The Fence At Wardenclyffe Just Became A Door: What Changed On Randall Road This Summer
July 23, 2026
July 23, 2026
Drive Route 25A east through Shoreham and you have always been able to see it. The brick laboratory with the tall arched windows. The chain-link. The sign for Randall Road. For a hundred and twenty years, that was the whole relationship most residents had with the site. You pointed at it from the car. Maybe you brought out-of-town guests to the fence line and told them Nikola Tesla worked there.
That relationship changed on Saturday, July 11.
The Nikola Tesla Expo drew its usual thousands of people to 5 Randall Road for an evening running from 5 to 9 p.m., but this year the crowd was there for something more specific than the drone show. The Tesla Science Center at Wardenclyffe dedicated a new visitor center nearly three years after a devastating fire, a 2,200-square-foot building that will serve as a "preview center" for the larger Wardenclyffe campus.
The name matters. It is the Eugene Sayan Visitor Center, and its dedication marks the first permanent public building ever on the Wardenclyffe site. Read that sentence twice if you grew up here. Every previous encounter with Wardenclyffe, going back to Tesla himself, happened outdoors or by invitation. There has never been a door on this property that a Shoreham resident could simply walk through on a Saturday.
There is now.
The context most residents already carry: the November 2023 fire tore through the roof of Tesla's former lab, destroyed 20th-century steel girders and caused more than $3 million in damage. For two years after that, the site felt frozen. Fencing, tarps, insurance work, quiet.
The Sayan Center is the first visible reversal of that stasis. The project broke ground last September on the 2,200-square-foot building, which will provide opportunities for expanded programming, including historical tours and docent training that follow Smithsonian standards, and will help expand STEAM programs for nearby schools and libraries. The building was funded by a coalition that reads like a who's-who of Long Island stakeholders: Softheon CEO Eugene Sayan, the Ludwick Foundation, National Grid, Suffolk County, New York State Economic Development and others.
Kara Cannon, TSCW's executive director, framed the opening this way in the announcement: "The opening of the Sayan Center means we can finally welcome visitors into a dedicated space on this extraordinary site to explore exhibits, experience programming, and begin their journey through Nikola Tesla's last remaining laboratory. It is the next chapter of what Wardenclyffe will become."
The operative word for a Shoreham resident is "finally."
If you have not been inside the fence, here is what you will encounter on a docent-led tour, per the center's own tour page:
The original brick laboratory still stands on this 16-acre site, listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 2018. That acreage is worth pausing on. Sixteen acres, in the middle of a residential Shoreham block, most of it walkable once you are inside.
The 2026 guided tour season runs from Friday, March 20 through Sunday, November 15. If you are reading this in July, you have a comfortable four-month window before the season closes for winter.
Two logistical notes that catch newcomers off guard. First, the site is open by appointment on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays with advance reservations only for docent-led tours. This is not a walk-up museum yet. You reserve online, you arrive at your tour time.
Second, and this trips up everyone with a GPS: the entrance to the site is on Randall Road only. While the laboratory is visible from Route 25A, there is no public entrance from the highway. If you find yourself in the CVS lot squinting at the fence line, you are on the wrong side of the property. Loop around to Randall.
Tours come in a few flavors. There is a standard 90-minute walking tour, a Picture the Past Tour that focuses on the architecture, infrastructure, and historical context of Tesla's laboratory from 1900 to 1917, and the Wizard of Wardenclyffe Family Tour, designed for families with elementary school–aged children who are eager to explore science through hands-on discovery. Pick to the crowd you are bringing.
Most residents assume Wardenclyffe is a summer stop. It is not, and this is where the Sayan Center changes the math. A handful of recurring programs to know:
Wardenclyffe Science Pub. An adult, off-site evening series. Blue Point Brewing Company at 225 West Main Street in Patchogue has hosted these, including a Wednesday, June 10, 2026, edition running 6 to 9 p.m. It is a talk with a pint. Good excuse to see the brewery too.
Metal for Tesla. A year-round recycling drive, open Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. If you have scrap metal in the garage, the center will take it, and there is a genuine historical thread here about Wardenclyffe's ties to metal salvage.
Winter at Wardenclyffe Holiday Fair and STEM Market. A holiday season fair the center runs on the grounds. A useful non-summer reason to be there.
Investigate Wardenclyffe. A paranormal-investigation night on the grounds. Take that at whatever face value you prefer. It sells out.
NewYorkBIO partnership. Worth flagging for the professionally curious: on June 24, Wardenclyffe and NewYorkBIO announced a collaboration aimed at continuing educational programs for all ages, with NewYorkBIO representing bioscience companies, universities, research institutions and organizations dedicated to advancing research and delivering new treatments and cures to patients. Translation for residents: the programming pipeline behind the Sayan Center is going to keep getting deeper.
The Sayan Center gives residents a new anchor for the shoulder season. Once the tour season closes November 15, Winter at Wardenclyffe picks up the thread. Before that, the community rhythm around Shoreham-Wading River fills in naturally:
The Wading River-Shoreham Chamber of Commerce Fall Festival is the big fall community touchpoint. It runs September 27, 2026, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., free admission, with live music from SouthBound, line dancing, food trucks, and vendors, held at The Shoppes at East Wind, 5768 Route 25A, Wading River. That is a straight shot east on 25A from Randall Road.
Layered together, the calendar for a Shoreham resident looks less like "quiet town, one summer event" and more like a steady drumbeat. A Sayan Center tour in July or August. Fall Festival at East Wind in September. Holiday Fair on the Wardenclyffe grounds in December. A Science Pub at Blue Point in between when you want a night out.
Two things, and this is the thesis worth carrying away.
One, the reason to point at Wardenclyffe from the car has been replaced by a reason to park. The site is transitioning from landmark you drive past to place you use. Landmarks-you-drive-past do not affect how a neighborhood feels day to day. Places-you-use do. When guests come out from the city, you now have a legitimate destination inside the ZIP code, not a twenty-minute drive to Port Jefferson.
Two, this is not a private, boutique restoration. It is a Smithsonian-standard preservation project sitting on sixteen acres in the middle of a residential block, backed by state and county money and a bioscience partnership network. The trajectory is up. What opened July 11 is described as a "preface to the main story," and the main story, on the same site, is the lab itself. If you already live here, you are early to something.
The fence is still there. It just has a door in it now.
Curious what the arrival of a walk-in Wardenclyffe means for your block on the Shoreham map, or thinking about a move into or out of the North Shore this fall? Conor Hertell knows this stretch of Randall Road and the streets around it better than most. Buy or sell? Call Hertell today.
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