We talked with Bob Coughlan, a principal at Tritec Real Estate Co., based in Setauket, about how the company he and his brother Jim founded 35 years ago is developing projects in Long Island’s downtowns and elsewhere.
Tell me how and why the company is rebranding. It’s to reflect what we’ve been doing as an organization for over 15 years and focusing on developing multifamily and mixed-use projects in downtown, walkable communities where we can help revitalize the community.
Can you give one example of a project you’ve done? New Village in Patchogue is one of the early if not first downtown revitalizations efforts on Long Island. We successfully built 291 residential units, 45,000 square feet of retail, and 17,000 square feet of office space.
How do you develop multiuse, since it has so many elements? It does, but it reflects the character and fabric of the areas we’re developing. Over the last decades, Long Island, being the first suburb, broke down uses into a Euclidean planning process. They separated office and industrial space. Retail was in another area. If you go back in time, communities were built up with a mix of various uses within walking distance of each other. People live, work, play within a radius they could walk to.
Can you tell me projects you’re involved with as we speak, or upcoming? We have a number of them. Lindenhurst. The Wel with just one L. We’re in the process of finishing a residential multifamily apartment project with 260 residential units that will be about two city blocks from Wellwood Avenue. It opens in early April.
How is demand for that project? Over 1,000 people expressed an interest in renting space prior to our opening in April. A good number of people will sign leases at some point in April or May. That project and the other projects we’re focused on are catalysts for economic development. Since we started construction, over 17 new restaurants signed leases on Wellwood Avenue in Lindenhurst.
Read the full article in The Long Island Press
