Welcome to New Hyde Park to get a little warmer

Noah Manskar

To the Greater New Hyde Park Chamber of Commerce, the Hillside Avenue entrance to New Hyde Park doesn’t give a very warm welcome.

The sign marking it has held up well, past chamber President Peter Caputo said, but the flower bed around it is dead, dried up and “ratty-looking.”

The chamber aims to change that — with help from a Town of North Hempstead grant, the group will invest $8,400 into beautifying the green space at Hillside Avenue and North Third Street.

“When you first come into New Hyde Park, it’ll at least give a little impression that New Hyde Park’s a nice place to live,” said Caputo, chairman of the chamber’s Beautification Committee.

Caputo said the chamber will plant flowers and grass, replace wood and install new stone and a sprinkler around the sign.

The Town of North Hempstead’s Business & Tourism Development Corporation will pay for $2,956.80 of the work with a matching grant from the Downtown Beautification Program it started in 2015.

New Hyde Park’s Milena’s Garden Center will refresh the flowers four times a year, he said, and Rocco’s Landscaping will cut the grass. Both are chamber members.

This is the first project the chamber’s Beautification Committee has undertaken since it was recently resurrected, Caputo said. The committee plans to do similar work at all four entrances to the New Hyde Park area, he said.

“We want to tell people that we’re with the greater New Hyde Park chamber and we’re not just one little section,” Caputo said.

The New Hyde Park project is one of six the Downtown Beautification Program has funded in its first year, said Kim Kaiman, executive director of the Business & Tourism Development Corporation.

The program was started to give North Hempstead’s downtown areas “a little bit of a facelift” with street furniture, plants, signage and other improvements, Kaiman said.

The New Hyde Park chamber’s proposal will ideally attract more residents and visitors to local businesses by cleaning up the “gateway” to one of the area’s commercial districts, she said.

“What better way than to drive down Hillside Avenue and see this beautiful welcoming sign?” Kaiman said.

The chamber plans to name the green space for the late Angela Powers, a founding member of the group who became its first female president, Caputo said. She died in December at age 76.

Chamber President Jerry Baldassaro proposed naming the space for Powers, who “did a lot” for the group, Caputo said.

“(I)nstead of just saying the Chamber of Commerce, we give it little bit more meaning when we dedicate it to somebody who did the greater good for the town and the chamber,” he said.

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