5 Photos
The Flanders Riverside and Northampton Community Association recently completed upgrades to the Riverside traffic circle. COURTESY FRNCA
The Flanders Riverside and Northampton Community Association recently completed upgrade to the signs welcoming visitors to Flanders. COURTESY FRNCA
The Flanders Riverside and Northampton Community Association recently completed upgrades to the entrance to Peconic River Park. COURTESY FRNCA
The Flanders Riverside and Northampton Community Association recently completed upgrades to the Riverside welcome sign at the gateway to the hamlet. COURTESY FRNCA
The Flanders Riverside and Northampton Community Association recently completed landscaping upgrades to the Riverside traffic circle. COURTESY FRNCA
Heading north into Riverside, motorists driving along Flanders Road may have noticed an array of upgrades: freshened landscaping and plantings along the way to the traffic circle.
Thank the volunteers of the Flanders Riverside and Northampton Community Association. They recently completed the cleanup of areas near the signs welcoming visitors to Riverside, Flanders and Peconic River Park, along with the center flagpole at the Riverside roundabout.
“I think the FRNCA beautification program, completed this year again with a generous grant from the Town of Southampton, as well as with donations by FRNCA members, is an ongoing success,” former FRNCA President Vince Taldone said this week. “I also believe it is as important to downtown Riverhead as it is to those in Southampton.”
“We’ve maintained the rotary for 20 years, almost,” said Taldone, who handles press for the group, speaking of the traffic circle at the Flanders Road terminus.
Back when they rebuilt the traffic circle to add an extra lane, the county was going to flatten the area around the flagpole, put in some stamped brick and be done with it, “And we said, ‘no,’” Taldone recalled. The county was in charge of cutting the grass, but, he recalled, “We stepped in.”
County officials agreed to put in drought-resistant native plantings if the community association would maintain it, and FRNCA agreed.
“It didn’t seem impossible,” Taldone related. But the circle plot needed irrigation because all the plants were new.
The circle’s center island could be a magnet for litter and on at least two occasions homeless people tried to sleep next to the flagpole. It got completely out of control, with tall grasses, Taldone said. “It has been a major thing of ours.”
“We wanted the entrance to the gateway to be beautiful, so we said we’d do it,” Taldone said. Fundraisers defrayed the cost , until the COVID pandemic shutdown.
“It became really difficult,” he said.
The town stepped in and increased its annual grant, and that covers most of the cost of the center island. For the remainder, FRNCA used reserves until they could have fundraisers. “We funded it ourselves for the most part for years,” Taldone said. He credited Suffolk County Legislator Bridget Fleming with brokering the deal with county officials that allowed them to maintain the rotary, plus Councilmen Rick Martel and Tommy John Schiavoni with helping them get mulch.
“We needed a fortune in mulch and the town agreed to give it to us. I have to say they stepped up,” said Taldone, a frequent critic of town endeavors.
Volunteers and a hired landscaper spruced up the island, did trimming, got rid of dead plants and weeds, and saw to the repair of the flagpole.
“We take really good care of it, and we’re pretty proud of it, and we want folks to know we do it,” Taldone said this week. “This is a happy story.”
There are three additional spots FRNCA beautified: The entrance to the kayak launch on Peconic Avenue at the Peconic River Park. On County Route 105, where the signs welcome visitors to Riverside and Flanders, is also under FRNCA’s care.
With the rotary island, volunteers are part maintenance, part cleanup crew.
Volunteers are also the holiday decorating committee. They added festive ribbons to bus shelters along Flanders Road, improvements FRNCA pushed for.
