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Andrew Schipper and his husband Joe are two of Kings Park’s newest business tenants after opening a “newtiques” shop on Main Street, bringing a different flavor to the hamlet. Photo from Andrew Schipper

By Rachel Siford

As customers walk into the store, they hear Pink Martini songs playing through speakers. They smell candle incense burning and see displays from around the world.

They must be in Wormhole ANDtiques.

Located on Main Street in Kings Park, Andrew Schipper opened the shop in February. The store has recently grown in popularity through his own Facebook following.

“I don’t believe in antiques, we like to call them newtiques,” Schipper said. “There is something for everyone in my shop.”

Schipper described his store as “Brooklyn hipster” and “kitschy.”

“Everything in here, I wouldn’t mind having in my own house,” Schipper said.

Schipper lived in North Carolina for 20 years and worked in interior decorating and sold his merchandise at flea markets. He is now from Glen Cove and originally had a similar store in Bellport when he first moved back to New York a few years ago. Recently, he made the move to Kings Park for more space.

Schipper said he is very interested in the global market and has products of Moroccan, Hindi and Asian design. He also carries a lot of local work.

Wormhole ANDtiques in Kings Park has lots of different types of merchandise. Photo by Rachel Siford
Wormhole ANDtiques in Kings Park has lots of different types of merchandise. Photo by Rachel Siford

His husband, Joe, is a painter and makes lamps and other fixtures too. Joe Schipper made a lamp of plumbing pipes and old telephone insulators.

“Joe is the money behind the store,” Andrew Schipper said as he described his husband, who also works as a software engineer. “It is amazing to have someone so supportive in my life.”

His eclectic mix of merchandise includes decorative plates, luggage, jewelry, “Mad Men”-era inspired goods, paintings and a variety of other things. He acquires items through estate sales and high-end boutiques.

“It really is my passion,” Schipper said. “I want to give this town a new breath of life.”

Andrew Schipper said he and his customers strongly believe in supporting small local businesses. He said he wants Kings Park to be the type of town people can walk around on Main Street and go into shops.

Schipper also said he takes pride in the display of the store.

“Everything is always very organized,” Schipper said. “You’re not going to find any of this kind of stuff at Walmart, or have this good of customer service.”

Saturday, June 20, was the annual Kings Park Day festival in town. Main Street was full of vendors and local stores displaying their products, along with many fun activities for children and live music. Wormhole ANDtiques had eight tables set up in the street, all displaying his variety of merchandise.

“It has been a lot of hard work getting this store up and running,” Schipper said. “I am here day and night.”

The store is open from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., with Schipper staying the whole time, plus more.

In the back of the store there is a pop-up sale by Gina Louise Designs and Kerri Rowles, both Kings Park residents. These two designers and decorators display their handmade merchandise in a special section of the store.

“I want to offer nightly events and a creative outlet for local artists and talents,” Schipper said.

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Vineyard would be Huntington Town’s first

The property is located on Norwood Avenue. Photo by Victoria Espinoza

A Northport property is one step closer to becoming Huntington Town’s very first winery.

The Huntington Town Planning Board granted the owner of a Norwood Avenue parcel conditional site plan approval on June 17 to grow grapes on the approximately 10-acre property. The board also added a condition requiring a second site plan approval if the owners want to build a winery.

Landowner Frederick Giachetti already has approval to subdivide the residentially-zoned property into seven homes, but decided to take the property down a different direction, his attorney Anthony Guardino told the board at last week’s meeting. Plans for a winery still have to be finalized, but the applicant said he wants to go forward with planting eight acres of sterile corn crop to nourish the soil for the planting of vines later on.

Planning Board Chairman Paul Mandelik prompted Guardino to talk about the vineyard plans. Guardino said Steve Mudd, a North Fork viticulturist, who is credited with pioneering Long Island’s wine industry, would be a partner in the business. Guardino also tossed around some ideas for the winery.

