Welcome back.

It's good to get the band back together again.

I am Deputy Supervisor John McCarron.

Unfortunately, Supervisor Smith has a couple of other engagements.

The uh when it starts to warm up, the events start happening again, so he wishes he could be here.

Before we begin anything, I'd just like to thank our uh friends at the Huntington Community First Aid Squad, uh Brian, the president of the board.

Thank you for hosting us.

I know uh the initial DRI award was done in this room when uh the Secretary of State came down and now we're back.

So uh on behalf of the Supervisor Smith, I just want to welcome everyone here.

Uh this is sort of a continuation of the prior meetings for the downtown revitalization.

Um and this is just one aspect of that uh of the grant money, and that is the New York Avenue Streetscape project.

And I hope you all had an opportunity to uh take a peek at some of the boards in the back and introduce Tom Schaefer from DB.

They've been working on this as well as the actual sewer project as well to put this together.

Uh I want to uh offer regrets from Councilman Dave Bernardo, Councilwoman Theresa Mari, Jan Hebert, and Brooke Lupinacci that could not be here.

Uh, but I did want to acknowledge some of our team.

I have uh our director of planning, Tony Locio is here.

Tony uh Tony uh Tony and his his deputy Craig Turner in his office were the if everyone remembers, they were the ones behind the actual application for the uh DRI award.

And uh luckily still here, so we can keep keep keep getting him involved.

Scott Spittle is our uh director of transportation, traffic safety and engineering.

Uh he's in the room.

Uh Angel Cepeda is our director of community development agency.

And then from the supervisor's office, we have Jonas Wagner and our director of communications, Christine Geed, both been both been very involved.

Um I just wanted to acknowledge a couple of our state partners, uh, New York State Senator Mario Matera, and we have Deborah Harris here from Assemblyman Steve Stern's office.

Uh they were all set to be here, but albody called, so uh unfortunately uh they're up in Albany and wish they could be here.

Uh I think we have our Suffolk County legislator, Rebecca Sannon is here.

Welcome, Rebecca.

Okay, when the town first submitted the application for the DRI program, the supervisor and and the administration knew Huntington Station was the perfect candidate.

Um so now we've progressed uh to this wonderful stage of actually beginning to get ready to put shovels in the ground.

So in this community, we have a very dedicated, passionate residential community, but also an up and coming and a vibrant business community.

And I know our president of the bid is here.

There he is, Frank.

Okay.

As you've all been experiencing, fortunately or unfortunately, there's a $66 million sewer line project uh that's going on.

Uh to uh there's a partnership between the state, the county, and the town.

We all put in 22 million dollars.

Um that is going to be the backbone for redevelopment here.

Uh a lot of people don't realize that development and redevelopment is mostly controlled by the Suffolk County Health Department and your sewage and where that goes.

And uh soon you may see some two and three-story nice buildings here, only because of that sewer project.

And again, that was championed by prior administration Chad Lupinacci with the current supervisor Ed Smith to use the the Opera funding, the federal funding just just for the sewer project.

So we're gonna share with you some of the vision that we've come up with.

Uh this is actually what we would consider the first New York State approved DRI project, the New York Avenue Streetscape.

Uh and like I said way back when, if people remember, we weren't going to design this without you because for the next however long I have, we're gonna hear you did a really bad job uh on the street and you could have done better.

So we just want to make sure that you are involved, see what's happening, process is as transparent as it was when we were having all those meetings here, the library, uh St.

Hugh, um, the gymnasium there.

So uh before we begin with the presentation, um, we did want to thank a few of our other partners, the New York State Regional Economic Development Council, uh, the members of the local planning committee who helped out uh and and attended all those meetings, um, and the participants in the DRI project search.

Uh this would not have proceeded so quickly because if if you take note, New York State 110 is a state highway.

We don't have much say on it.

And uh we were able to push this project through as quickly as we could here with help from again Senator Mario Matera and uh Assemblyman Steve Stern.

Uh they when we call some somebody picks up the phone.

When Assemblyman Stern and Senator Matera call the uh executive director for the for this territory, the regional director, Rich Causan gets on the phone.

And they were able to set up a meeting out in Hopog with us where we discuss some of our vision.

And you're going to see it soon if you haven't seen it already, but they acquiesced to many of our requests that they were originally not looking too fondly on.

So just want to really thank uh again Mario and Steve for uh opening doors for us and uh and obviously the state DOT because they uh they realize we can't treat Huntington Station differently than Huntington Village in terms of our streetscape improvement.

So uh and last of and and uh but not least is the stakeholders.

Those of you who live here, work here, have businesses here, and have participated in this process um throughout these last couple of years.

So uh you keep pushing us, we thank you, and and there's still a lot to go.

Okay, so stick around.

Um I did want to uh introduce Thomas Schaefer.

Tom is the uh engineer who's been working on, like I said, the initial design for the sewer line project, and uh also for the streetscape project.

He and his team, he's got the any number of members of his own team have put together uh something to pass muster with the state DOT, um, which is the most important thing.