Kathleen Lynn

“We looked at other towns but discovered we had fallen in love with Parsippany and wanted to stay,” said Pacan, 36, a corporate trainer in the financial industry. (Although the township’s name includes a reference to the neighborhood of Troy Hills, it is often referred to simply as Parsippany.)

They appreciated the friends they had made, as well as the township’s cultural diversity — about a third of the population is Asian, and there is a large Hispanic community — and its open space.

“It’s a nice balance; you’re away from the city but not in the middle of nowhere,” said Simon, 34, a web developer and video producer. The couple moved into a split-level in May 2018, paying $530,000.

Like Pacan and Simon, many homebuyers in Parsippany are drawn to its proximity to several major highways, including Interstate 80, Interstate 287, Route 10 and Route 46.

“You can hop on the highway, and in an hour you can get to the city, the mountains or the beach,” said Cheryl Schuck, a RE/MAX agent in nearby Montville.

Some of those highways go right through the township, causing rush-hour backups. “Traffic is a huge quality-of-life issue,” said Michael Soriano, 51, the mayor of Parsippany. The township is updating its master plan, and Soriano said he hoped the new plan would address traffic problems.

But many residents don’t have to commute far; they work in Morris County’s many corporate offices, a number of which are in Parsippany, including the headquarters of the Avis Budget Group.

“A lot of people come here for their jobs,” said Triveni Gurikar, a RE/MAX agent.

But the office vacancy rate is more than 20%, reflecting the soft office market across northern New Jersey.

Parth Parikh, 27, grew up in Parsippany with his brother and parents, who emigrated from India in 1987. He has fond memories of playing street hockey and cricket in the Intervale Gardens apartment complex with friends of various backgrounds — Colombian, Italian, Polish, African American.

Parikh is now attending law school at the University of Notre Dame but hopes eventually to return to Parsippany, where his parents own a town house.

“Growing up in a diverse town, you appreciate different perspectives and learning from other people,” he said.

What You’ll Find

Parsippany-Troy Hills is Morris County’s most populous township, with about 53,000 residents spread over 25 square miles, in the eastern part of the county. (In an odd quirk, some of those residents have Morris Plains ZIP codes but technically live in Parsippany.) The population exploded in the 1960s, during the post-World War II suburban building boom, so many of the homes date to that era, with plenty of Cape Cods, split-levels and ranches.

But one of the most picturesque areas is Mount Tabor, which was founded 100 years earlier, in 1869, as a Methodist camp meeting, drawing visitors for short summer stays in tents. Now Victorian homes line the narrow, hilly streets of the neighborhood, which is on the National Register of Historic Places.

Other areas, including Lake Hiawatha and Lake Parsippany, were developed as summer retreats. Small cottages in these lake neighborhoods generally start at around $250,000, but many of the original homes have been expanded, or knocked down and replaced.

What You’ll Pay

Home prices generally start at about $150,000 for a one-bedroom condo in a converted garden apartment complex and can go over $1 million for the largest houses.

As of April 20, there were about 130 properties listed for sale, from a two-bedroom cottage for $127,000 to a six-bedroom house for $1.5 million.

The median home price was $405,000 for the 12 months ending April 1, up 1.3% from the previous 12 months, Gurikar said, citing data from the Garden State Multiple Listing Service. And the market has gained momentum this spring, she added, with a number of homes selling for more than the asking price.

Parsippany also has some 7,800 rental units, many in garden complexes, where rents generally start at around $1,200 for a one-bedroom.

Parsippany’s retail businesses, including a Target, a Home Depot and a movie theater, mostly cluster in strip malls along busy Route 46. While that makes shopping convenient for residents, Route 46 is not a cozy downtown where you bump into your neighbors on the sidewalk.

“It appears like it was planned for vehicles, not for pedestrians or bicycles,” Soriano said.

But on North Beverwyck Road, in the Lake Hiawatha neighborhood, there is a small shopping district with a drugstore, deli, comic book store and ice cream shop. The township recently received a Walkable Community Workshop grant from the North Jersey Transportation Planning Authority to look at ways to make that area more pedestrian-friendly, Mr. Soriano said.

Because the township is large and divided by highways, some residents get their sense of connection within their neighborhoods, rather than from the township as a whole. Andrea Martone, an agent with Realty Executives Platinum, who grew up in the Lake Parsippany neighborhood, said, “When you’re in a lake community, that feels more like a tight-knit community.”

Still, civic leaders make an effort to bring everyone together with township-wide events, including an annual Flavors of India celebration that recognizes Parsippany’s large Indian community.

The township has a number of popular Chinese and Indian restaurants, including Shan Shan Noodles, Noodle Wong, Spice Grill, Tandoori Flames and Chand Palace.

