Hauppauge has a lot of great attributes including some of the region's best dining and a regional employment engine with its industrial park.
But for all it does have, many in Hauppauge have lamented the lack of a central area in the community. Unlike nearby Smithtown, Stony Brook and Port Jefferson, Hauppauge has no downtown. In fact, it even lacks a central village green where locals can gather.
To be fair, there are no plans on the table to create a community hub in Hauppauge, but that shouldn't stop its residents from imagining a place in town where, just maybe, one day a Hauppauge downtown or village green could emerge.
So let us know in the comments: Where should Hauppauge's center of town be? Where would a village green fit in nicely? We'll collect the best answers for a future post.
As for the question of where a downtown or village green could emerge, I see three sites with enormous potential based on their current layout, uses, and location in the "center" of Hauppauge: 1. Redeveloping Atrium Plaza to front the building onto Wheeler Road, and investing in the vacant land to the west of it as a green or tearing up the parking lot on the east side of Atrium Plaza and constructing a small green with a bioswale or large rain garden representative of the springs which lend Hauppauge its name, and relocating the parking spaces lost to the vacant land to the west of Atrium Plaza as a public parking lot. 2. Redeveloping the Branchinelli's Shopping Center with an eye toward preserving the existing businesses but perhaps adding on a floor with apartments above and a public plaza on the corner of Townline and Wheeler. 3. Covering the parking in front of Shoprite and A.C. Moore with a sturdy landscaped roof and connecting it to the hill to the southwest to provide breathtaking vistas and a unique public square.
1. Create interior service roads by requiring cross access between businesses along Route 111 where possible. This allows businesses and offices to share parking more easily and keeps traffic moving between uses on either side from entering Route 111 to make such movement. This has already been done between Staples and Shoprite, and one could only wonder how traffic would be impacted if they were not linked internally. 2. Complete the sidewalk network and add bicycle lanes. Every little bit counts and any trips we can move out of cars through more convenient safer facilities is one less contribution to congestion. 3. Widen Route 111 to four lanes throughout. This would allow for greater volume to be handled along 111, however without widening all the way along 111 or its connecting roadways congestion would still persist and might potentially worsen through a phenomenon known as induced demand whereby the roads would become as congested as before because the new capacity would attract more people to drive on the route.