The applicant said he envisions a small tasting room on the property, along with wine-making on premises that would occur in a building that would need to be built. Patrons would be able to come in, taste the wine and be able to purchase it, and the business would also sell local honey, and perhaps some cheeses, jams and jelly. He likened it to Whisper Vineyards on Edgewood Avenue in St. James and said the operation would be “very, very small.”

“I don’t want people to think there’s a catering facility,” he said. “That is not something that is being contemplated now or in the future.”

The scale of the operation was a concern some residents brought up in comments to the board, as well as concerns about the operation’s proximity to Norwood Avenue Elementary School. One woman said she wanted to know whether there was potential soil contamination on the land. Out of the approximately dozen individuals who spoke, many were in favor of the proposal.

“This is a unique opportunity in my mind to preserve open space,” Suffolk County Legislator Rob Trotta (R-Fort Salonga) said, noting that there is not much more land left in Huntington Town. He urged the board to move quickly in approving it.

One Northport resident expressed concern about being able to manage the popularity of such a business.

Todd Gardella said he works across from White Post Farms in Melville and has witnessed overflow parking in the area.

“My concern is that this might become something that we cannot foresee at this point in time,” Gardella said.
Alexander Lotz, 20, of Northport, said he’s loved agriculture his whole life and is heartened to see the winery proposal, because it shows younger generations that farming can be done.

“To have someone like Fred present something that’s so unrepresented in our area is inspiring,” he said. “And I appreciate him doing this more than anything.”

Mudd was present at the meeting last week, and spoke to some of the residents’ concerns. He said he’s been on the property and tested the soil, and didn’t see anything concerning with regard to soil contamination. He also committed to staying on the community’s good side.

“We will be right neighborly,” he said. “We will do the right thing.”

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RampShot starts taking over as a new summer favorite

Josh Bonventre shows off a RampShot prototype. Photo by Alex Petroski

Lots of people have ideas. Some say they do their best thinking in the shower. Josh Bonventre’s big idea came while driving home from his day job as a physical education teacher in the Shoreham-Wading River school district.

A few years ago, Bonventre was a typical Long Island husband and dad of three. Now he is the co-founder of RampShot, an outdoor game designed for four players which involves four racquetball-like spheres and two ramps with built-in nets. Two players make up a team and score points by either tossing the ball into the net or catching the ball after it bounces off the top of the ramp.

The idea may sound simple, but taking it from a fleeting daydream in traffic to an award-winning, booming business venture is anything but.

Bonventre, along with help from his friend and co-founder Kevin Texeira, set up shop in Bonventre’s detached garage at his Center Moriches home about two years ago. Today, the garage is bursting at the seams with office furniture and packaged RampShots waiting to be shipped.

Texeira has since moved from Mount Sinai to the Finger Lakes area in upstate New York. He is a national sales manager for a cookie company in addition to his responsibilities with RampShot.

“Right now our biggest obstacle is getting them made fast enough,” Bonventre said. Bonventre and Texeira launched the company Shore Creations in November, though RampShot is their only game so far. Their trajectory as a company is hardly the norm.

The net in which players must try to toss a ball in order to score points in RampShot. Photo by Alex Petroski
The net in which players must try to toss a ball in order to score points in RampShot. Photo by Alex Petroski

Within the first two months of the company’s launch, the duo applied to be recognized by the National Sporting Goods Association as one of its top 10 new products. By April, they were on a plane to Austin, Texas, to attend an NSGA conference and be recognized as one of the top products.  In addition, the game was featured on A&E Network’s “Project StartUp.”

“They’re a great partner for the sports industry,” Katie Nemec, director of marketing for the NSGA, said in an email about Bonventre and Texeira.

“Everyday I wake up I just can’t believe what’s happening,” Bonventre said about the success his company has experienced despite being in its infancy. “We’re still at the beginning so for us this is really exciting now. But to think about the potential for the future is sometimes overwhelming.”

