The long-vacant drive-thru building on Church Street in Patchogue Village will soon be making way for more parking.
The former Union Savings Bank and then North Fork Bank parcel was acquired by the village for $94,000 last month.
Mayor Paul Pontieri said the structure itself will be likely be demolished within the next 30 days. The village is also trying to acquire other properties along Church Street to the west for parking.
The $94,000, and any other money spent buying land for parking, is all coming from the meter program the village instituted last year. That program generated just over $250,000 from June 2014 to June 2015.
The drive-through parcel was actually owned by the Suffolk Sports Hall of Fame, which had acquired the parcel as a gift, Pontieri said.
The mayor said the village is still a long way off from considering building a parking garage.
“A parking garage will cost you $30,000 a space, when surface parking costs more like $8,000 or $10,000 a space,” he said. “The garage also requires a certain amount of space.
“Our determination right now is that we’d like to get to the point where we’ve accumulated enough space around Church Street, where if that doesn’t relieve the parking pressure, then you’d look at the next step.”
That next step would be a parking garage.
But at the moment, Pontieri said, the village is in no position to undertake a project estimated to cost $6 million.
Caption 1: The vacant bank drive-thru on Church Street will be demolished soon. (Credit: Michael White)
