👑 Royal Princess Prep: The Costume Kelsey Couldn't Find, She Learned to Build

🎭 Uniondale High Wins $278K Grant for an Auditorium Tech Upgrade

🏗️ Long Beach Approves $26.5 Million Bond for Capital Projects

🚗 Patchogue Carves Out Parking Spots Just for Uber and Lyft

There's a moment at a kid's party when the character walks in and the child's face does something you can't fake. Everything Kelsey has built over the last decade is aimed at that half second, which is why her performers sing live, why the wigs are custom made, and why casting is the part she's most obsessive about.

It started with a costume she couldn't find. Kelsey got her BFA in theater from NYU, and while she was there a friend back home was volunteering as a princess. Frozen had just come out, she fell in love with it, and she had no idea where to source materials or how any of it was made. So a professional costume designer, the mother of a friend from high school, built her a custom Anna costume from scratch. Then friends started asking whether she still did that, because the family they nannied for needed an Elsa. It grew from there until Kelsey realized she could make it a profession, and now she gets to combine acting with working with kids and spends her days practicing accents and vocal work.

Ten and a half years and 21 Best of Long Island awards later, the roster is past 150 characters with a regular cast of about 20 performers. Every one of them is a professional: Broadway, off Broadway, national and international tours, regional theater. They all sing live, because that's what they're trained to do. Costumes and wigs are entirely custom. And the casting process is rigorous on purpose, because a performer has to look like the character and also sound and act like her. Princesses are what they started with and what most people know them for, but their Taylor Swift tribute performer has become a phenomenon of her own, complete with backup dancers for full concert style shows. They also offer all three of the K-pop Demon Hunters when most companies manage one, and their newest additions are dinosaur trainers with baby dinos, which have the rare quality of appealing to every kid in the room. It isn't only birthdays either. Libraries all year, camps in the summer, bridal showers, bachelorette parties, weddings, and 50th birthday parties.

A basic 30 minute package with a princess starts at $250, and it climbs from there with more characters, longer performances, and the roles that take serious makeup to pull off. What's telling is how hard they work to say yes. The team is large deliberately, and the performers will happily do four, five, or six events in a day, because Kelsey's whole approach is fitting in as many families as she possibly can.

You can find everything at royalprincessprep.com.

Join us in welcoming Royal Princess Prep to the neighborhood spotlight, a company that exists because a college kid couldn't find the costume she needed and had one made instead, and has been making everything from scratch ever since.

Uniondale High School's auditorium is getting its first major technology upgrade in years after Nassau County unanimously approved nearly $278,000 in funding to modernize the space. The Community Revitalization Project grant was secured by County Legislator Olena Nicks, herself a Uniondale High graduate who now represents the district she once walked the halls of.

The money will go toward upgraded sound, projection, microphone and control systems, new projection screens, LED lighting, a professional podium, large format television display panels, and roll top covers to protect it all once it's installed. For a school that hosts everything from graduations to concerts to community meetings in that auditorium, it's a long overdue refresh.

It's the kind of project that doesn't make headlines the way a new stadium or a ribbon cutting does, but it's exactly the sort of investment that shapes what students experience every day. A graduate coming back to fund the room where she once sat is a nice touch too.

👉 Read more: Herald Community Newspapers

The Long Beach City Council voted to authorize $26.5 million in bonds to fund capital projects across the city, with about $9 million of that expected to be offset by state and federal grants. City officials say the borrowing won't happen all at once, but will be spread out over the coming years as projects move forward.

The biggest ticket items include $4 million for hazard mitigation at the water treatment plant, which was rehabilitated after Hurricane Sandy but never fully protected against future storms, $3.5 million to replace city buses, $2.9 million for road reconstruction, and $1.5 million for FEMA reimbursable building projects. Some of the ice arena's equipment, which has been in place since the 1970s, is also getting replaced.

City Manager Dan Creighton told the council the plan should actually work out to a modest net decrease in the city's debt load once older bonds roll off the books, even as new borrowing comes online. As Creighton put it, neglecting infrastructure for years is what ends up costing residents more down the line.

👉 Read more: Long Beach Patch

Anyone who's tried to grab a rideshare in downtown Patchogue on a busy Saturday night knows the drill: double parked cars, awkward U-turns, and drivers stopping wherever they can find an opening. The village is trying to fix that by installing four designated rideshare pickup and drop off spaces along Main Street, near the Four Corners intersection of Main Street and Ocean Avenue.

The purple painted spaces are in effect Thursday through Sunday, from 6 p.m. until 4 a.m., and revert to regular metered parking the rest of the time. Officials believe it could be among the first efforts of its kind in a Long Island downtown, following similar moves in cities like Nashville, Fort Lauderdale and Chicago.

The idea grew out of conversations between the village, local restaurant owners and the business improvement district after complaints about traffic tie ups on busy nights. "If there's an opportunity here to create a safer, more convenient experience for people who want to use rideshares, we're willing to pilot something," said Augie Ruckdeschel, the village's deputy planning and zoning coordinator.

👉 Read more: Greater Long Island

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