Allied Optical Plan getting set to close after 55 years downtown
It’s Tuesday morning in downtown Riverhead and the going-out-of-business sale is unofficially underway at Allied Optical Plan on West Main Street.
At 9:52 a.m., about an hour after store owner Jerry Steiner releases the lock on his front door, the first customer of the day walks in. Marilyn Downs Aldrich, a lifelong East Ender and Aquebogue native, is looking for a new pair of glasses.
“Everything’s half-price,” Mr. Steiner tells her.
One day earlier, the 60-year-old businessman went to contract with a buyer for his building at 20 West Main St. Developer Georgia Malone, who recently renovated the now-sparkling building at 30 West Main, next door to Mr. Steiner’s business, hopes to do something similar with the brick structure that has housed Allied Optical Plan since 1975.
It’s the end of the line for a business that, its owner admits, died years ago.
In the three hours we spent at Allied Optical Plan Tuesday morning, two customers came through the door. A handful of others popped in, but mostly just to shoot the breeze.
Mr. Steiner described Ms. Aldrich an “out-of-habit” customer; her patient card revealed that she first bought glasses at Allied Optical Plan in 1966. She remembers when the shop was run by Mr. Steiner’s father, Selig, better known by the nickname Sol.
The son of a plumber, the elder Mr. Steiner grew up on East 92nd Street in Brooklyn. He helped his dad out as a kid but eventually realized, perhaps because of an incident in which he got stuck in a boiler and had to be squirted with oil to escape, that he needed to find his own line of work. He attended Ohio State University and became a licensed optometrist in 1946.
Mr. Steiner spent the next 14 years working for eyeglass retailers in Brooklyn and Massapequa before venturing east. When he found his first location at 55 West Main St. in Riverhead, he intended to open it as a new store for his employer, Group Optical. His boss had different plans.
“He showed his loyalty to my father and said, ‘It’s yours,’ ” Jerry recalled, saying his dad then moved the family to Northampton.
Mr. Steiner was permitted to tap into Group Optical’s line of credit until he got on his feet. Eventually, he was running Allied Optical Plan on his own.
An advertisement published when the business moved to 20 West Main St. boasted of having served 120,000 customers in its first 15 years and showed the business had six employees.
“Back in the day” is a phrase you’ll hear often hear any time you pull up a chair and let Jerry pour you a glass of whiskey at Allied Optical Plan.
He often rails against the current state of downtown businesses but also talks about the glory days of the 1960s, when his father’s generation had it “really good” on Main Street.
“Every store was filled,” he said. “There was Riverhead and Patchogue and nothing else. The fire marshal would come around and say, ‘No more people in the stores.’ ”
Jerry Steiner began working for his old man when he was 8 years old. He said he’d sit in the back and screw side pieces onto eyeglass frames. Most days, after a few hours of work, his father would take him to the old Erma’s Diner on East Main Street for a bite to eat. Other days, they’d visit Cy White’s in Polish Town.
Eventually, the younger Mr. Steiner spent two years at Eastern Michigan University and, later, New York Community College. He worked at Sears Optical in Bay Shore during college but returned to work at the family business after earning his optician’s license. Father and son worked side by side for another 30 years. Sol officially retired in 2005 and died five years later at the age of 85.
“He was always a really smart dude,” Mr. Steiner said of his father. “He was a real businessman. This business is all about him.”
The Steiners’ business is one of several multi-generational enterprises still operating — for now, at least — downtown. Liz Strebel recently listed her family business, Riverhead Diner & Grill, for sale. There are also the Balzanos at Main Street Haircutters, the Meras family at Star Confectionery and the Barths and Griffings, whose names hang, respectively, on the signs of their pharmacy and hardware stores.
Before Ms. Aldrich left to purchase her new glasses Tuesday, a friend told her to ask Mr. Steiner about the old “breakfast club” in Riverhead. The term refers to a group of local businessmen who would line the counter at Papa Nick’s — as Star Confectionery is better known — before heading to work.
“There’s my old man and there’s the superintendent of schools,” Mr. Steiner joked. “The whole counter would be filled. Captains of industry.
“Now the old guard is gone. They’re all gone.”
At 10:59 a.m. Tuesday, the back door to Allied Optical opened. In stepped Bruce Tria of WRIV, who had signed off from his morning show an hour earlier. He was the first neighboring businessman to drop by for a little gossip and a laugh that morning. He wasn’t the last.
