Work It

For Kelsey Marechal …

Change is the opportunity to try again. And it isn’t always a good thing, but change is an inevitable thing, and so at the very least we must try to “work it,” be ready for it.

If you do not work it, change is likely to sweep you along, depositing you where it sees fit. Of course, you could be hydroplaning … and no amount of steering will help.

The closure of Kmart was the inevitable change, because the potato farm, Woolco, Caldor all failed, too. Why continue the century-long trend? Why not imagine this prime, 2-acre lot ringed by parking spaces and retailers, close to transportation and good schools, as something else?

When Target, the current suitor, failed to make quarterly earnings, the Friends of Reasonably Priced Housing saw an opportunity to circulate their petition in favor of small apartments with common spaces. Plans already drawn show a modest high-rise, with finished basements and Neoclassical features (like Ancient Rome).

F.A.R.P.H. is a coalition of small-business interests and husbands who see better ways of managing the high cost of housing in the Hamptons. Shopping malls, because of their broad, often treeless positioning, can be excellent places to see the sun set. And the Commons is one such mall.

Also sharpening their skates … I mean, roller skates … is C.O.O.L. The Coalition of Outward Locomotion needs no further introduction. Funding is not fully in place. C.O.O.L.’s founders are waiting on a few more art auctions.

But here, too, plans already exist. And they are gorgeous. Working with mainly terracotta, craftsmen will so alter and improve the existing square that in just under a year you will strap on your wheels and boogie into the affordable world of rollerskating. Ah, the joy of self-propelled ellipses to the beat!

Weekends will welcome a farmers market to the center of the rink, and because of its rugged styling and relative high-ground location, the Rink in The Commons will continue to serve as a fallout shelter for years to come.

The last group, we haven’t heard from for a while. Meetings plunged members into despair; as they couldn’t help but reminisce, they stopped meeting. Members moved, members grew old.

Until now. Reinvigorated by the market jitters, the Committee to Save the Drive-in Movie Theater Where King Kullen Is, like the phoenix — in fact, like one of those magnificent sunsets — rises.