.
A row of vacant stores along Kings Park’s Main Street. / Photo by David Winzelberg
Once a thriving downtown along Route 25A, Kings Park was hurt by the closing of the Kings Park Psychiatric Center in the 1990s. Some 2,500 jobs were lost, and many merchants never recovered from the exodus of all those customers. Today Main Street is still dotted with vacant storefronts.
After a few plans for housing and other commercial development at the sprawling psych center fizzled because of community opposition, Kings Park stakeholders decided to focus their attention to revitalizing their long-suffering downtown.
Guided by community planning group Vision Long Island and months of meetings that began in 2015, a coalition of residents, civic leaders and business owners created a 66-page action plan that called for new zoning to allow for rental apartments and mixed-use developments around the Kings Park Long Island Rail Road station.
A vacant lot on Kings Park’s Main Street. / Photo by David Winzelberg
Nine years later, the Town of Smithtown has incorporated most of those recommendations in the new Kings Park Downtown Revitalization Master Plan, which the town board expects to adopt by the end of the year. And though the new plan comes with zoning changes that pave the way for a revitalized downtown, new development couldn’t be possible without Kings Park’s expanded sewer system, funded by $25 million in public money and on track to be completed ahead of schedule later this year.
“Sewers are the key. I don’t care what anybody says. You will not revitalize a business district unless you have sewer mains because they can’t operate off of antiquated septic systems,” Ed Wehrheim, Smithtown supervisor and longtime Kings Park resident, told LIBN. “There was a time when people said to me ‘you’ll never get Kings Park sewered and you’ll never be able to do any revitalization of the business district.’ And now we’ve proved that we were tenacious and kept working with our other government partners and as we speak, the sewer mains are being installed throughout Main Street. They’re expected to be completed sometime in late November of this year.”
The proposed downtown zoning changes in the Kings Park master plan would allow for about 375 units of new multifamily housing, while limiting building heights to three stories. The master plan also aims to improve pedestrian safety and implement traffic calming measures, establish a façade improvement program, create new public spaces and more.
An oil storage and distribution property just south of the Kings Park LIRR station is listed as an opportunity site in the Kings Park master plan. / Photo by David Winzelberg
“The new master plan is the product of years and years of work on behalf of the Town of Smithtown, the consultants that they hired, numerous public meetings where the town had solicited input from the residents and experts alike to try and come up with a path that makes our downtown more sustainable and bring it up to where it needs to be today as opposed to what made a successful downtown 50 years ago,” said Tony Tanzi, president of the Kings Park Chamber of Commerce. “Having a dense collection of residences within walking distance of the downtown makes it so that you can have a built-in consumer base that doesn’t need to drive there and take up valuable parking on Main Street to actually utilize the businesses.”
Certainly, a crowning achievement that will accelerate Kings Park’s revitalization efforts is the $10 million Downtown Revitalization Initiative grant awarded by the state in January. Wehrheim said the town is currently holding local planning committee meetings to determine which downtown projects will be funded with the DRI grant. All in all, the trifecta of sewers, new zoning and state dollars will spur private investment that should usher in a new reign of prosperity for Kings Park’s downtown.
“Hundreds of Kings Park residents and business owners came together to shape a downtown revitalization plan that included sewers, walkable streets, new restaurants, additional parking and modest housing options by the train station,” said Eric Alexander, director of Vision Long Island. “The sewers are under construction, additional parking has been provided, the first housing development is going through the planning process and the $10 million New York State DRI grant will assist implementing other elements of the plan. While the process has taken longer than planned, much of what the community wanted is getting done.”
Rendering of the 50-unit apartment development proposed for Kings Park. / Courtesy of Terwilliger & Bartone
The new Kings Park master plan, which is still going through its environmental review process, identifies “opportunity sites,” suggesting where new development projects might be located. Those include a municipal parking lot on Main Street across from the Kings Park Fire Department headquarters; the Kings Park Plaza shopping center on Indian Head Road; and a home heating oil storage and distribution facility on Meadow Road.
Another opportunity site listed in the master plan is the Tanzi Plaza shopping center, where a new $22 million apartment project has already been pitched. Farmingdale-based developer Terwilliger & Bartone Properties has proposed to build a 46,000-square-foot building that will have 50 apartments on the site of a long-shuttered restaurant on the west side of the shopping center, just steps away from the Kings Park LIRR station.
And there will likely be more to come.
“I think within the next two years, maybe a little sooner, we should really start to see some real nice downtown revitalization improvement,” Wehrheim said. “People are going to invest in those properties, because once those sewers come in, the properties become more valuable, and they have the ability to expand restaurants and things of that nature. We’re pretty excited about it.”
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