Ask someone in Halesite where "the park" is and you'll get three different answers depending on who you ask. There's Halesite Park on Bay Avenue, with its small beach and kayak launch. There's Halesite Marina Park, tucked behind the fire department on New York Avenue. And there's Mill Dam Park, a few hundred feet away at 25 Mill Dam Road, with its bocce courts and its own event calendar. All three sit within easy walking distance of the Nathan Hale memorial rock at the traffic circle, and all three are currently in some phase of public work, funded by three different sources moving on three different clocks.
That overlap is not confusion for its own sake. It's the reason one stretch of the harbor looks finished while another, fifty yards away, still has fencing around it.
Halesite Park Is the One With the Beach
Halesite Park sits on Bay Avenue and functions as the hamlet's gathering spot: a playground, picnic areas, a small beach, and water calm enough for launching a kayak. It's also the site of a state-funded ecological repair project that has nothing to do with parking or piers.
In late 2024, New York awarded more than half a million dollars, $549,955, to the 1653 Foundation to restore the park's degrading shoreline, part of a larger $225 million round of state water quality grants. The problem being addressed is specific: Huntington Harbor is listed as impaired for pathogens, and stormwater running off East Shore Road, combined with runoff from septic systems on unsewered properties upgradient of the park, has been feeding the nitrogen loads that contribute to the harbor's algal blooms. The fix removes a failing seawall and replaces it with a rock sill, an oyster reef, and salt marsh plantings designed to filter that runoff before it reaches the water. Huntington Supervisor Ed Smyth welcomed the funding at the time, calling it assistance for infrastructure the town needed. The 1653 Foundation's executive director, Don Tesoriero, described the living shoreline as a step that both restores natural habitat and manages stormwater without the maintenance burden of a traditional seawall.
This is not the project residents may have watched break ground in 2023. That was next door.
Halesite Marina Park Is the One Behind the Firehouse
Halesite Marina Park is a separate waterfront space directly behind the Halesite Fire Department and just north of Halesite Marina. Where Halesite Park's project is ecological, this one was straightforwardly infrastructural: a 60-year-old bulkhead had reached the end of its service life, and the town replaced it with 520 feet of new composite bulkhead and a new wooden pier. The redesign also added expanded floats for transient and resident boaters, reworked the parking lot to improve traffic flow and add 15 stalls, and swapped the old flagpole for one with LED flag lighting.
The town announced the groundbreaking in December 2023 and targeted completion by the end of the following summer. Nothing in this year's town business points to that project still being under construction. What shows up instead in the 2026 Town Board agenda is a line item folding Halesite Marina Park, along with Mill Dam Marina and Municipal Lot 49, into a broader environmental open space and green energy improvement fund, the kind of appropriation that typically follows a capital project into its maintenance phase rather than precedes it.
Mill Dam Park Is the One With the Festival
A short walk from both of the above, Mill Dam Park at 25 Mill Dam Road runs on a different track entirely. Its bocce courts host a Special Olympics New York training program authorized by the town board this year, and in May 2026 it served as the site of the Huntington Waterfront Festival, organized by the Greater Huntington Boating Council during Safe Boating Week, with food trucks, craft vendors, boats on display, and live music running from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Nothing in the current town record points to Mill Dam Park undergoing the kind of capital rebuild the other two sites have seen. Its current chapter is programming, not construction, which is worth knowing if you've been waiting to see fencing go up there the way it did at the other two.
Here's how the three break down side by side:
| Park | Location | What's Happening | Who's Behind It |
|---|---|---|---|
| Halesite Park | Bay Avenue | Living shoreline restoration: seawall removal, rock sill, oyster reef, salt marsh | 1653 Foundation, $549,955 NY state water quality grant |
| Halesite Marina Park | Behind the fire department, north of Halesite Marina | Bulkhead, pier, and parking rebuild, targeted for completion by summer 2024 | Town of Huntington |
| Mill Dam Park | 25 Mill Dam Road | Bocce court programming, host site for the 2026 Waterfront Festival | Town of Huntington, Greater Huntington Boating Council |
The Longer Plan Is to Connect All Three
None of this is happening in isolation from a bigger idea. The 1653 Foundation's own description of its Harbor Walkway project frames the ambition plainly: a linear walkway connecting underused parks and reimagining Halesite Park into a genuine event space along the shoreline, meant eventually to serve boaters and the public alike.
As of this spring, that ambition had moved from concept toward active coordination. A LICA Road Warriors report on the effort describes Supervisor Ed Smyth, Councilwoman Theresa Mari, Suffolk County Legislator Stephanie Bontempi, State Senator Mario Mattera, and Congressman Nick LaLota working together on a plan to revitalize four town-owned sites at once: Halesite Marina Park, Halesite Park, Mill Dam Road, and the former American Legion Hall site, with a new waterfront esplanade at the center of it. Legislator Bontempi and a state Assembly grant have already secured $400,000 specifically for improvements at the American Legion Hall site. The broader effort ties into the town's Local Waterfront Revitalization Plan, with Cornell Cooperative Extension assisting on stormwater mapping for the North Shore. Separately, the 1653 Foundation has also been pursuing grant funding for a targeted vulnerability assessment of the stormwater system at Mill Dam Road and Park itself.
The existing Harbor Walk connecting these sites has been described by officials involved in the project as suffering from aging infrastructure and years of deferred design work, which is part of why the current esplanade plan treats it as a rebuild rather than a patch job.
What This Means If You're Walking the Harbor This Fall
Two practical notes for anyone who uses the water here rather than just walking past it. The Town Board this year established updated fees for the Halesite North and South Transient Docks, so boaters tying up there should check current rates rather than assume last season's pricing still applies. And if you were hoping to secure a kayak mooring permit for this season, the window has already closed: the Town's Maritime Services office confirms the 2026 kayak permit application process is no longer accepting applications, which means anyone who wants harbor storage next year will want to watch for the 2027 opening rather than wait for a fall window that isn't coming.
None of these three parks is standing still, and none of them is on the other's schedule. That's less a sign of dysfunction than of a harbor with enough going on that no single agency, town department, or nonprofit is running all of it. Knowing which name belongs to which stretch of shoreline is mostly just useful for making sense of what you're looking at the next time you walk past the fire department or cut through on Mill Dam Road.
If you're weighing what any of this means for a home near the harbor, or just want a clearer read on how Halesite's waterfront investment tends to move property values along the way, Scott Van Son is happy to walk through it over a conversation.
This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional about your situation.
