By Aiden Steng
With changing times comes changing communities, but the Town of Smithtown has invested in restoring and revitalizing its cultured past. However, these initiatives have not seen unanimous praise from outside the town’s government.
In December 2024, the Smithtown town board voted unanimously to authorize Town Supervisor Republican Ed Wehrheim to purchase St. James’ Calderone Theater for $900,000. The vote additionally gave Wehrheim the authority to grant a 10-year lease to Celebrate St. James, a local non-profit arts group to renovate the theater.
Since the sale from Celebrate St. James’ founder and advisor Natalie Weinstein, her organization has been tasked with renovating the theater that is now called the St. James Community Cultural Arts Center.
“Their intention is to do some major renovations on the theater, and that will be paid for by them,” Wehrheim said. “The lease agreement is completed and signed by the board of directors of Celebrate [St. James], so we think it’s going to be a really nice addition to the business district.”
Wehrheim is a former United States Navy veteran who served in Vietnam and has been Smithtown’s town supervisor since 2018. He has overseen recent projects aimed at revitalizing the community’s local business districts.
Such initiatives expected to be pushed for in 2025 by the board include the implementation of LED street lighting in the area, improvements to local parks and roads, the building of a playground and pickle ball court at Callahan’s Beach and an implementation of lofts at the former site of Nassau Suffolk Lumber & Supply Company.
While projects such as the creation of Celebrate Park on the former site of an abandoned bar and the introduction of the new sewer line in St. James have yielded an overhaul in Smithtown’s local community, some are unhappy with the town board’s execution of these plans.
Local Democrat Nick Cipollo, a member of Smithtown Democrats and trained historian, has notably voiced his concerns with the recent execution of the sewer line project.
Photo by Aiden Steng
“The sewer line that was installed on Lake Avenue in Saint James was installed four years ago and is still not hooked up to a treatment plant,” he said. “The people of Smithtown are paying for this through a bond when this could have been done through grants from the government.”
However, Wehrheim said “that was a $3.9 million project [that] was originally going to be a grant from New York State. Unfortunately, that project began right at the onset of COVID, and the state of New York, like many other government entities, went home.”
Cipollo also said that while he believed the Calderone Theater should be preserved, the process in which the deal was brokered was poor.
“I believe that the Town of Smithtown could have done better,” he said. “The first step was the last step, which was to spend $900,000 to purchase the theater … the Town of Smithtown also could have sought out grants from the county, state, or federal government to save this historical building.”
Cipollo also noted that the town board gave themselves “exorbitant” pay rises in 2022, one of which was a raise of 22 percent for Wehrheim. Cipollo said he would have given the town board pay rises in line with the 3% enjoyed by town employees during that time.
Wehrheim did not agree with this analysis.
“Those salaries for elected officials were stagnant for a number of years. I think three or four years, maybe,” he said. “I think those increases were put into the budget, and there were public hearings on the budget. So, that is the most transparent way to do that.”
Aidan Steng is a reporter with The SBU Media Group, part of Stony Brook University’s School of Communication and Journalism’s Working Newsroom program for students and local media.
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