Bonventre estimates that he and Texeira have invested somewhere in the neighborhood of $100,000. Both said they dedicate between 30 and 40 hours a week to RampShot, on top of their normal work schedules and family duties.

Texeira remembers the moment when he decided it was time to fully commit to producing and selling RampShot. The partners received a phone call one evening from their attorney who informed them that their idea was 100 percent original and would not infringe on any existing patents. Texeira said that for him there was no looking back after that.

“It’s been fun for me personally,” Tim Goddeau, operations manager of Micelli Chocolate Mold Co., said in an email. His Long Island-based company manufactures the games.

“Anytime you have people who never been in the manufacturing business you get to show them how difficult it can be to make a product.”

Bonventre and Texeira are not alone.  Rather than cut short this interview, Bonventre’s wife Jackie and son Tyler rose to the occasion when a UPS truck pulled up to their house to pick up an order of 16 games.

“It’s my exercise,” Jackie Bonventre said laughing.

Tyler was somehow able to hoist three of the boxes up at a time and haul them out to the truck, despite the fact that one box seemed to be about half of his size.

“Once I saw the product I knew that he had something so I was supportive of it,” Josh Bonventre said.  “Whatever he had to do, I was in.”

Texeira fondly remembered when he decided to go to his parents and tell them about the idea.

“My dad was a Rocky Point music teacher for 35 years,” Texeira said. “He wasn’t someone who took a lot of risks.  They loved the idea that it was a game and they trusted my business background.”

Bonventre estimates more than a thousand games have been sold in the past few months.

“The other day I come home and there’s a bunch of new orders that came in while I was at work,” he said. “They were from basically every corner of the country.”

The game is currently sold in sporting goods stores in the tri-state area, the Midwest, New England and online.  Soon a few Bed Bath & Beyond locations on Long Island will carry RampShot.

“We just had somebody the other day on Facebook, somebody we don’t know posted to our wall and they have a picture of our game at the beach,” Bonventre said. “She writes ‘probably the best game to play in the sand. Probably the best game ever.’”

Bonventre stopped short of declaring RampShot and Shore Creations as his sole source of income in the future. Standing in his garage — turned small business headquarters — Bonventre daydreamed about the future again for a moment.

“Two years from now, three years from now, four years from now are we going to be selling 10,000 at a shot?” he pondered.  “We obviously won’t be able to do it here.”

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Discovering the science of wind at the Maritime Explorium. Photo by Jacqueline Grennon-Brooks

By Erin Dueñas

Calling all artisans, DIYers, amateur scientists, inventors, innovators and everyone in between: The first large-scale Makers Festival is set to debut on Long Island this Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Port Jefferson Village Center and Harborfront Park.

Presented and co-sponsored by the Maritime Explorium in Port Jefferson, the Long Island Makers Festival 2015 will feature a broad range of interactive exhibits including 3D printing, robotics, green screen technology, performance art, African drummers, roller skating, organic gardening and even geologists setting off volcanoes. The Explorium will also be open; there will be a “meet the scientist” booth and a horseshoe crab walk is scheduled. According to festival event coordinator Cindy Morris, the aim of the festival is to encourage the people who are already actively “making” as well as to show the community that innovation can happen anywhere.

“The common thread of the Maker Movement is accessible innovation,” Morris said. “The reality is that people have great ideas. We want to empower the ones who are creating. We found some amazing people.”

Morris said that financial backers and high-tech equipment is no longer necessary for anyone looking to invent and create. “This is something anyone can do. You don’t need a $5,000 piece of equipment. People are doing these things in their living rooms and garages.”

Mixing technology, coding and moving with kidOYO. Photo by Melora Loffreto
Mixing technology, coding and moving with kidOYO. Photo by Melora Loffreto

The Maker Movement is a mash up of lovers of art, science, technology, engineering, entrepreneurship and innovation who quite literally make things based on that love. “These are people who are inventors, artists and scientists who are doing incredible things. We believe it was time to showcase what is going on here on Long Island.” Morris said the festival will include a group of men who make holograms and students who created their own 3D printer. “We are taking concepts that feel big and powerful and making them accessible.”

