It was 2000, and a 26-year-old Drew Allt had just survived a violent rollover crash on Montauk Highway in West Bay Shore.
A distracted driver had swerved into oncoming traffic and ran his SUV off the road.
The doctors told him he would need a spinal fusion to live a normal life.
“But I really didn’t want to have back surgery at just 26,” Allt said.
Instead, he opted to workout intensely with a trainer.
He did yoga and Pilates, and received physical therapy in the form of massage.
He kept up the regimen for some five years while commuting to Manhattan.
Allt never did get that surgery, and through his recovery experience, the idea for what would become Drew Patrick Spa began to germinate.
“I got my mobility back,” said Allt, now 49. “And my experience after the crash really helped to shape this business.
“Personally, I believe in what we do here, and the healing aspects of it.”
And business is booming.
The spa, which opened as central Long Island’s seminal day spa in 2007, has only increased in popularity after nearly two decades at this prominent corner of downtown Bay Shore, built in an old bank. Ahead of its time, Drew Patrick Spa specializes in traditional and medical spa treatments, offers its own personal skincare lines, personal training and reformer Pilates classes.
Then there’s the retail shop on the building’s main floor, which is stocked with men’s and women’s clothing and jewelry, candles, hostess gifts and furnishings.
It’s a lot.
This is the story of how it all came together.
Noticing a void
“Long days on the train weren’t helping my back,” Allt said of his time commuting to and from McGraw Hill in Midtown Manhattan. But he would also travel the U.S. in his role in market development.
“I would plan events at resorts around the country,” he said. “We’d invite college professors and pick their brains so that our materials would be better.”
In his travels, especially on the West Coast, Allt visited day spas for the care and attention he sorely needed.
“Then I would come back to Long Island, and think, ‘Why don’t we have that here?’” he said.
At the time, he said, “massage was a thing you did at a resort, on vacation,” or at a chiropractor’s office. Maybe you’d get a scalp or neck massage at the hair salon. “This was before all the big massage chains,” he said.
He knew of several day spas in and around New York City, and pointed to the resort spa at Gurney’s in Montauk as just one on eastern Long Island that was dedicated to such offerings some 25 years ago.
“But there was nothing much in between.”
A plan takes shape
It was while pursuing his MBA at Adelphi University that things really started to come together.
Allt was assigned to write a business plan.
That plan, just a few years later, eventually took shape in a vacated bank building at 128 West Main Street, back when downtown Bay Shore wasn’t exactly known for its bustling foot traffic.
In his first mental draft, and drawing from his experience in retail and hospitality, Allt envisioned opening a gift shop — something he felt the town needed, as the restaurants had already begun to bring life to the downtown.
“Bay Shore was still lacking in retail,” he said. “And, this wasn’t that long after Sept. 11, so community and being on Main Street was very much on my mind.”
But thinking like a businessman, or student, Allt was also trying to fill a void.
His recent life experience eventually had him thinking wellness center with a luxury day spa.
Partnership
Allt got the full support of his partner, the esteemed Dr. Richard T. Byrnes, a radiation oncologist here on Long Island, to incorporate medical-grade aesthetic treatments and procedures into the plan for Drew Patrick Spa.
“When we opened the spa, Richard was just such a supportive partner,” he said. “He’s not only my life partner, he’s my business partner. So he went and took classes in medical aesthetics.”
Byrnes even trained in Toronto with Dr. Jean and Alastair Carruthers, the Canadian doctors who famously discovered the cosmetic benefits of Botox.
With Byrnes supervising the medical spa, Drew Patrick Spa became known for its ethical considerations, extensive research, and caution while administering injectable fillers, neuromodulators and laser treatments.
“Being a radiation oncologist and treating people with cancer, he’s always taken a holistic approach and has believed that nutrition, exercise, rest and moving and stretching through yoga and meditation are important parts of healing,” Allt said.
“It also gives him a different perspective in meeting clients where they are,” he continued. “Improving aesthetics and making someone feel better because they look better is important to all of us, and that promotes healing whether you’re fighting cancer or you’re fighting … aging.”
