New York State Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, accompanied by Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr., last week announced a $1.75 million state award for the Montauk Playhouse Community Center, where ground was broken last summer for its new aquatic center.
Also announced during the speaker’s Oct. 25 visit to the South Fork was $250,000 for the Bridgehampton Child Care and Recreational Center’s outreach efforts.
The tour took the Assembly members to the Child Care and Recreational Center as well as to Wolffer Estate Vineyard in Sagaponack, where they and other officials including East Hampton Town Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc and Southampton Town Supervisor Jay Schneiderman held a working lunch.
“Montauk’s a big community that never had a community center,” Mr. Thiele told Mr. Heastie at Wolffer Estate.
The Playhouse was originally constructed by Carl Fisher as a 12-court tennis arena. Decades later, the building had fallen into disrepair. In 1999, after a developer’s plans for the structure were opposed by the community, the property was donated to the town and the Playhouse Community Center Foundation formed to help the town restore and convert the building into a community center, rescuing it from demolition. Restoration commenced in 2003, and in 2006 the eastern half of the building was reopened as a community center with day care programs, a fitness center, a senior citizens nutrition program, a town clerk annex, and recreational programs.
The aquatic center is to feature a 32-by-33-foot shallow pool for instruction, recreation, and physical therapy, and a 25-yard, four-lane lap pool for instruction, recreation, and training. Fund-raising for a second phase of the project, a second floor, multiuse cultural center, is ongoing.
“This will help to finish the project,” Mr. Thiele told Mr. Heastie of the state award. “This will push it to the top.”
“Fred put it on our radar,” Mr. Heastie said of the project.