Morris said that the festival motto is “Try it.” “The event is going to be very hands-on. No one could run an exhibit without it being interactive,” Morris said. “We are not just showing what was made, but we are focusing on what you can be doing.”

According to Lauren Hubbard, executive director of the Explorium, the festival will be an extension of what the Explorium does every day. A hands-on museum that features what Hubbard calls “open-ended exhibits,” the Explorium encourages visitors to build and create whatever they want. “You can do the same activity and get a different outcome every time,” Hubbard said. “There are just a million things that can be built.”

She said that the Makers Festival will offer visitors the same experience. “It’s all going to be hands-on and open ended,” Hubbard said. “We wanted to provide a venue for all Maker people to come together for a family friendly day. There’s going to be something for everyone.”

Melora Loffreto is the founder of the festival co-sponsor KidOYO, a program geared toward children ages 7 to 17 that teaches computer programming and coding. She said that Makers festivals and fairs have been popping up in small-scale locations such as schools and libraries across Long Island, but the Port Jefferson festival is the largest so far. “They take place in larger cities and there is a big one in Queens, but this is really the first to come out this way,” Loffreto said.

She described the Makers Movement as particularly important to Long Island. “Our youth is funneling off the Island. The festival is going to say that we have lots of Makers here, we have the skill set and we want to inspire people to keep the talent local.” She said the Makers Movement and the upcoming festival will help to keep skills in the United States. “We want to spur on inventors and to inspire local youth to go down a path of inventing and engineering.”

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Veterinarian reflects on family business

The Huntington Animal Hospital, located on Walt Whitman Road in Huntington Station, is celebrating 63 years. Photo from Dr. Jeff Kramer

A four-year-old boy’s dream of being a veterinarian and following in his father’s footsteps has led to decades of business success.

The Huntington Animal Hospital is celebrating 63 years of business, and owner Dr. Jeff Kramer, who is living his lifelong passion, plans to mark the milestone with a special client appreciation day on June 6.

From the time Kramer, 61, was brought home as a baby from the hospital to his bedroom, which now serves as the exam room in Huntington Animal Hospital on Walt Whitman Road, he has been surrounded animals and the veterinary office.

“Growing up all I was ever going to do was be a veterinarian,” Kramer said in a recent interview. “I was always going to be a vet, there was never any other options.”

The animal hospital that Kramer owns once served as his childhood home and his father Mort Kramer’s veterinary office, which is where he got first-hand experience working in the field. The younger Kramer would hold animals, clean cages and observe as his father performing daily duties. Every free second he had was spent working with his dad, Kramer said.

“I’ve worked in this animal hospital since I was a little boy,” Kramer said. “I skipped Saturday morning cartoons and came here.”

Huntington Animal Hospital's Dr. Jeff Kramer is hard at work doing what he does best — helping animals. Photo from Kramer
Huntington Animal Hospital’s Dr. Jeff Kramer is hard at work doing what he does best — helping animals. Photo from Kramer

Kramer attended Johns Hopkins University and then went on to attend veterinarian school at Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine, where he worked hard to fulfill his dream of becoming a vet.

After graduating from veterinary school, Kramer spent time living in Virginia and working at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo in Washington, D.C.  He then returned to Huntington Station where he teamed up with his dad and worked at the family’s animal hospital. Once his dad retired, Kramer took over the business and has been operating it ever since.

“It has been an all-around wonderful experience, giving back to people and providing the animals and people with care and help,” Kramer said.

In the past Kramer has treated ferrets, guinea pigs and hamsters, but the practice now treats cats and dogs. Kramer said the staff would treat other animals if they came in.

