TIMES HERALD The Village
Stony Brook • old Field • Strong’S neck • Setauket • eaSt Setauket • South Setauket • Poquot t May 14, 2015
Volume 40, No. 11
$1.00
Revisiting Route 25A SBU students reimagine North Shore ‘Main Street’ By Phil corSo
‘Seeds’ art exhibit honors LT Cherokee
Also, Fleece & Fiber Fair returns, Cinema Arts Centre to host Student Film Festival, ‘Full Monty’ at CMPAC
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Tracking offenders
Legislator Hahn plugs GPS detection to protect domestic violence victims
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Nick Fusco is still in college, but he already has a vision for the Three Village community’s de facto Main Street known as Route 25A. He and his classmates brought that vision to his neighbors Monday night to show what a little dreaming can do for the North Shore’s future. “Our community could look like this,” Fusco said in front of a projected rendering of a reinvented Route 25A, complete with greenhouse spaces, apartment housing, environmentally friendly landscaping and more. “We’ve come up with ways to improve safety, aesthetics and, most importantly, functionality.” Fusco and about a dozen other Stony Brook University students presented at the Setauket Neighborhood House on Monday evening as part of a final project for Professor
Photo by Phil Corso
Stony Brook university professor dr. Marc Fasanella shares his students’ visions at a meeting Monday night.
Marc Fasanella’s ecological art, architecture and design class under the college’s sustainability studies program. The conversation, “Keeping a Sense of Place in the Three Villages,” involved four students presenting PowerPoint slides showing off their visions of reborn Setauket and Stony Brook communities, utilizing existing infrastructure to help employ ecologically-friendly additions and make Three Village a community that retains young people. “We looked at this as a tremendous opportunity for our
students and for the community moving forward,” Fasanella said. “Are we dreaming? Of course we’re dreaming.” The class built off the work of last year’s students, who brainstormed ways to bridge the gap created by the railroad tracks that separate the university from the greater Three Village community. This year’s proposals were met with great praise from residents, civic leaders and officials in attendance Monday. The ideas were bold, including anything from pulling buildings closer to the 25A curbside to make way for
a greater “Main Street” feel to constructing a “green” multitiered parking garage near the train station for both retail space and commuter parking. Shawn Nuzzo, president of the Civic Association of the Setaukets and Stony Brook, applauded the students for daring the community to take a different look at the future of Three Village. His group helped to sponsor the event, alongside the Three Village Community Trust. In an interview, Nuzzo said the Route 25A corridor, espe25A continued on page A14
Convicted Stony Brook home invasion rapist sentenced By Phil corSo
The East Moriches man convicted of raping and sodomizing a woman in Stony Brook was sentenced to 25 years in prison on Thursday at Suffolk County Criminal Court in Riverhead, the district attorney said. Patrick O’Sullivan, 23, pleaded guilty to charges of rape, criminal sexual act, burglary, sexual abuse and conspiracy in relation to the Nov. 20, 2012 incident, at a residence where his victim was house-sitting. Suffolk County District Attorney Tom Spota said the man wore a mask and
carried a loaded rifle when he Spota said. The plot was foiled entered the house through an when the man he tried to hire unlocked door. He fired his notified the police. weapon twice and The conspiracy sexually assaulted charge alone landthe victim after ed O’Sullivan a restraining her concurrent prison with duct tape. term of up to 25 While in cusyears, Spota said. tody at the county O’Sullivan apjail following his peared before arrest, O’Sullivan Judge Barbara was also charged Kahn in county with conspiracy court Thursday after prosecutors morning for senPhoto from Spota’s office tencing. said he tried to hire a hit man to Patrick o’Sullivan. At the sentenckill the victim and ing, he apologized another person he believed to the victim, who also prowould testify against him, vided a statement. He said
he hoped she could one day forgive him, a spokesman for Spota said. In a moving testimony, the woman, who is not being identified because she is the victim of a sex crime, relived the horrific experience and the subsequent days before an arrest was made. “For over an hour that night, I was terrorized, tormented and violated. He showed me bullets and told me I shouldn’t make him use them,” she said in court Tuesday. “He left me in a house tied up, naked, violated, broken and alone. It was 10 days before an arrest was RAPE continued on page A14