Officials Break Ground For New Ambulance Barn On North Sea Road

Getting ready for the official groundbreaking, Donna Kreymborg, chairwoman of the board of directors of Southampton Volunteer Ambulance, thought it would be nice to invite business owners along North Sea Road, where the new ambulance barn will be sited.

The gesture elicited a reaction she described as “amazing.”

Steve and P.J. D’Angelo, owners of North Sea Hardware, arrived at the groundbreaking on Tuesday, May 17, with a gift: a golden shovel to commemorate the occasion.

“I thought that was really special, why I love North Sea so much,” said Kreymborg, who had the chance to pose for a photo with her son Thomas, one of the company’s newest members, both holding the shovel. Now 18, he was just 2 when his mother joined Southampton Volunteer Ambulance.

Kreymborg, Ian King, district EMS supervisor, and 1st Assistant Chief Joseph Riccardi welcomed dignitaries, colleagues and neighbors to the celebration this week.

Those wielding shovels — golden and otherwise — broke ground on a new $3.5 million, 8,600-square-foot ambulance barn for Southampton Volunteer Ambulance on Tuesday. Much more than a traditional barn, the new facility will be home to an array of features lacking in the current headquarters.

One of the busiest agencies for trauma response, Southampton Volunteer Ambulance’s territory is one of the largest in the region. Its 45 members serve a 35-square-mile area that includes the Shinnecock Territory, Shinnecock Hills, Tuckahoe, North Sea and Water Mill.

It’s the largest service area in town and the second-largest in Suffolk County, Southampton Town Supervisor Jay Schneiderman said.

The current facility can’t fit all the members at once, meaning officials can’t do all the training they’d like to do in-house. In fact, they have to move their ambulances out of the bays when they have meetings.

There are no showers or bunks for volunteers, some of whom travel from as far away as Port Jefferson to serve.

“Their barn was too small for the equipment and volunteers. The new building is substantially larger,” Schneiderman pointed out.

The new facility will include a kitchen, offices, a garage with four bays, meeting and training rooms, two small bunk rooms, and a basement for storage.

The original plan considered a metal paneled building, but in response to input from the community and the Southampton Town Planning Board, the designers changed the pitch of the roof to better accommodate solar panels, and will have horizontal siding along the front of the building.

It’s easily twice the size of the original building, which was built some 40 years ago, King explained during an interview about the new barn last winter.

The new building will be constructed on a 1.5-acre parcel right next door to the current barn on North Sea Road. During the November interview, King predicted the existing site will likely be signed over to the town, which could then sell it as surplus, with the proceeds offsetting the cost of construction.

Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. was in Albany on Tuesday, but he sent a message via email.

He wrote, “My congratulations to the Southampton Volunteer Ambulance on the groundbreaking for their new facility. We owe a debt of gratitude for the critical service our emergency services volunteers provide to our community. We have an even greater appreciation for their work since the pandemic. I am thrilled that in Southampton, our volunteers will have the new facility they deserve and for which they have fought for so long and hard.”

“This project has been needed for years and is finally underway,” Schneiderman said. It was developed prior to the pandemic, but the pandemic led to delays and increased costs, the supervisor explained.

“It also made us even more aware of the importance of health care workers, including EMS. We are grateful for these volunteers who put themselves at risk in order to help others,” he said.