Outdoor activities include golf at the Knoll Country Club and hiking through Troy Meadows, a 3,100-acre wildlife preserve.

The Parsippany-Troy Hills school district serves about 7,000 students from prekindergarten through 12th grade. The district has 10 elementary schools, two middle schools and two high schools, Parsippany High School and Parsippany Hills High School.

Average SAT scores for the two high schools in 2017-2018 were 583 in reading and writing and 598 in mathematics, compared with statewide averages of 542 and 543. About 90 percent of graduates go on to further education, and 75 percent attend four-year colleges.

Parsippany is about 30 miles west of Times Square, in Manhattan. Lakeland Bus Lines’ Bus 46 takes about 60 to 65 minutes to get to the Port Authority Bus Terminal; the fare is $11.35 one way, or $95.45 for 10 trips.

Commuters can also drive to train stations in neighboring Denville or Morris Plains, which have New Jersey Transit rail service to New York Penn Station. From Morris Plains, the trip takes about 70 minutes and costs $15, or $436 for a monthly pass.

As Parsippany is crisscrossed by highways, commuters who drive have several options, including Interstate 80, Route 10 and Route 46, which run east-west across the township, and Interstate 287, which runs north-south. The drive to New York City can take an hour or two during rush hour, depending on traffic.

Arts and crafts designer Gustav Stickley built a log house on the western edge of Parsippany in the early 20th century. The property, which he was forced to sell in 1917 after declaring bankruptcy, is now a 30-acre park and historic landmark known as the Stickley Museum at Craftsman Farms.

Driving to work is easy Walking, not so much

Kayla Pacan and Patrick Simon bought a town house in Parsippany-Troy Hills, New Jersey, in 2012, drawn by the township’s easy highway access and location halfway between their jobs in Middlesex and Bergen counties. After about five years, the couple began searching for a larger home.

Driving to work is easy. Walking, not so much

“People tend to stay, and their children tend to stay,” said Wehrheim, 70, supervisor for the Suffolk County town of Smithtown, where Kings Park is one of several hamlets.

“You have a lot of shoreline, and people gravitate to that,” he said, referring to the large stretches of parkland along the Long Island Sound and the Nissequogue River. Also appealing: the school system and Kings Park’s location on a Long Island Rail Road line.

The hamlet grew up around a state psychiatric hospital that treated patients for more than a century, before closing in 1996. Many of the old hospital buildings remain, because of the cost of demolition; they stand as eerie reminders of an earlier era’s approach to treating the mentally ill. Part of the old hospital property is now Nissequogue River State Park.

The beaches and open space were a draw for Jenna Castoro, 40, and her husband, Chris Castoro, 45, who moved to Kings Park in October 2017 from Hicksville, New York. They paid $499,000 for a four-bedroom ranch house with a pool, Jenna Castoro said, and “we got a lot more for our money here.”

Jenna Castoro said they enjoy relaxing at the beach after work on summer evenings, and they also appreciate the small class sizes at their 8-year-old daughter’s school. One downside, though, is the hourlong drive to their jobs in Nassau County — his in information technology, hers in hospital billing.

“I love it,” Jenna Castoro said of Kings Park. “I just hate the commute.”

Kevin Johnston, a retired high school English teacher and longtime resident, who is a member of the board of education, described the hamlet as “a slice of America: it’s comfortable, it’s homey.”

A number of Johnston’s former students have returned after college, he said: “They hit a certain age, and they realize this is where they want to raise their kids.”

Scott Paisley, an agent with Signature Premier Properties in Smithtown, who has lived in Kings Park for seven years, said buyers like the small-town feel. “It’s more laid-back, and a little quiet, but you’re only six minutes away from Commack and all the shopping on Jericho Turnpike,” he said.

Kings Park’s own shopping district, on Main Street, has been the focus of recent revitalization efforts by the chamber of commerce and the Kings Park Civic Association, which have worked with two nonprofits, Vision Long Island and the Regional Plan Association. Plans call for drawing more people into the shopping district by encouraging multifamily and mixed-use construction in the area. To support such development, the state has authorized $20 million for sewer service for the Main Street area. Wehrheim said he expects sewer construction to start by 2020.

— What You’ll Find

Kings Park is part of the town of Smithtown, in western Suffolk County. It has a population of about 21,000, including about 4,000 residents in the section of Fort Salonga that is in the Kings Park school district and is generally considered part of Kings Park.

The hamlet has mostly single-family houses, with a number of 1950s and 1960s subdivisions filled with ranch houses, colonials, split-levels and raised ranches.

The San Remo neighborhood, near the Nissequogue River, was developed as a summer community in the 1920s, when the publisher of an Italian-language newspaper in New York City teamed up with a developer to offer free newspaper subscriptions to buyers. Prices there start at about $300,000 for an older bungalow on less than a quarter-acre and go up to about $700,000 for newer construction.

