Patchogue revitalization seen as model for other LI downtowns
BY REID J. EPSTEINA
A walk down Patchogue's Main Street reveals a handful of empty storefronts, just like in other Long Island downtowns that were hurt when the big-box stores arrived.

But the village also boasts a blues and barbecue joint and a soon-to-open sushi restaurant that promises live jazz. New downtown housing, including a development earmarked for artists, also is in the works.

It's the sort of development praised -- and encouraged for other Long Island communities -- in the Long Island Index annual report, produced by a Garden City-based nonprofit group, the Rauch Foundation, which was released Wednesday.

Downtown Patchogue is anchored by the Patchogue Theatre for the Performing Arts, a refurbished structure that was nearly left for dead just over a decade ago.

The restaurants, music venues and niche stores that have opened along Main Street are the result of Patchogue's effort to get younger -- faster -- in recent years, officials said.

Blocks from the theater sits the Copper Beech Village affordable housing development, which Mayor Paul Pontieri touts as the community's latest step toward revitalizing itself.

"We need to put people on Main Street to support the stores and to support the theater," Pontieri said. "The only way we're going to stay younger in this community is through affordable housing."

The Index cites Patchogue as "an increasingly livable center for culture, shopping and entertainment" and compares it favorably to communities like Mountain View, Calif., home of Google Inc. It calls Patchogue a downtown "undergoing a dynamic revitalization process" and lauds its political and business leadership.

"Providing homes in convenient proximity to the downtown attracts those seeking the lifestyle offered by a newly thriving cultural center and ... creates patrons for the local economy, further fueling Patchogue's revival," the report states.

Like scores of similar communities across Long Island, Patchogue saw its downtown decline in the 1970s and 1980s as retail establishments fled Main Street.

Abie Siegel stuck it out through the bad years. His store, Blum's, has sold women's swimwear on Main Street since 1968.

"We had a lot of empty stores," said Siegel, 77. "We had a lot of vagrants on the street and homeless. Now most of the stores are being filled up, being kept better."

Pontieri, the mayor since 2004 and a Patchogue native, said stores like Blum's saved the downtown from total demise.

"We didn't die," he said. "We were just on life support."

The combination of reinvestment in the downtown theater --Patchogue's village board bought the then-abandoned theater in 1997 and spent $5 million on renovations -- and recent encouragement by the village and Suffolk County of high-density, affordable housing within walking distance of the village center has sparked a boomlet.

The most recent evidence of Patchogue's renaissance comes in plans on Pontieri's desk for an eight-story hotel on the corner of Main Street and Ocean Avenue. The mayor said the proposal, for a Hilton-style hotel, is likely to go before the village's planning board in the next month.

While high-density affordable housing projects typically draw their share of community opposition, Pontieri and village trustees have ushered through two such developments: the year-old, 80-unit Copper Beech complex and a 41-unit artists' colony, which passed the village's zoning board last week and is likely to be approved by the village board on Monday.

The developments, both within walking distance of Main Street, bring the critical mass of foot traffic necessary to support restaurants and new stores, according to Long Island Index director Ann Golob.

Eric Rifkin, who opened the Bobbique restaurant and blues club on Main Street in June 2006, said the theater and new housing bring in customers both before and after the shows.

"There's people that have been going to this theater for a while," he said. "But they didn't stay downtown because there was nothing here."