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A map from the early 1960s includes proposed lots for a Port Jefferson parking district. Main Street runs down the middle. Photo from Port Jefferson Village historical archive

Woodard Square. Crystal Lake Square. If Port Jefferson residents hadn’t banded together to oppose their town, those would be the names of parking lots paved through the middle of a few downtown blocks.

In the early 1960s, Brookhaven Town officials had proposed a parking district in lower Port that would have called for several buildings to be demolished to make way for asphalt, according to the village historical archive. But Port Jefferson residents came together as a property owners association to defeat the idea.

A 1961 map depicting the proposed parking district shows a large lot called Loper-McNamara Square in the location where Port Jefferson’s biggest parking lot, referred to as the “Meadow lot,” is now; a Woodard Square lot on the south side of East Main Street, where it meets Main Street and where the post office and a few other businesses currently stand; a Davis Square lot at residential space between South and Spring streets, near High Street; a lot called Round the Block Square, where the village’s Traders Cove parking lot is now; and a Crystal Lake Square lot on the south side of Maple Place.

The plan was abandoned after homeowners, who were then living in an unincorporated village, reacted negatively to it and formed The Property Owners Association of Port Jefferson, according to the village archive.

A drawing depicts the proposed Woodard Square lot on East Main Street, with the old Baptist church pictured back center, as part of an idea for a Port Jefferson parking district. Photo from Port Jefferson Village historical archive
A drawing depicts the proposed Woodard Square lot on East Main Street, with the old Baptist church pictured back center, as part of an idea for a Port Jefferson parking district. Photo from Port Jefferson Village historical archive

The town, under the direction of former Supervisor August Stout Jr. and later Supervisor Charles R. Dominy, held public meetings at Earl L. Vandermeulen High School, warranting the property owners to publish flyers that were a proverbial call to arms for neighbors.

“Port Jeff will be sold down the river unless you attend the official public hearing on the parking district,” read one flyer, in relation to a March 21, 1962, meeting. “This is it. Everyone concerned with this problem and the future of Port Jeff must be there.”

Another flyer said the homeowners supported improvement, but said about the parking district proposal, “No, no, no.”

The property owners association that helped derail the parking plan also championed the village’s incorporation.

Later in the same year as that meeting, on a snowy Dec. 7, 1962, residents voted 689-361 to incorporate Port Jefferson.

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Supervisor Ed Romaine listens to resident concerns at the town meeting. Photo by Giselle Barkley

Civic leaders in Three Village are calling on Brookhaven to put the brakes on a local law that could potentially limit the number of vehicles parked on town roads.

In an attempt to crack down on illegal rental housing in Brookhaven, elected officials mulled over a proposal at a work session late last month that would restrict the number of permitted vehicles at a rental house to one car per legal bedroom, plus one additional car. But Shawn Nuzzo, president of the Civic Association of the Setaukets and Stony Brook, said imposing “separate and unequal” laws would infringe on residents’ most basic rights as Americans by determining which Brookhaven natives would be allowed to park their vehicles on the street.

The civic president wrote a letter in opposition of the town’s proposal.

“While it is certainly in the town’s purview to determine how our roadways should be used, our laws should apply equally to all,” Nuzzo wrote in the letter. “It is unwise to create restrictive laws meant to apply only to certain members of our society — in this instance, based on their homeownership status.”

Nuzzo said he submitted his remarks on the law for the board to consider at its Sept. 17 meeting, when the town will look to add an amendment to Local Law 82 in the Brookhaven Town Code, which oversees rental registration requirements. The proposed vehicle restriction was only the latest in a string of initiatives the town put forward to prevent illegal housing rentals, including one measure that outlawed paving over front yards to make way for parking spaces.

The measures were borne out of an issue Bruce Sander, president of the Stony Brook Concerned Homeowners, helped bring to the forefront after communities in and around Three Village became hotspots for illegal or otherwise overcrowded rental homes filled with Stony Brook University students. Sander was only one of many Three Village natives to come out against the overcrowded housing debacle, citing quality of life issues such as noise and overflowing trash.

Brookhaven Town Supervisor Ed Romaine (R) said at the Aug. 27 Town Board work session that he believed restricting the number of vehicles parked in front of rental homes could be a helpful tool in fighting illegal rooming houses.

“Normally, what we have to do is try to get inside to cite them, but to do that requires a search warrant, which judges are reluctant to give without probable cause,” Romaine said. “However, one of the other factors that these illegal rooming houses generate is the fact that there’s a lot of cars around. If we could control the number of cars, we would be better able to cite people.”