People began to trust Byrnes and his staff.
And people talk.
What they built in Bay Shore eventually caught the attention of Extra, the television program, The New York Times and regional publications.
“We were fortunate to get a lot of great publicity,” Allt said. “Because I think we were unique.”
Transformation
To be sure, Allt and Byrnes were taking a huge leap of faith when they decided to not only open a day spa in a downtown just on the brink of revitalization (but not there yet), but to do so in a massive, two-story bank building that was built during the Great Depression, in 1930.
The building had sat largely empty for several years.
“It was still very much set up like a bank — big bulletproof glass over the teller windows,” Allt said.
It also needed new plumbing, heating and electric.
“All the systems had to be replaced,” he said. “The second floor — where the spa services are now offered — was all offices and had to be gutted. Where the gym is now was last used as a call center. The vault couldn’t be moved, but that became my office.
“And since the bank was built in art deco style, we really wanted to bring that back as we uncovered things” during construction.
“It had gone through the 70s and 80s,” he continued. “There was a drop ceiling, and all the character had been covered up. The marble in the lobby was covered by Formica and wood paneling.
“The marble moldings were broken but we were able to piece them back together, so it’s all the original stone.”
Attention to detail
If Drew Patrick’s success today seems as if it were inevitable, the attention to detail during the renovation and restoration work played a crucial role.
The design vision centered on bringing natural elements indoors, so they lined the place with wood and stone, highlighting it with water. The pond in the middle of Drew Patrick’s sun-splashed first floor is a focal point.
“We found the pond in a flea market in Brimfield, Massachusetts, near the town where I grew up,” Allt said.
They even used the marble at the tellers’ station for the sign outside the locker rooms.
“We tried to bring natural elements back into the space; that helps people connect and relax,” Allt said. “Yeah, the space is amazing, so how lucky were we to find this building and to be able to utilize that the way we did? It sets the tone as you walk in for a sense of calm and relaxation, and that’s what we want you to do.”
Drew Patrick begins
The last piece of the Drew Patrick vision was going to rely on finding the right people.
That all began on a February day in 2007, when Drew Patrick Spa was hosting a job fair.
“It was freezing cold in here; there was no heat,” Allt said. “We had folding tables and patio heaters and got a roll of commercial carpet to make a clean space. The building had been gutted, but we wanted to bring in prospective therapists to get a sense of the space and what we were building.”
The owners and their friends — who had also become staunch supporters, with the future spa director, Dana Tarasevicius, even joining the Drew Patrick team — were all on pins and needles that morning.
They advertised the event heavily in Newsday and The Islip Bulletin. They papered the windows with signs. But what if no one showed?
Well, people showed.
Applications were taken, interviews were conducted. Drew Patrick was looking for front desk associates, personal trainers, massage therapists and estheticians.
“Then we scheduled auditions over our [home] garage” in Brightwaters, Allt said with a laugh.
“I still have two estheticians [Milli Zamot and Kay Spinaris] who applied that February working here today, and another [Corinne O’Hara], our business director, whom we hired the first month,” he added proudly. “And Dana has been a part of the project since before we opened; she went to esthetics school in order to help open this business.”
With the team in place, it was time to start start planning a grand opening. That date would be July 14.
“Then you open the door, and you kind of pray,” he said.
Those prayers were answered by Bay Shore itself.
The community
No story about Drew Patrick could be complete without mention of this South Shore community.
Of course, Allt and Byrnes could have opened in the already established Huntington, or Manhasset or Babylon, but they were set on Bay Shore.
They wanted to help in the downtown’s long-awaited revitalization.
“Bay Shore is a tremendous community that is both tight knit and welcoming to people from all walks of life,” Allt said. “It has a committed base of families who believe in their community and have shown time after time that they will come together to support one another and preserve the special place this is.”
And it was those people, he said, “who made conscious decisions to support small businesses on Main Street, and that helped us succeed,” even through the 2008-2009 financial crisis, and the COVID-19 pandemic.
“People have choices about how and where they spend their money,” Allt said. “And when they spend it on Main Street, they keep the lights on.”
Peek inside
