This Small Town Needs Help With Some Big Ideas

There is no doubt about it; Kings Park is a charming tiny suburb on Long Island. With the High School celebrating their last day of classes I started to reminisce about my life growing up in Kings Park.

When I found my way home from the city last week, I rolled into the Kings Park train station in the late afternoon. I walked across the parking lot to Ralph’s, got myself an ice and sat on one of the benches provided outside. As I watched the cars go by on main street I thought about how when I was a teenager, this wasn’t even here. A group of kids were behind me at a picnic table, laughing, ‘hanging out’. I remember being their age, walking into town with my friends and having nowhere to go. We’d sit on the curb in front of Genovese (which isn’t even there anymore) or T.J Maxx (where we’d be asked to move because of something called loitering). There was, and still is, not much to do in Kings Park.

Part of the town’s charm comes from the family owned business appeal. The problem is that today, many of those businesses have been run out of town. I remember ‘Chicken Video’. The video store was next to a chicken place, that the owner bought and expanded his store into but never changed the sign, or so I remember, I could be wrong. It is where Encore Dance came to be, and now it is an empty space yet again I am pretty sure the owner’s name was Steve, he knew my parents well. We would go there weekly and pick from the selection of VHS tapes that he had. Everything was well organized, and it was fun to get those black plastic cases with the movie waiting to be watched on the inside.

Then, Blockbuster came along. Chicken Video lost business. I remember a news article that the owner wrote about how he participates in all of the town’s events, and the town stopped giving back to him. It was sad. When my family went in to buy some of the videos that were left behind I remember the feeling quite well, and the look on his face. It was anger, mixed with pride and sadness. We walked out as the doors shut behind us forever.

Blockbuster was always a mess. I could never find anything and it was so bright. Still, we had to rent videos somewhere. Now even Blockbuster is gone, and I see a hardware store is taking its place.

Really? Because I remember Dan’s Hardware, another small townie business that went under as well and now we are going to open another hardware store? I am starting to get frustrated. For a town that prides itself in being family oriented, where are the family oriented facilities? Every street has a bar, or maybe even a nail salon, but that is about it. Wait, I left out 7-11s, sorry.

Anyway I sat on this bench and thought about it. Northport also has a small main street, but it is 1) on the water and 2) has cute places to go and spend some time. There used to be a record store that had all second hand music. The high school students would go, sell back their CDs that they didn’t want anymore and then the place would sell them to new rightful owners. Even music shops are a bust now because of iTunes, but still, it was something to do!

This may be controversial for me to say, but I am going for it. The Kings Park Psychiatric Center is always such a sensitive subject for everyone. There is so much land there! We have to start somewhere, and I think we could use this land a little more productively. Sure, breaking into these old dangerous buildings has given teenagers something to do at night for who knows how long – but it really is not doing much of anything for the town.

What if some of this space is used for family oriented fun? We pick a good spot on the grounds to start with and we have it cleared out. And then, I don’t know build a bowling alley or mini golf course. This is wishful thinking I know. One thousand codes and violations have just been broken with the mere thought that I just put out there.

Don’t you think it would be awesome to have a place you could go with your family right in town? And then, this place could attract people from other towns, meaning Kings Park could bring in some major tax revenue that might alleviate the harsh property taxes a bit? That way our school district can grow without the financial pressure on our residents?

But wait, that would bring in ‘the outsiders’. And who am I kidding; we won’t even let a cell phone tower be built (insert cursing over a dropped call here).

There are so many people (like myself) that grow up and grow out of the town. It is too expensive. What good is having a quaint little family town without any venue for family fun? I am not saying we need fast food and Chuck-E-Cheese, Commack had provided that for us nicely. But it would be great is families could start up a business in Kings Park and it could last. Chicken Video went under because Kings Park decided to modernize with the wrong type of business. We had a perfectly nice place to rent our videos, but where can we hang out with our friends and families?

 A few benches on the sidewalk is a good start, but we could do much better.