Looking ahead, Nuzzo said he planned on forwarding the proposal to the state attorney general’s office as well as the Southern Poverty Law Center to delve into the legality of a township restricting the number of vehicles parked in front of any given home, and whether or not the town can selectively enforce such a measure.

“If the Town Board feels street parking regulations are necessary, then those regulations should be implemented town wide,” Nuzzo said. “To target only certain residents for selective enforcement is un-American, and quite possibly illegal.”

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Spaces to be closed beginning Monday

Roped off parking spaces on the fourth level of the Huntington Long Island Rail Road train station's south parking garage earlier this year. File photo by Rohma Abbas

Portions of the Huntington Long Island Rail Road station’s south parking garage will be closed beginning Monday, Aug. 17, due to a waterproofing project that is “the last phase of the garage’s rehabilitation,” according to a Huntington Town statement.

The entire roof level of the five-level garage will be closed for about 24 days. Work will then continue to the lower levels, one at a time. As work commences on the lower levels — also for an estimated 24 days each — three-fourths of the affected level will be closed.

“Commuters are advised that parking should be available in the surface parking lot on the west side of New York Avenue between Railroad and Church streets, but that they should allow some extra time to walk to the station,” according to the statement.

Earlier this year, the town closed off 228 spaces at the garage as part of an emergency repair project. The upcoming waterproofing work, which was anticipated and not an emergency repair, is necessary because it “helps preserve the concrete” at the garage, town spokesman A.J. Carter said.

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Petrone: RFP for parking garage coming soon

The Huntington Town Board authorized a $1.6 million purchase of property to create 66 additional parking spaces in Huntington village. Photo by Rohma Abbas

Huntington village’s parking pickle may soon become a little less of one.

On Tuesday, the town board green-lighted a $1.6 million purchase of property on West Carver Street to create about 66 new parking spaces in the village.

The board unanimously authorized Supervisor Frank Petrone or his representative to execute a contract to purchase a portion of the property at 24 West Carver St. from owner Anna Louise Realty II, LLC— right across the road from the New Street municipal parking lot. The money will be bonded for over a 10-year period, Petrone told reporters after the meeting.

It won’t be the only parking update in Huntington village this season. Petrone said the town is working with the Huntington Township Chamber of Commerce and the Huntington Station Business Improvement District to draft a request for proposals to build a parking garage in town — an idea town officials and residents have mulled for years.

“It’s a beginning,” Petrone said. “We made a commitment that parking is a continuum. We changed the meters. We have a different approach. We restriped, we added more spots, we redid lots. And now this is adding like 66 more additional spots, which is pretty substantial given the fact of the needs in the town.”

Town officials are hoping to get the RFP out by the end of summer, Petrone said. Asked where the structure would be sited, the supervisor said there have been discussions about locating it at the New Street lot, right across from the 66 additional spaces.

If a parking structure is to be built, it is likely current spots would be closed down in the construction process. Part of the idea of purchasing the 66 spaces would be to help mitigate parking during the building of a structure, he said.

Town officials had explored creating a parking facility on Elm Street for years. Those ideas aren’t dead, Petrone said, but the feeling is the town might be able to get more spots out of the New Street location. “We begin with New Street,” he said. “I’m not saying Elm will not be looked at.”

Petrone said the town’s been thinking up creative ways to finance a parking structure. Asked how the town would pay for such a facility, Petrone said it could be a private project, with the town providing the developer with a lease to the land, or it could be a public-private partnership. If a private entity were to come in, it would have to be worthwhile to them financially. To that end, he said “we’ve heard all sorts of ideas,” like building apartments or shops into the structure — properties that could be rented out. He said officials have also explored whether the cost of parking in the structure would suffice in terms of paying the debt service on the bond off.

The supervisor said he’s also weighed creating a parking district for the whole village area, with businesses paying into it, “because it’s the cost of doing business, it basically will provide better parking in the village.”

The chamber of commerce has “played an integral part in the push for increased parking options” in the town over the last three years, according to David Walsdorf, a chamber board member and member of the Huntington Village Parking Consortium.

“We view the parking challenge as a positive reflection of the growth and vitality of our flourishing businesses and we continue to support further improvement in our infrastructure to meet the needs and sustainability of our community,” he said in a statement.

Chamber chairman Bob Scheiner praised the news.

“The Huntington Chamber of Commerce is proud to be a part of this parking consortium and we fully support the supervisor and town board in this acquisition, which will go a long way to help the parking situation in downtown,” he said in a statement “The chamber looks forward to the release of the RFP and thanks the board for their efforts.”

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Parking spots in the Brookhaven Town Marina lot were given to Port Jeff Village as part of a 2015 agreement, but the deal alienated parkland, according to the AG's office. Screen capture

Port Jefferson Village could add 50 more spaces to its metered parking arsenal, drawing them on asphalt in the town’s marina lot.

