Smithtown Town Board unanimously approved a zoning change for the project
Beechwood’s $220M development includes 288 condos on a 71-acre site
Community will feature single-family homes, townhomes and villas
Project includes 29 affordable units and extensive resort-style amenities
One of the largest multifamily housing developments in the history of Kings Park cleared a big hurdle Thursday when the Smithtown Town Board unanimously approved a zoning change for Beechwood Organization‘s proposed 288-home condominium project.
The $220 million project, called Country Pointe Estates at Kings Park, will bring a mix of 53 single-family homes, 153 townhomes and 82 villas to a 71-acre site near the northwest corner of Old Northport Road and Lawrence Road.
Rendering of the clubhouse at the planned Kings Park condo community. / Courtesy of Beechwood Organization
The property, currently a poultry farm and woods, which had been zoned for single-family homes on half-acre lots and some light industry, was rezoned as a Planned Residential Development.
“We could have had on this property probably 140 to 150 three-to-five-bedroom McMansions or an Amazon-type warehouse,” Smithtown Councilman Thomas McCarthy said at the meeting. “But what we’re getting is all two-bedroom units which will help the elderly and will help the younger people of Kings Park and I think it’s a phenomenal application.”
Smithtown Supervisor Ed Wehrheim said he agreed with McCarthy’s assessment.
“I think it’s a development that will be good for the Kings Park community,” he said.
The condos are expected to be priced from the low $700,000s to $1 million, depending on the model and location. There will be 29 homes designated as affordable and offered at reduced prices.
Amenities will include a 12,000-square-foot staffed clubhouse, two heated pools, two pickleball courts, a fitness center, a yoga studio, a sports lounge, bocce courts and a putting green.
The next step for the project will be site-plan approval, which Beechwood principal Michael Dubb said he hopes to have some time next year.
“What is special about this community is that most condominium developments are six units to the acre and up, including most of the condominium developments I’ve done recently,” Dubb told LIBN. “This is four units to the acre. So there is a tremendous amount of open space that we were able to save in this community.”
Once approvals are received, Dubb said the Kings Park development would take about three years to complete.
“These communities create such a great sense of camaraderie while offering a maintenance-free alternative for people to stay here on Long Island, stay close to their roots and their grandchildren,” Dubb said. “This community will also give young people the opportunity to set up roots in a community that they might desire to raise their children in one day, whether they’re just starting a family or planning a family.”
Elected officials and local business leaders will join development executives Tuesday at a groundbreaking ceremony for a new boutique apartment project in Kings Park.
Site work has already begun on the $22.5 million transit-oriented project that will bring a three-story, 59,715-square-foot building to the western side of the Tanzi Plaza shopping center at 30 Indian Head Road. The site was formerly occupied by a freestanding Sombrero’s Southwest Grill restaurant.
The 46-unit development, called Cornerstone Kings Park, is a partnership between Terwilliger & Bartone Properties and Tanzi Properties. Located just steps away from the Kings Park Long Island Rail Road station, it will consist of a mix of five studios, 32 one-bedroom and nine two-bedroom units. Five of the apartments will be offered at reduced rents and designated affordable workforce housing.
Amenities will include a clubroom, fitness center, virtual entry system, elevator and trash valet service. The project will feature 137 parking spaces, including 29 below-grade spots. Islandia-based GRCH Architecture is designing the development, and its civil engineer is Huntington-based R&M Engineering. Garrett Gray of Melville-based Weber Law Group represented the developers throughout the approvals and IDA application process.
The developers received a financial assistance package from the Suffolk County Industrial Development Agency for the project, including a payment-in-lieu-of-taxes agreement.
Cornerstone Kings Park is the first new multifamily development in Kings Park in decades, facilitated by the Town of Smithtown’s comprehensive plan for Kings Park’s downtown and the completion of Suffolk County’s expansion of the Kings Park sewer system. The project will create about 90 construction jobs and is expected to be completed in about 18 months, with first occupancies slated for Q1 2027.
