Source the Station September 2016 Meetup Recap

September 22, 2016 2:01 pm | Filed under: News | Posted by: Nicholas Wieland

Back to school season and September brought us to La Hacienda this month for our meetup! We had delicious pupusas, quesadillas, calamari & more, got updates from Renaissance Downtowns, found out the September 2016 grant winners and had special guests from Signature Premier Properties to discuss retail options for Northridge!

We started the evening off with some updates from Renaissance Downtowns. Some items and permitting are left and the goal is to be able to break ground late fall of 2016. Gateway site plans are being reviewed, some feedback has been received from the NYS DOT and the goal is to be able to break ground in the Spring of 2017. In addition, Renaissance Downtowns and the Town of Huntington have been meeting with Suffolk County about sewer funds and those meetings have been very successful; Legislator Spencer is helping to get the funds and move forward the study for sewers for Huntington Station. We will likely be doing a campaign in the fall for the sewers, so stay tuned! Additionally, Renaissance Downtowns continues to work with the NYS DOT for the land transfers necessary for the hotel and artist lofts.

We then went into a discussion about the Northridge development and potential retail solutions for the ~6000SF of retail/commercial space. Currently the space is permitted for dry retail which means no restaurants or anything that would have a full sized kitchen. For this discussion we were lucky to have three realtors from Signature Premier Properties present – Debby, Jasmine, and Jessica. All three expressed their enthusiasm towards working to help with Huntington Station revitalization efforts and helping bring mom-and-pop / small businesses to the area. Some of the most preferred types of businesses that were voiced by meetup attendees were a cafe – by itself, or as a combo with a bookshop / common space, a yoga/pilates/exercise studio, an ice cream shop, and a place with fresh take out food (potentially delivered from another local restaurant). Signature Properties will be reaching out to their networks to see if they find any businesses who would like to open here and will be returning in October to let us know of progress. Also, if anyone has any contacts with a business that you think may want to have another location in Huntington Station, please let us know!

Our last topic was stationsix grants! There were some updates about past grants: Con Artist will also be doing some additional Rainworks Sidewalk Art Wednesday, September 14th at 3:30pm. Bill Paladino would be distributing bags at the annual Unity Festival and will also donate some to the local food banks for when Huntington Station residents need them, Tom D’Ambrosio is working on finding someone who will shape the bushes for his Community Landscape Beautification project, Mike Plunkett’s Pool Tournament took place Saturday, September 10th at Instant Replay, Elissa Kyle is moving forward with putting together the cinder-block benches for her project, Sandra Everitt has scheduled her Voter Registration workshops for Friday, September 16th at the Huntington Library on Main Street 9-11am in Spanish and 6-8PM in English, The Little Free Library was built by Lider Raynor and will soon be painted and then installed, the Huntington Station Branch Library is done with their birdhouse painting program and will be installing them in the next couple of weeks, the Backpack Bash held by Bethel AME Huntington was a great success with over 170 backpacks filled with supplies were distributed, and finally on August 24th LIVC made over 100 emergency preparedness kits at the Tri CYA. Let us know if you’d like to get involved with any of these!