Great Neck Plaza making moves with renovations

Janelle Clausen

Great Neck Plaza village officials announced they would add three roads to their repaving plan on Wednesday, following the board’s authorization of a grant agreement for roadway repaving, but that unrelated alleyway renovations hit a snag.

Great Neck Plaza Mayor Jean Celender said the village would have $125,000 available from the State and Municipal Facilities Grant Program, managed by DASNY, and other development funds.

“We didn’t know when the state and municipal facilities grant money would come in, and we’ve also got the community development awarded,” Celender said. “So we realized with the American Paving contract we have additional funds, we can do additional roads.”

The $234,640 contract with American Paving and Masonry was originally slated towards seven streets and fixing adjacent sidewalks.

Streets to be repaved included Overlook Avenue, Clent Road, North Station Plaza, Bond Street, Barstow Road, Welwyn Road and its extension. Now the contract will also address Walnut Place, Pierce Place and Gussack Plaza.

While Celender said the additional streets were small, she said they had also been slated to have “more major rehabilitations.”

This year’s repaving begins a multi-year project to bring Great Neck Plaza’s streets into a “state of good repair,” trustees previously said.

In the unrelated Alleyway Project, however, village officials had to rescind their approval of Castle Industries in Garden City Park to begin work on beautifying  an alleyway at 44 Middle Neck Road.

Back in August, village officials had approved a $29,997 offer from the company to begin widening the alleyway, redoing the brickwork and making it a more “exciting walkway,” Celender previously said.

“When we did the agreement with the contractor, we realized that it wasn’t on prevailing wage, so it’s going to up this contract and it’s going to be above the cost of what typically has to be bid out,” Celender said.

Village officials ultimately approved the advertisement of a public bid for the alleyway repairs.

“I don’t think we can get this bid out and done before the season [ends], but we can advertise for it and try to hope we can start it in March and get it done in early spring next year,” Celender said.

Trustees also authorized the renewal of the Town of North Hempstead Inter-Municipal Agreement for Services, approved a conditional use permit for Greek Xpress at 37 Great Neck Road and heard arguments from representatives of the 15 Bond Street project and concerned neighbors.

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