Concrete Contractor in Commack, NY

Commack is the largest place we work and the most administratively awkward, because it is not in one town. The hamlet straddles the boundary between the Town of Huntington and the Town of Smithtown, spreading 36,536 residents across about 12.25 square miles. It has the highest owner-occupied rate of the places covered on this site at 93.7 percent, 11,640 households, a median owner-occupied home value of $678,200 and a median household income of $169,792. It is also, as descriptions of the hamlet regularly note, a place without a walkable downtown or a Main Street - a postwar suburb laid over what had been farmland, described historically as flat land with rich soil and thick oak forests.

The name comes down from the Secatogue, most likely from Winnecomac, understood to mean pleasant lands, a reference to soil good enough to farm. Traces of that older Commack survive in the built record: the Commack Methodist Church of 1789, the oldest Methodist building in New York State and a National Register listing, the Carll S. Burr Mansion, and the Harned Brothers Sawmill from the 1840s. Everything else is highway and subdivision. Jericho Turnpike, Route 25, runs the length of it, and the Long Island Expressway, the Northern State Parkway, the Sunken Meadow State Parkway and the old Long Island Motor Parkway all touch the hamlet.

Which Town Issues Your Permit Depends on Which Side of the Line You Are On

This is the single most useful thing to know about concrete work in Commack, and it catches homeowners and contractors alike. Because the hamlet is split between two towns, the code that governs work in the road right-of-way in front of your house depends on which side of the municipal boundary the property sits, and the two towns do not do it the same way. On the Smithtown side, an excavation in a Town street requires a permit under Section 245-15 of the Town of Smithtown Code, and the Chapter 245 fee schedule prices a residential driveway apron at $150 and a commercial apron at $200 under Section 245-18A(2), with curb or curb cut and sidewalk excavation at $150 for the first 100 feet plus $1 per foot thereafter under Section 245-18A(8). Smithtown also sets a minimum concrete replacement size of 10 by 10 feet for restoration work under Section 245-22F, which is a specification worth knowing before anybody cuts a small patch out of an apron.

On the Huntington side, Chapter 173 of the Town of Huntington Code governs instead. Section 173-1 requires a permit before anyone constructs a sidewalk or curb or makes a curb cut along a Town street or highway, and the Town's Highway Office publishes a permit for work in the right-of-way at $100. Huntington adds a wrinkle that Smithtown does not: if the apron is to be built of anything other than concrete or asphalt - Belgian block, pavers, light fixtures - the applicant is required to submit a hold harmless agreement with Suffolk County, with an additional county fee. That single difference has stalled more than one job that was scheduled on the assumption that a decorative apron is a design choice rather than a filing. On top of both, Jericho Turnpike is a state route and the Long Island Expressway and the parkways are not town roads at all, so a property fronting one of those has a different agency again. We establish the jurisdiction before we set a date.

See Commack, NY on Google Maps — we cover the whole area from Smithtown.