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After deliberating the price tag on a new parking garage in the Suffolk 6th District Court lot, Patchogue Village Mayor Paul Pontieri felt the project failed to provide enough bang for its buck.
“A $6 million or $7 million investment into a garage is a tough push for a village this size,” Pontieri said in a telephone interview. “If we can, for $2 million, come close to the same number of spaces, it works.”
While the garage plan would have provided about 100 new spaces, this new plan designed by L. K. McLean Associates, P.C, a Brookhaven-based engineering firm, will increase the lot’s capacity from 134 spaces to around 220, according to Pontieri.
A significant portion of these spaces will crop up beyond the southeast corner of the lot where the old gas station resides at the corner of South Street and Railroad Ave. Pontieri said the village is currently in negotiations with the property owner to acquire the lot.
The plan also sees the bus stop on South Street relocated to West Avenue just north of where it currently sits. Pontieri explained that West Avenue will be widened to accommodate the buses.
Funding
Pontieri explained that multiple streams exist to fund the project.
“There’s $1 million from the state that we’re hoping to use for planning money,” he said, referring to the state’s Regional Economic Development Council’s Consolidated Funding Program. “And we’re waiting to hear back from the state. “
Should this not pan out, the mayor explained that the village can supplement that $1 million from parking meter revenue.
The village also has funds provided by Suffolk County’s Jumpstart Grant, which was awarded in two sums, for $1 million and $625,000, in 2019.
Timetable
With the project being less intense than a parking garage, Pontieri said the county lot will still be accessible during the reconfiguration. He hopes construction can begin sometime late summer or early fall and believes it will last no longer than six to eight months.
The next step of the planning phase will come much sooner than summer. “We’ll be meeting next week with the engineers,” Pontieri said. “And we’re gonna start looking at a bidding process.”