While he loves treating dogs and cats, he said a big part of his job is treating their owners and helping them cope through difficult times. Through his more than 30 years running the practice, he said he has seen some sad cases that are just part of the job.

“It’s hard to see a dog and cat that has been hit by a car,” Kramer said.

The veterinarian said his job is very rewarding and he loves helping animals and owners. He said he loves giving back and providing animals with the care they need.

“It’s a wonderful profession,” he said. “I’m very very lucky to be a veterinarian. I’m one of the family doctors, that’s my favorite part.”

Sal Migliore, an owner of four cats, visits Kramer regularly and has been for the last three years. He called the veterinarian a good person who is very caring with animals.

“He is our Dr. Doolittle,” Migliore said. “He is a doctor for animals. We don’t know what we would do without him, we have so much faith in him.”

Next week, at the June 6 client appreciation day, people will get to meet a dog trainer, groomer along with Kramer and his team. Attendees will also be able to enjoy snacks and drinks, Kramer said.

“It’s really saying thank you to our Huntington Animal Hospital family,” Kramer said.

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Fresh produce will make its way to the streets of Kings Park once again as the annual farmers market takes shape with an opening date set for Sunday. Photo from Alyson Elish-Swartz

The market is fresh.

Kings Park’s coveted Farmers Market will start a brand new season on Sunday, June 7, with all of last year’s farmers returning plus some new additions. Founded in 2010, the market boasts everything from locally grown produce, baked goods, fresh fish, goat cheese, olive oil, pickles and more.

One addition includes the St. James-based Saint James Brewery, a craft brewery which specializes in Belgian beer.

Returning farmers market participants also include Thera Farms, from Ronkonkoma, Fink’s Country Farm from Manorville and Monty Breads from Islip Terrace.

There will be multiple festivals held at the market throughout the summer, including a strawberry festival, a corn festival, Oktoberfest, a baking contest and a chili cookout, according to members of the Kings Park civic group helping to organize events.

“This market has brought the town together, while also supporting local agriculture,” said Alyson Elish-Swartz, a member of the Kings Park Civic Association and a chairperson of the farmers market committee said.

The King’s Park Civic Association sponsors this event in partnership with ligreenmarket. Kings Park’s Farmers Market will also spotlight local musicians, as they have done before, with new acts coming this summer. But new this year will be a spotlight on local photographers, with booths featuring photographs from some of Kings Park’s most talented photographers.

Kings Park restaurants will also be hosting cooking demos, where they buy the ingredients from the farmers market and then show fun and fresh dishes residents can make with them. Restaurants like Café Red and Relish have participated in the past, making dishes like fresh watermelon soup.

The Kings Park Farmers Market is open Sundays, from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., now through November 22, at the municipal lot on Route 25A and Main Street.

The whole idea of the farmers market started when two local residents who didn’t know each other, Ann Marie Nedell and Elish-Swartz, had the same the idea. Sean Lehmann, president of the Kings Park Civic Association, gave Nedell and Elish-Swartz each other’s phone numbers and told them to link up. He asked them to find out more and report back to the civic association.

Elish-Swartz and Nedell pounded the pavement, talking up the idea to community groups and handing out surveys to find out what Kings Park wanted in a farmers market, with free parking high on the list.

The plan took a leap forward when Nedell and Elish-Swartz met Bernadette Martin. Martin is director of Friends and Farmers Inc., a company she started to advocate for small family farms and to bring fresh, local food to Long Islanders. The market first opened in the summer of 2010 and Martin manages it, every Sunday, from June through November.

Susan Risoli contributed reporting.

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Lawn signs opposing a potential CVS in St. James have resurfaced several months after the pharmacy withdrew its initial application. File photo by Phil Corso

After striking out the first go-around, CVS has stepped up with a second attempt at building a new site in St. James, and residents are not going silently.