Terwilliger & Bartone has been a prolific developer of Long Island downtown apartment projects in recent years. The company has built multifamily apartment developments in Farmingdale, Hauppauge, Lynbrook and Westbury.
LIBN was first to report on the developer’s newest endeavor, a $61 million project that will bring 106 apartments over 4,000 square feet of retail space to a 2-acre site on Jerusalem Avenue in Hicksville. Called Cornerstone Hicksville, the four-story building will have a mix of studios, one- and two-bedroom units with underground parking for more than 200 vehicles. The planned transit-oriented development is located a stone’s throw from the Hicksville Long Island Rail Road station.
After decades of neglect, Kings Park’s underperforming downtown is finally on the road to recovery. It’s been a long time coming.
A row of vacant stores along Kings Park’s Main Street. / Photo by David Winzelberg
Once a thriving downtown along Route 25A, Kings Park was hurt by the closing of the Kings Park Psychiatric Center in the 1990s. Some 2,500 jobs were lost, and many merchants never recovered from the exodus of all those customers. Today Main Street is still dotted with vacant storefronts.
After a few plans for housing and other commercial development at the sprawling psych center fizzled because of community opposition, Kings Park stakeholders decided to focus their attention to revitalizing their long-suffering downtown.
Guided by community planning group Vision Long Island and months of meetings that began in 2015, a coalition of residents, civic leaders and business owners created a 66-page action plan that called for new zoning to allow for rental apartments and mixed-use developments around the Kings Park Long Island Rail Road station.
A vacant lot on Kings Park’s Main Street. / Photo by David Winzelberg
Nine years later, the Town of Smithtown has incorporated most of those recommendations in the new Kings Park Downtown Revitalization Master Plan, which the town board expects to adopt by the end of the year. And though the new plan comes with zoning changes that pave the way for a revitalized downtown, new development couldn’t be possible without Kings Park’s expanded sewer system, funded by $25 million in public money and on track to be completed ahead of schedule later this year.
“Sewers are the key. I don’t care what anybody says. You will not revitalize a business district unless you have sewer mains because they can’t operate off of antiquated septic systems,” Ed Wehrheim, Smithtown supervisor and longtime Kings Park resident, told LIBN. “There was a time when people said to me ‘you’ll never get Kings Park sewered and you’ll never be able to do any revitalization of the business district.’ And now we’ve proved that we were tenacious and kept working with our other government partners and as we speak, the sewer mains are being installed throughout Main Street. They’re expected to be completed sometime in late November of this year.”
The proposed downtown zoning changes in the Kings Park master plan would allow for about 375 units of new multifamily housing, while limiting building heights to three stories. The master plan also aims to improve pedestrian safety and implement traffic calming measures, establish a façade improvement program, create new public spaces and more.
An oil storage and distribution property just south of the Kings Park LIRR station is listed as an opportunity site in the Kings Park master plan. / Photo by David Winzelberg
“The new master plan is the product of years and years of work on behalf of the Town of Smithtown, the consultants that they hired, numerous public meetings where the town had solicited input from the residents and experts alike to try and come up with a path that makes our downtown more sustainable and bring it up to where it needs to be today as opposed to what made a successful downtown 50 years ago,” said Tony Tanzi, president of the Kings Park Chamber of Commerce. “Having a dense collection of residences within walking distance of the downtown makes it so that you can have a built-in consumer base that doesn’t need to drive there and take up valuable parking on Main Street to actually utilize the businesses.”
Certainly, a crowning achievement that will accelerate Kings Park’s revitalization efforts is the $10 million Downtown Revitalization Initiative grant awarded by the state in January. Wehrheim said the town is currently holding local planning committee meetings to determine which downtown projects will be funded with the DRI grant. All in all, the trifecta of sewers, new zoning and state dollars will spur private investment that should usher in a new reign of prosperity for Kings Park’s downtown.
