As Main Street in Kings Park gets ripped up for sewers, business owners have hope for the future

Repairs to Main Street in Kings Park are underway to advance a $101 million project to connect the downtown business district to sewers, a critical step in revitalizing the hamlet, municipal officials said.

Construction workers began the process of "road milling" on Main Street, also known as State Route 25A, earlier this month. Through that process, crews drill into the top layer of the road's asphalt to remove it before the road is repaved. The construction is taking place overnight, from 8:30 p.m. to 6 a.m., according to Town of Smithtown officials. The work is taking place  from the entrance of Nissequogue River State Park westward to Park Avenue.

On Main Street near the corner of Indian Head Road, a portion of the road was ripped up on a recent afternoon. Town officials have warned motorists of lane closures, detours and some parking limits in the downtown. 

But the inconveniences are small, some business owners said, compared with the long-term benefits that sewers stand to bring.

Don Brown, owner of the restaurant Relish on Pulaski Road, said Kings Park should follow in the tradition of Babylon, Patchogue and Farmingdale. Those communities, he said, have ushered in successful downtown revitalizations in recent years. The sewer connections will help rejuvenate the business scene, Brown said.

“Main Street being underinvested in and the lack of infrastructure really put a damper on business,” said Brown, a lifelong Kings Park resident. “I’ve been here 16 years with my business. My business is down 35%. It’s not getting any better without any type of revitalization program.”

Smithtown Supervisor Ed Wehrheim said the work to re-imagine and transform Kings Park’s business district alongside planners and government partners has stretched more than a decade.

“This work is more than just infrastructure,” Wehrheim said in a statement. “It marks the start of a long-awaited transformation."

$101 million project

In November, state officials said they had awarded Smithtown $21.3 million through its Water Infrastructure Improvements Program to build sewers in the hamlet’s downtown. The Kings Park sewer project is expected to cost about $101 million, Suffolk County officials have told Newsday. The county has pledged to fund the effort through its capital budget.

In September 2022, Newsday previously reported, Suffolk County legislators approved spending $1.7 million to buy a 17-acre property near the former Kings Park Psychiatric Center to build a leaching field that will capture treated wastewater.

Nicole Garguilo, Smithtown public information officer, said the last coat of asphalt will be applied to the road in the spring and should restore all roads to a “smooth, finished surface with freshly painted traffic lines.” Kings Park’s roads will be fully paved by May, “providing a safer and more visually appealing streetscape,” Garguilo said.

Adrienne Esposito, executive director of Citizens Campaign for the Environment, a Farmingdale nonprofit, said sewer connections are “critically important for Kings Park.”

Many homes and businesses in Suffolk County are connected to cesspools, which are expensive for businesses to maintain and can be harmful to the environment. Waste from the systems, which contain nitrogen, can be absorbed into the groundwater and run off into larger waterways.

“For us, sewers are about protecting groundwater, service water and estuaries,” Esposito said in an interview. “We all love our harbors and our bays, but when we allow for septics and cesspools to reach into those water bodies, they become highly polluted, and they become unswimmable and closed to shell fishing and even sometimes fin fishing.”

'We need that for Kings Park'

In Kings Park, business owners said they were optimistic about the changes.

Todd Feldman, owner of Legends Bar & Grill on Indian Head Road, said so far road repairs have not caused huge disruptions to his business. 

“We need to make Kings Park a destination,” Feldman said in an interview. “You look at what’s happening in Huntington and Patchogue, and people are coming there because of what they’re doing downtown. We need that for Kings Park.”

John Hagen, manager of Kings Park Hardware, said he was also hopeful about the plan.

“It’s good for the community and it’s good for business,” Hagen said.