Vincent Trimarco Sr., the attorney representing CVS Albany LLC, had withdrawn initial plans to install a 13,551-square-foot CVS pharmacy with a mezzanine and 57 parking spaces at the intersection of Woodlawn and Lake avenues back in November. But Peter Hans, principal planner for the Town of Smithtown, outlined the details of the latest proposal at a Town Board work session on Tuesday as St. James residents dusted off their anti-CVS lawn signs for another bout.

The new plans, documents showed, included an 11,970-square-foot building on the first floor with 1,581 square feet of mezzanine space. Hans said CVS had modified its original plan, now placing the proposed building within a commercial business portion of the lot without a zone change, and would require slight variances to make the plans possible, including a special exception to expand parking in a residential district.

Hans said the applicant was requesting this exception to give CVS an extra 50 feet of parking. The proposal will be heard at the June 9 Board of Zoning Appeals meeting at 7 p.m. at the Smithtown senior center. If approved, the BZA will send the proposal to the Town Board for site plan review.

“So they’re more or less shoehorning the building in,” Supervisor Patrick Vecchio said in response to Hans’ outlining of the new plans at Tuesday’s work session.

Trimarco could not be reached for comment. But in a presentation to the Planning Board last October, he assured St. James that CVS would be a good neighbor.

“CVS wants to become part of the community,” he said at that initial meeting late last year, inviting a heavy stream of jeers. “The community of St. James, we believe, really needs a full-service pharmacy.”

Residents had long been against the proposal to build a CVS on the site, citing an abundance of reasons why they felt it would be a detriment to their community.

When the first proposal was at the center of controversy in November, residents took to a special Facebook page called Say No to CVS in Saint James as a means to organize and promote their cause. That page breathed new life this week in light of the newest proposal — something the page had warned about months ago.

“Don’t be fooled,” the page posted after CVS’s application was withdrawn on Nov. 19. “This fight may not be over yet. If you have a sign, hold onto to it. CVS can revise their plan and come back at a later date.”

The signs started sprouting back up over the past month.

CVS currently owns three stores in Smithtown. But for more than 70 years, the St. James community has been the home of Spage’s Pharmacy, which is located roughly five blocks from the latest proposed CVS site.

Residents approaching the podium at a BZA meeting last year often cited Spage’s as a more-than-adequate option for anyone in town looking for basic pharmacy needs, including the store’s own management.

“In my opinion if you were to grant this, these variances are excessive, there’s no need for it, you wouldn’t have as many people in this room and the signs that are out there, with over 6,500 hits on our Facebook page Say No to CVS, that are opposed to what is going on here,” a recent post on the page said. “This is a downtown community and we care about the character of our area, and we care about our quality of life, and we care about the values of our properties.”

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Bill Stewart's Kings Park hobby shop. Photo by Jenni Culkin

By Jenni Culkin

An entrepreneur from the North Shore is making his hobby into a new career.

Bill Stewart, the owner and sole employee of Filadelfos Toy & Hobby, decided after 20 years as an IT worker that he was looking for a job with more fun, stability and control over his profession.

“I decided to turn my hobby into a business,” Stewart said in an interview.

According to Stewart, “filadelfo” is a modernized form of the Greek “Philadelphia,” which means “brotherly love.”

Bill Stewart proudly shows off one of his favorite items at his Kings Park hobby shop. Photo by Jenni Culkin
Bill Stewart proudly shows off one of his favorite items at his Kings Park hobby shop. Photo by Jenni Culkin

Since 2010, Stewart has been selling his merchandise through the Internet. In late March of this year, Stewart made the leap to establish a physical shop on 12 Main St. in Kings Park. The shop stands parallel with the local train station, has an exterior decorated with pinwheels and whirligigs and plays 1980s music from inside the storefront.

The store’s interior is about 200-square-feet in size and fits comic book merchandise, model planes and cars, action figures, cards and so much more.

Stewart said he runs the shop simply “for the love of the stuff” that he sells and not to make excessive profit margins or achieve any goals of expansion.

