• John Wilson
• April 13,2022

For New York–based interior designer Phillip Thomas, the renovation of the Bellport Community Center’s bowling alley is a project that brims with nostalgia. He’s been visiting the charming village since he was just four years old, and when the opportunity arose to restore the 90-year-old alley, he knew it was one he couldn’t pass up.

“I sit on the board of a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) of the Bellport Village Program Fund, and every year we try to help the village execute projects they don’t necessarily have the budget for,” he says. The entire committee saw the promise in renovating the basement recreation area and bowling alley, and asked Phillip—the only designer on the committee—to oversee the entire project.

It’s easy to fall in love with the charm of Bellport, located on Long Island’s Great South Bay, which the designer states is a “wonderful town with a year-round community, with its own natural private beach and bucolic ferry. It’s also been rated one of the top 10 seaside villages in the U.S.” Throughout the year, it’s common to see residents driving to the marina at the end of Bellport Lane paying “homage to the Great South Bay,” he adds.

BEFORE: The alley was basically unusable, with no color, and paint chipping everywhere.

AFTER: There was a lot of heart and soul put into this project, and a ton of paint. “Sometimes it takes a lot of detail to make something look simple,” Phillip says. “That was the case here.”

But the community center, which was home to town meetings, the village theater, and the children’s summer camp, had fallen into disrepair, and Phillip realized it was time to revamp this important mainstay of the community.

“I am the youngest of three and remember going down to there in the mid-1980s,” he says. “I remember how big a part of the summer community that alley was.”