The village is leasing the spots as part of an agreement with Brookhaven Town regarding the historic First National Bank of Port Jefferson building at the corner of Main and East Main streets.

Town officials are selling the former bank — and the attached building on East Main Street that used to house the Brookhaven tax receiver’s office — to local developer Agrino Holdings LLC, which has approval from the Port Jefferson Planning Board to put retail space on the first floors and apartments above. The developer plans to renovate the tax receiver’s office and restore the bank building, a historic landmark.

But downtown Port Jefferson has a perennial parking problem, with a constant space shortage that can make it difficult for new developments to meet requirements in the village code. To offset the lack of spaces at the site of the mixed-use project, the town has been working with the village for more than a year on a parking space swap — leasing to the village some spots at the town-owned marina lot two blocks away.

The original plan involved the roughly 30 existing spaces that wrap around the old Suffolk County Water Authority building across West Broadway from McDonald’s. But Trustee Larry LaPointe explained at Monday’s board of trustees meeting that it would have involved “a spaghetti of easements and curb cuts.”

Instead the village will get land on the western end of the marina lot, near Beach Street, that it will restripe and meter. LaPointe said the size of that section will allow the village to create 50 new parking spaces, whereas the previous arrangement would have merely transferred ownership of 30 spots.

Revenue from the village’s other parking meters will cover the costs of restriping and adding the new meter.

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Work will add parking spots, greenery near historic area

The parking lot east of Mariners Way will get a makeover. File photo by Elana Glowatz

Village officials have lined up a construction company to redo the parking lot behind the Fifth Season restaurant, recently dubbed the Baker’s Alley lot, as part of a larger project that aims to restore a downtown historical area.

The Port Jefferson Village Board of Trustees hired East Moriches-based Rosemar Construction, the lower of two bidders on the work, at its meeting on Monday night. At the municipal lot by Mariners Way, the work includes repaving and striping, putting in a pedestrian walkway and adding landscaping.

In addition to the parking field east of Mariners Way, the lot includes 14 spaces in a strip on the road’s western side.

Restriping will make room for seven to eight more parking spots, Mayor Margot Garant said at the meeting.

It will also eliminate a dead end in the middle of the parking lot, improving access for public works employees when they remove snow from the village’s lots in the winter.

East Coast-based engineering firm VHB — the group that put together the construction drawings and plans for redoing the metered parking lot based on designs by Port Jefferson’s Campani and Schwarting Architects — still has to review Rosemar’s bid, which came in close to $350,000 and will be funded by village parking meter revenue.

“I’m told that this is quite a good price,” Trustee Larry LaPointe said. “VHB expected it to come in significantly higher.”

Officials are now calling the area the Baker’s Alley parking lot, making it the namesake of a nearby path the village is working to restore. Baker’s Alley was, in turn, named as a nod to Port Jefferson’s so-called bakery wars that took place there in the early 1900s, in which William West’s New England Bakery famously competed with another local shop. The feud fully erupted in 1916, when both owners changed the establishments’ names to Port Jefferson Bakery.

The now-overgrown and often overlooked dirt path starts at East Main Street, heads down to the parking lot and turns north toward East Broadway. Village officials are looking to turn the alley into a brick walkway, with classic lighting and native plants along the way. After turning north, it would run along a short stone wall as it passes between the parking lot and adjacent businesses, then connect with the small Founders Park at East Broadway.

The village has not yet received bids on the alley portion of the project, LaPointe said, but officials want to get moving on the parking lot work.

“We need to get started as quickly as possible so we don’t interfere any more than necessary with the use of that lot in the high season.”

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Roped off parking spaces on the fourth level of the Huntington Long Island Rail Road train station's south parking garage earlier this year. File photo by Rohma Abbas

Huntington Town is slated this week to reopen more than half of the 228 parking spaces at the Huntington Long Island Rail Road station’s south parking garage it closed off earlier this year.

The town will reopen 116 spaces on the fourth level of the garage on Wednesday, April 8, it announced in a Monday statement. The spaces were closed as part of an emergency repair project on the fifth level, where there are still currently 112 spaces out of commission.

Parking stalls on the fourth level were closed off “as a safety precaution” because they were located directly underneath work that included removing parking deck concrete in certain areas, repairing cables and structural reinforcement, according to the town.

“The project has reached a stage where the remaining work no longer presents a potential falling debris hazard to persons and vehicles on the fourth level, allowing for the spaces to reopen,” the town said in a statement.

Spaces on the fifth level are scheduled to reopen on April 20.

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