Business & Tech

Soundview, San Simeon Jump Back to Business on Sound Side

Though many homes and businesses on the Peconic Bay sustained damage from winds and floods, Soundview and San Simeon fared well across the Fork on the Long Island Sound.

Halfway through the first day the North Fork really felt the winds and waves from Hurricane Sandy this past Monday, Rachel Murphy said she thought she would be rebuilding across the street.

The owner of Soundview Inn and Restaurant located nearly on top of the Long Island Sound on a narrow stretch of beach on Route 48 in Greenport said that when Sandy hit with its most forceful winds during the late morning, early afternoon of last Monday, she described the moment as “incredibly rough.”

“You could feel the sheer force of the storm here,” she said. “The tables were vibrating … it was quite something. And I thought that it was just the beginning. I was sure, when I left that afternoon, that I’d be rebuilding this place across the street.”

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Luckily, due to a slight shift in the winds to the east, the worst Sound-side businesses like the Soundview and San Simeon by the Sound experienced was during the early part of the day. At San Simeon, a Greenport nursing home that is located on the south side of Route 48 just to the east of Soundview, it was business as usual, according to Administrator Steven Smyth.

Smyth said that a staff member overheard one resident saying: “Things were running so smoothly around here, we hardly even knew anything was happening.”

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“We prepared for whatever was necessary for a hurricane, and the staff handled the storm extremely well,” he said.

Back at Soundview, Murphy said her husband, Mike, stayed behind for the duration of Hurricane Sandy, making sure the basement was being pumped continuously to fight flooding, and that the restaurant was back to business with power and dinner service on Wednesday at 5 p.m.

“To say I had a sigh of relief is an understatement,” Murphy said. “With the shift in the winds, we got very, very lucky, but I still felt a powerful force. But this building is one good old strong ship — I just kept thinking that. And she sailed into it.”


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