CVS Pharmacy, East Setauket New York
 

The CVS Corporation in conjunction with Slayton Development earmarked a corner property in the Village of Setauket for construction of a stand alone CVS Pharmacy. The corner of NYS Route 25A and Bennets road in Setauket masks the gateway to both the commercial district to the east and the historic residential neighborhood to the north. Within a quarter mile lie the 350 year old Thompson House and the headquarters for the Three Village Historical Society.

The developer’s first consideration to place the CVS prototypical store on the corner was met by great opposition from the community and the locally elected officials as being out and inappropriate to the context of the community. However, the same people who were prepared to fight to stop the project realized that CVS had the zoning for the site. Community members worked to get a few conditions applied to the site and a building plan that could fit within the community. As part of that, CVS and the developer agreed to hire a local architect to design the building and we were commissioned to do the project.

From the plan CVS uses to layout all their stores our firm first reduced the scale of the 10,000 SF box store into a more manageable form. Rooflines were brought down and the mansard discarded for more traditional gables and slopes. Dryvit siding standard to the CVS was discarded for traditional clapboard look using fiber cement board siding. All signage is designed to be lit from the front rather than the more modern backlit signs.

Although unaware, the client received a number of simple green building applications, which should help reduce energy cost over the life of the building. First two sides of the building were placed into the hillside giving the wall an ambient exterior temperature of sixty degrees in wintertime. In addition, clerestory windows run the length of the west side of the building to allow natural light to penetrate the building in the afternoon.