“Hundreds of Kings Park residents and business owners came together to shape a downtown revitalization plan that included sewers, walkable streets, new restaurants, additional parking and modest housing options by the train station,” said Eric Alexander, director of Vision Long Island. “The sewers are under construction, additional parking has been provided, the first housing development is going through the planning process and the $10 million New York State DRI grant will assist implementing other elements of the plan. While the process has taken longer than planned, much of what the community wanted is getting done.”
Rendering of the 50-unit apartment development proposed for Kings Park. / Courtesy of Terwilliger & Bartone
The new Kings Park master plan, which is still going through its environmental review process, identifies “opportunity sites,” suggesting where new development projects might be located. Those include a municipal parking lot on Main Street across from the Kings Park Fire Department headquarters; the Kings Park Plaza shopping center on Indian Head Road; and a home heating oil storage and distribution facility on Meadow Road.
Another opportunity site listed in the master plan is the Tanzi Plaza shopping center, where a new $22 million apartment project has already been pitched. Farmingdale-based developer Terwilliger & Bartone Properties has proposed to build a 46,000-square-foot building that will have 50 apartments on the site of a long-shuttered restaurant on the west side of the shopping center, just steps away from the Kings Park LIRR station.
And there will likely be more to come.
“I think within the next two years, maybe a little sooner, we should really start to see some real nice downtown revitalization improvement,” Wehrheim said. “People are going to invest in those properties, because once those sewers come in, the properties become more valuable, and they have the ability to expand restaurants and things of that nature. We’re pretty excited about it.”
A new $20 million apartment development is planned to replace a long-vacant restaurant building in Kings Park.
Farmingdale-based developer Terwilliger & Bartone Properties has proposed to build a 61,356-square-foot building that will have 50 apartments on the site of a shuttered restaurant at 30 Indian Head Road in the Tanzi Plaza shopping center. The development site is located just steps away from the Kings Park Long Island Rail Road station.
The rental complex, to be called Cornerstone Kings Park, will bring six studio apartments, 35 one-bedroom apartments and nine two-bedroom apartments. Rents have not been set, however, five of the apartments will be designated as affordable and offered at reduced rates.
Amenities will include a clubroom, fitness center, virtual entry system, elevator and trash valet service.
Islandia-based GRCH Architecture is designing the project, and its civil engineer is Huntington-based R&M Engineering.
The project, the first pitched for Kings Park’s ongoing revitalization effort, was conceived in 2018 when the Town of Smithtown completed a comprehensive plan for Kings Park’s downtown following community visioning sessions led by the Kings Park Chamber of Commerce, the Kings Park Civic Association and Vision Long Island. But the development wouldn’t have been possible without Suffolk County’s expansion of the Kings Park sewer system that is currently underway.
The apartment plan still needs to go through the town’s approvals process. The developer will be holding an open house on the project from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. on Thursday, Dec. 7, at VFW Post 5796 at 40 Church St. in Kings Park.
“We’re very excited. This has been a long time coming for Kings Park,” said Anthony Bartone, a principal of Terwilliger & Bartone Properties. “We’re proud to be the first project in the ongoing revitalization of Kings Park’s downtown.”
The three highest-priced home sales in Kings Park last month ranged from $680,000 to $888,000.
The priciest Kings Park home sold in November was a 4-bedroom, 2.5-bath colonial on .26 acres at 50 4th Ave. that sold for $888,000. It was listed by Pamela Zaid of Coach Realtors and sold by Jeanette Cinelli of Signature Premier Properties.
A 5-bedroom, 3.5-bath colonial on .35 acres at 7 Gingerbread Road fetched $860,000. It was listed by John Constantinides of Modern Spaces Love Your Place and sold by Marco Vinaccia of Coldwell Banker American Homes.
At 156 Boxwood Drive, a 5-bedroom, 3.5-bath hi-ranch on .25 acres went for $680,000. It was listed by David Saracino of Homeology Realty and sold by Scott Graziano of Coach Realtors.