Fort Salonga, at the western end of Kings Park, offers larger homes, of 2,200 to 5,000 square feet, on 1- to 2-acre wooded lots near the Long Island Sound. Prices there typically range from about $625,000 to $2 million, said George McKnight, of Century 21 McKnight Realtors, in Kings Park.

There is one co-op community, which began life as a rental garden-apartment complex; one-bedrooms there range from about $220,000 to $260,000. And there is an age-restricted rental complex, Kings Park Manor, that offers apartments to tenants ages 55 and up, with rents starting at $1,400.

Nordeen Accardi of Coldwell Banker, in Huntington, said she often works with buyers moving from New York City who start their searches in higher-profile Huntington, but then discover they can afford more land and a bigger house if they look east, to Kings Park. “We have to educate them,” Accardi said.

— What You’ll Pay

Single-family home prices generally start in the mid-$300,000s and range up to around $1.2 million, with most of the pricier homes in the Fort Salonga area of the hamlet, McKnight said. As of March 10, the Multiple Listing Service of Long Island showed about 30 homes listed for sale in Kings Park, ranging from a three-bedroom ranch with an asking price of $359,900 to a newer stone house, with three master suites, for $1 million.

The median home price in the 12 months ending March 19 was $450,000, up 2.5 percent from the same period a year earlier. As the supply of homes for sale is limited, McKnight said, properties that are appropriately priced tend sell in about a month.

On Main Street, there are popular restaurants like Relish, Ciro’s and Cafe Red. The hamlet also has a couple of strip malls, including one just south of the train station that offers a supermarket, a T.J. Maxx, an Italian restaurant called Gino’s of Kings Park, and Professor’s Diner.

The annual St. Patrick’s Day parade always draws a crowd. This year, the grandmasters were members of the Nally family, who have been in Kings Park for six generations, since their forebears immigrated from Ireland around 1900. Kings Park Day in June, sponsored by the chamber of commerce, features rides and music on Main Street. On Fridays in the summer, the Kings Park Civic Association sponsors live music on Main Street.

And there is plenty for lovers of the outdoors to do.

“We have two state parks — how lucky are we?” said Linda Henninger, president of the Kings Park Civic Association.

The Governor Alfred E. Smith State Park, also known as Sunken Meadow State Park, has more than 1,200 acres, with a beach and a boardwalk along with picnic areas, running and walking trails, and a golf course. Nissequogue River State Park offers walking and biking trails, a soccer field and a marina. And the town of Smithtown runs Callahans Beach on the Long Island Sound and the Kings Park Bluff, a boat launch where the Nissequogue River flows into the Sound.

The Kings Park Central School District serves about 3,100 students in five schools: Fort Salonga and Parkview elementary schools, for kindergarten through third grade; RJO Intermediate School, for fourth and fifth grade; William T. Rogers Middle School, for sixth through eighth grade; and Kings Park High School, for ninth through 12th grade.

In 2018, according to the New York State Education Department, 69 percent of Kings Park students in third through eighth grade were proficient in English language arts and 66 percent were proficient in mathematics, versus 45 and 47 percent statewide. The high school graduation rate in 2018 was 93 percent.

Kings Park is about 45 miles east of midtown Manhattan, on the Long Island Rail Road’s Port Jefferson line. The ride to Penn Station takes 67 to 97 minutes, depending on the time of day. The fare is $19 at peak times, $13.75 off-peak and $391 monthly.

Drivers can take the Sunken Meadow State Parkway, which runs through Kings Park, to the nearby Long Island Expressway or Northern State Parkway. The drive takes between 90 minutes and 2 1/2 hours at rush hour, depending on traffic.

Fort Salonga was the site of a Revolutionary War-era British fortification known as Fort Slongo, which was destroyed in a 1781 attack by Continental soldiers who crossed the Sound from Connecticut.

In the 1860s, an Episcopal minister from New York City founded the Society of St. Johnland, a rural refuge for the destitute near the Long Island Sound. The organization now runs a nursing home and rehabilitation center on part of the original property.

But the event that really marked Kings Park was the opening of a mental institution serving residents of Brooklyn in the 1880s.

The railroad changed the name of the train station from St. Johnland to Kings Park in 1891, to reflect the hospital’s link to Brooklyn, in Kings County. Kings Park Psychiatric Center housed as many as 10,000 patients at its peak in the 1950s.

A slice of long island with plenty of shoreline

Kings Park is the kind of place where families put down roots, often for generations. Just ask Edward R. Wehrheim, who lives in the same Kings Park house that his grandparents, and then his parents, owned.

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Kathleen Lynn

Articles written by the author

Driving to work is easy. Walking, not so much

A slice of long island with plenty of shoreline