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Points East Acupuncture now open in Mattituck

The vacant former Capital One Bank headquarters in Mattituck has finally found a new tenant: the property owner’s daughter. 

State-licensed acupuncturist Ava Cardinale, 27, of Cutchogue opened Points East Acupuncture on the western side of the building at 9025 Main Road earlier this month.

She said the newly renovated, roughly 3,500-square-foot location will operate independently from the rest of the eight-acre property, which belongs to her father, Alan Cardinale Jr. of Cardinal Management in Mattituck. The remaining space remains vacant, she said.

Selecting the location was symbiotic for the pair, she said: Her father wanted to display the space, and she needed a new location for her practice.

“It was kind of just synchronistic for both of us,” she said. “He wants to utilize the space and show people that there can be something here, and I needed somewhere to work.”

A 2010 graduate of Mattituck High School, Ms. Cardinale said she struggled with intense headaches after graduating from Wheaton College in Massachusetts. She often called in sick for work at Renee’s in Mattituck due to the discomfort.

“I was dizzy for hours, I couldn’t function,” she said. “I was given maintenance medicine and it wouldn’t do anything.”

A friend suggested acupuncture as a remedy for pain. While skeptical at first, Ms. Cardinale said she was eager to try anything to stop the suffering. The result, she said, was instantaneous.

“It was incredible,” she recalled. “I was having headaches every single day, and I’d go a week without having one. And then two weeks. Then a month.”

Cardinale at Points East this week. (Credit: Kate Nalepinski)

Following the positive results of the alternative medicine approach, Ms. Cardinale switched her career path from art therapy to acupuncture and went on to acquire a master’s in acupuncture at the New English School of Acupuncture at Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Science in April 2018.

She specializes in Chinese and Japanese acupuncture, which focus on human organs in different ways. She gravitates toward the Japanese style, she said, because it is gentler and uses fewer needles — more approachable for newcomers.

“We talk in terms of blood and chi in the body,” she said. “I’m assisting and guiding, but your body will do what it needs to do to heal itself.”

In addition to acupuncture, the business offers services including cupping, which involves placing cups on a patient’s skin; gau sha, which involves scraping a flat tool along the skin’s surface; and moxibustion, a therapy during which dried mugwort is burned to heat key points on the body.

While she’s unsure if she’ll remain at the Main Road location long term, she knows she’ll continue working on the North Fork.

“I can’t see myself not being here,” she said. “For me, the North Fork is my home.”

Cardinal Management, which also owns both Mattituck Plaza and the Jamesport Center, first purchased the property, which had been a supermarket, in 1982 for $175,000 in a foreclosure, according to previous reports. It was sold to North Fork Bancorp two years later for $975,000, according to town property records. The building served as the headquarters for North Fork Bank, until Capital One purchased the bank and the building in 2006.

Capital One announced in 2011 that it would shut its doors at the location, and the building has been vacant since 2012. Cardinal Management reacquired the property in 2014.

In 2018, The Suffolk Times previously reported that the building had the potential to become a hotel based on Southold Town Building Department records.

Mr. Cardinale was not available for comment.

Appointments at Points East Acupuncture can be made online at pointseastacu.com, by phone at 631-298-7717 or in person.

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