The shop hosts sessions to play games such as the Magic card game and Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game. On Saturdays at noon, Filadelfos already hosts a Dungeons & Dragons competition for residents.

If people are also looking for something that is difficult to find, they can ask Stewart whether or not he can find and sell it to them. Stewart sometimes makes purchases directly from the manufacturers.

Stewart is currently waiting for Shopkins, popular new toys that are modeled after food and have faces and online profiles, to stock his store with.

There are also plans to expand if his current shop experiences enough success.

Visit www.frchobby.com to find out more about Stewart’s store.

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The Bridgeport & Port Jefferson Steamboat ferry company is temporarily operating with a significantly scaled down schedule. File photo

Port Jefferson hopes to become a hub for weekend travelers with the launch of a new ferry service connecting the village to New York City and New Jersey.

The Seastreak ferry will start running on May 22, according to a press release, in partnership with other travel companies that already link the village to Connecticut and the Hamptons.

Port Jefferson will operate as the center of the new Sea Jitney service, with the high-speed Seastreak ferry running between Highlands, N.J., Manhattan’s East River ferry terminal at 35th Street and Port Jefferson; the Bridgeport-Port Jefferson Ferry running across the Long Island Sound between Connecticut and Long Island; and the Hampton Jitney bus service driving between the village and the Hamptons and other locations on the East End.

The three transportation companies will coordinate service between the branches.

“This powerful partnership has an extremely low impact on our infrastructure while introducing visitors to our beautiful, historic village,” Port Jefferson Mayor Margot Garant said in a statement.

According to the press release, one-way fares change based on where passengers start and finish their trip, but range from $33 to $50.

Reservations are required for the trips, which will focus on travel toward Long Island on the weekends, with departures from New York City and Connecticut on Fridays and Saturdays and from the East End on Sundays.

“Sea Jitney is a game changer for people who travel between Connecticut and the Hamptons,” Bridgeport-Port Jefferson Ferry General Manager Fred Hall said in a statement. “At two and [a] half hours from Bridgeport to Southampton, it’s shorter than going through NYC and much less stressful.”

The ferry between the city and Port Jefferson takes about two hours, the press release said, while the bus from the village to the Hamptons takes another hour.

Visit www.seajitney.com for more information.

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The King Kullen supermarket on Route 25A will close its doors next month. Photo by Phil Corso

A North Shore grocery chain is shuttering one of its locations next month just as summer breaks into full bloom.

Joseph Brown, senior vice president and chief merchandising officer for King Kullen Grocery Co., Inc., said the East Setauket location on Route 25A will close its doors for good on June 11, answering to rumors that have been swirling through the Three Village area over the last several weeks. The chain’s workforce, however, will be taken care of, Brown said.

“We do not anticipate a layoff of employees, as they will be offered relocation to other stores, including our nearby supermarkets in St. James and Selden,” Brown said.

The East Setauket King Kullen opened back in 2005 in the same shopping center as two other grocery chains — Wild by Nature and Super Stop and Shop. The former grocery chain also operates under the King Kullen brand, which Brown said was not going anywhere.

“It has been a privilege to serve the Three Village community and we remain committed to the area through our East Setauket Wild by Nature,” he said.

Andrew Polan, president of the Three Village Chamber of Commerce, said his group was sad to see the supermarket chain go after several years of service to the community. He said it was likely that oversaturation in the area could have made it difficult for King Kullen to prosper as it stood alongside two other major chains.

“Anytime something closes down, it’s a cause of concern for us. King Kullen is a longtime Long Island company and we’re sorry to see this happening,” he said. “I’m sure the increase in competition in the area has made it difficult for businesses to survive.”

King Kullen operates several other locations in communities near the North Shore area including Mt. Sinai, Lake Ronkonkoma, Middle Island, Commack, Northport, Huntington and Huntington Station among others.

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