After two floods and several years of repairs, the sound of children playing could be heard again at the New Hyde Park Police Athletic Center on Tuesday morning as public officials and center staff celebrated the facility’s grand reopening.
Work on the concrete floor under what were the basketball courts in the center’s gymnasium and resurfacing of the floor was completed at the Denton Avenue facility earlier this month.
The project was a team effort with the Town of North Hempstead, Nassau County, the state and the New Hyde Park and the Nassau County Police Athletic League all contributing toward the $750,000 needed to complete the work.
“It took five different sources to fund this and to fund this took seven years,” said Kevin Worth, Nassau County Police Officer director of the facility.
“It took all I had to get this done,” he added, his voice breaking with emotion.
The project entailed restoring a gym floor that had buckled twice during floods in 2005 and 2007 and remedying drainage problems in the facility’s parking lot that caused the flooding problems.
The gym floor was in pristine shape on Tuesday as grade schoolers played floor hockey during the reopening. The parking lot outside the facility had also been resurfaced.
Worth said he originally approached Town of North Hempstead Supervisor Jon Kaiman for funding and credited Kaiman with getting the ball rolling on the restoration.
Kaiman said the town contributed approximately $100,000 for engineering fees and other costs.
“Years ago this facility was in crisis,” Kaiman said. “We ran into some bumps in the road, but we stayed the course and here we are.”
Town Councilwoman Lee Seeman said she was “proud” the town enabled the facility to be “poised to flourish again.”
Nassau County Legislator Richard Nicolello secured a $100,000 county grant for the facility in 2009.
“New Hyde Park PAL is back in business,” Nicolello said. “This is going to be a resource for the community for years to come. It’s a great example of different levels of government working together.”
The Nassau County PAL secured a 25-year $250,000 loan for the project, Worth said, and the New Hyde Park PAL kicked in another $200,000.
That was supposed be combined with a $200,000 state grant secured by former state Sen. Craig Johnson in 2009. The grant secured by Johnson was lost – along with approximately $10 million in other state grants secured by Johnson – by the state Senate Democratic leadership after Johnson lost his seat to Republican Jack Martins in 2010.
Martins (R-Mineola) secured a $150,000 grant for the reconstruction to address the flooding issue among approximately $4.7 million in grants he helped to restore.
“This is the house that Kevin built,” Martins said, crediting Worth’s efforts in the reconstruction. “This is the heart of a community that wanted its heart back.”
Ralph Wotruba, past president of the county PAL, who signed off on the loan while still president, said, “It’s great to see this thing in shape again.”
Summer camp resumed at the center for 200 children from first graders through ninth graders two weeks ago, officials said. Worth said the seven-week summer camp, with daytime sessions for grade schoolers and evening hours from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. for youngsters in seventh through ninth grades, costs $500 per person.
Worth said that since opening in 1980, more than 2,000 children had participated in PAL programs each year. Included were children from New Hyde Park and surrounding communities including Garden City Park, Garden City, Mineola and the Willistons. At its peak, he said the center had 500 youngsters participating in summer camp.
The engineering work on the project was done by Hauppauge-based Cashin & Associates.
Appearing on behalf of Nassau County Executive Edward Mangano, who was unable to attend the opening, Nassau County Police Commissioner Thomas Dale, presented Worth with a citation from Mangano.
“You kids are lucky. You’ve grown up in a community that really cares. It’s up to you when you grow older to keep that tradition alive,” he told the campers.