In fact, within 10 minutes of Mr. Tria’s arrival Tuesday, two more men stopped by “The Clubhouse,” as Jerry calls his store. Claudio Sciara of Uncle Joe’s Pizza popped in next, followed by Bobby Hartmann of Mainstream House, a nearby addiction recovery facility.
The men stood around for a few minutes talking local politics and business. When his friends aren’t in the store, Mr. Steiner kills time on Facebook, where he’s established an identity lampooning Riverhead politicians, the local media and anything related to the “North Fork lifestyle.” He even published a satirical Riverhead newspaper in 2010 that featured articles on “bum wines and sausages.” When the News-Review took his photo for an article about The Riverhead Rebel’s first and only issue, Mr. Steiner insisted it be taken with him reading the paper on the toilet.
• Related: See our five favorite artifacts from Allied Optical
His brand of comedy has won over many of his downtown neighbors over the years.
“I’ll miss him,” said Mr. Sciara, who bought his restaurant in 2014 from Frank Spatola, another clubhouse regular. “These guys all got years with this guy. I only had months.”
A lot still has to happen before Allied Optical Plan closes. A best-case scenario, Mr. Steiner estimates, is that he’ll be gone in two months. But while his business is loaded with all sorts of relics from Riverhead’s past, he’s not overly sentimental about the closing. It’s something he’s wanted for a while. His wife, too.
“Am I sentimental about him closing? No, no, it’s good,” Kathy Steiner said while calling into the shop Tuesday. “He’s not making any money. It’s time.”
Mr. Steiner said that business has been declining for many years, and the past five have been particularly challenging. That’s when, he said, the industry changed from “optical people to marketing people.”
He said he knew he was doomed when a customer called to ask for help ordering glasses on zennioptical.com. He walked the woman through the process as long as she promised to bring the glasses in so he could see what $26 can get you online.
“It was a quality pair of glasses,” he said, estimating he’d have to charge about $130 for the same product. “I said, ‘I am done. This is it.’ ”
A critic of anyone who glorifies downtown revitalization efforts — “Route 58 is Riverhead and Main Street is just done,” he said — Mr. Steiner admitted he shares in the blame for the lack of success his business has had in recent years.
Because he’s an optician and not an optometrist like his father, his customers have to obtain prescriptions elsewhere. He also refuses to deal with insurance companies, chalking it up to “too much paperwork.”
“I’m a dinosaur and I don’t want to change,” he said. “I’m my own worst enemy. I never updated this place once over the years.
“My accountant comes in here and laughs. He says I’d be better off locking the door and staying home.”
Mr. Steiner said he doesn’t know what’s in store for him moving forward. He’s spent a lot of his time in recent years at his second home in Maine, but he’s not the only one with a say in the matter.
He met his wife at Club Marakesh in Westhampton Beach in the late 1970s. Kathy said Jerry taught her how to dance that night and “that was it.”
They were married in 1980 and moved to Shoreham, where they raised two children. Their older son, Andrew, 32, runs a restaurant on the Jersey Shore. He never had any interest in the family business and instead spent his formative years working at Phil’s in Wading River before going into that industry himself.
The couple’s younger son, Jay, was diagnosed as an infant with neurofibromatosis, a genetic disorder that disturbs cell growth in the nervous system, causing tumors to form on nerve tissue. By age 13, his tumors became aggressive. He died in 2007 at the age of 22.
“That knocks the wind out of your sails,” Mr. Steiner said. “It reframes your life. What’s important to you changes. Money means nothing.”
The Steiners had their “batteries recharged” in 2012 with the birth of their grandson, Jax. After the store closes, Kathy wants to move to New Jersey — a state Jerry refers to as “the armpit of the East Coast” — to be closer to their son and grandson.
Wherever they end up, the people who do shop regularly at Allied Optical Plan will miss their favorite optician and resident funnyman.
Many of the customers he’s maintained are folks like Ms. Aldrich, who have only known Allied Optical Plan, and customers from the Hamptons who get a better price through him than they would from their local boutiques.
The second set of customers to walk into Allied Optical Plan Tuesday morning were Jim and Cathy Watters of Calverton. They represent the third type of customer who’s remained loyal to the downtown store. They’re transplants from Nassau County who were referred to Mr. Steiner by an area optometrist. Then they fell in love with his personality.
“Any news on the sale?” Ms. Watters asked as she walked in.
“Signed the contract yesterday,” Mr. Steiner responded.
At first the couple was happy for him. Then Mr. Watters, a retired cop, looked down and mumbled softly.
“It’s actually kind of sad,” he said.