The recent completion of the Village of New Hyde Park’s upgrade of the Jericho Turnpike business district ended a 12-year saga of delays characterized by piles of paperwork, amended plans and a village board’s persistence to enhance the area’s aesthetic appeal and improve pedestrian and traffic safety.
Village officials say, in the end they are happy with the results.
“We were unable at times to get things done in the order that we would have preferred,” village Trustee Donald Barbieri said. “All that said and done, we got to the finish line and we were fundamentally happy with the end product.”
But, they all agree, it wasn’t easy.
“The whole paperwork process to have all the I’s dotted and T’s crossed made it complicated. Working with the federal government and state government and county, we found to be challenging,” Village of New Hyde Park Mayor Robert Lofaro said. “But bureaucracy is a necessary evil.”
The idea for Operation Mainstreet began with the upgrading of village signage and storefronts in the business district.
In 1999, Lofaro said, the village board offered business owners $10,000 in federal community block grant funds to make storefront improvements with
north 11th and 12th Streets on Jericho Turnpike targeted in the first round.
But, Lofaro said, two of the 10 business owners on the block balked at participating.
“In our opinion, it did not have the impact we hoped for because of reluctant business owners,” he said. “We had a bad feeling about expanding that further because we didn’t get 100 percent participation.”
In 2002, Lofaro said the concept of the project started shifting from upgrading private commercial property to improving public facilities. Block grant funds helped the village draft initial plans and obtain more funds.
“We decided we would use some of the money from the block grants to develop a plan so we could get more money for block grants,” Lofaro said.
He said village attorney John Spellman introduced architect Bill Kuhl to the village board members, who interviewed Kuhl along with several other architects.
Kuhl won the job on the basis two “streetscape” improvement projects he worked on in Garden City along 7th Street and Franklin Avenue.
“We thought that Bill Kuhl was most aligned with the concept of a pedestrian friendly, aesthetically pleasing Main Street. We were very optimistic we could sell these plans to the federal government and the state,” the mayor recalled.
“It started with a schematic design. We did some public outreach with the community,” Kuhl said. “It took a little more time than anticipated.”
Kuhl, chairman of the board and senior principal of Saratoga Associates, had his own architectural firm when he drew up those initial plans. His firm merged with another company, but he brought the New Hyde Park project with him and stayed with it when he eventually moved to Saratoga Associates.
The initial phase of the project was focused on improvements to village sidewalks with the use of red brick.
Kuhl said the first phase as well as the subsequent two required state Department of Transportation approval as Jericho Turnpike is a state road.
“Little by little, we worked with the DOT,” Barbieri said. “The project from Hillside Boulevard to Central Boulevard was eligible for block grant funding. That was the heart of downtown New Hyde Park.”
Barbieri said the village received $350,000 to $400,000 in federal block grant funds for additional brick paving, new street lighting and village signage.
The project was also initially supported with $100,000 from a state grant secured through then state Sen. Michael Balboni and a $100,000 county grant secured through Nassau County Legislator Richard Nicolello (R-New Hyde Park). .
“The first part of it took three years to make happen, maybe four. And then there was a big gap until we completed it now,” Barbieri said.
Lofaro said Nicolello helped secure money for pocket parks and the Town of North Hempstead provided funds for benches on Lakeville Road across from the Hillside Public Library. Ultimately, he said, approximately $1 million in community block grant funds for the expansion of the sidewalk paving, bicycle racks and curb repairs were spent on the project, drawing on the $100,000 to $150,000 the village receives annually in federal funds.
“All the while we were getting our annual block grant monies and we were using those monies for Operation Mainstreet,” Lofaro said
The big break came when Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-Mineola) helped secure a $1.42 million federal community block grant from the Federal Highway Administration in 2004 for the second phase of the project.
“Carolyn McCarthy hit a home run,” Barbieri said.
Plans for the second phase of Operation Mainstreet, intended to make the business district more pedestrian friendly and improve traffic safety, were formulated in 2008.
Barbieri said the second phase initially included a proposal for bulbouts – medians with rounded corners – extending into Jericho Turnpike to slow traffic.
The state DOT initially approved those plans, he said, but then reversed itself.
“Originally the bulbouts were approved into Jericho Turpike. They subsequently got cold feet on that. So we backed off and changed the plan,” Barbieri said.
The need to change the plans cost the village money and time, he said.
The need to amend plans based on state DOT reviews led to many of the delays that would characterize the project.
“Every time we submitted the plans, they gave us pages of comments. And the comments were so trivial, it was almost like they wanted us to go away. That was the sense that we got,” Lofaro said. “We were so intent on getting it done, we just persisted on it.”
In 2008, the state DOT initiated its own project to repave Jericho Turnpike, which initially included countdown traffic lights and center medians along the thoroughfare from the Cross Island Parkway to Herricks Road and adding a traffic lane, Lofaro said.
“They wanted to eliminate parking spaces along Jericho and make it more like a three-lane highway. The village objected very strongly – particularly business owners,” Lofaro said, recalling a public hearing on the DOT proposal at New Hyde Park Memorial High School.
As the village went back and forth with the state DOT on its plans for Operation Mainstreet’s final phase, the state DOT began $21.1 million project to repave Jericho Turnpike from the Queens border to Glen Cove Road.
Coordinating the village’s plans with the state DOT’s made things increasingly problematic, he said.
Tom Savino, president of Vision Accomplished, who was retained by the village trustees as a consultant on Operation Mainstreet during the final phase, said the state and federal rules also made the paperwork itself challenging.
“There’s just an immense amount of regulation and bureaucracy and that delays each step. It’s endless,” he said.
Kuhl said he worked with the DOT on plans to control traffic around the medians, eliminating left-hand turns and incorporating bulbouts on the side streets along Jericho Turnpike as another means of slowing traffic.
Kuhl joins Barbieri’s fellow trustee in crediting his persistence as the village’s liaison with the state DOT as the finish line persistently receded.
“If it hadn’t been for Don Barbieri, this would never have been completed. He was like a pit bull moving every step of the way,” Kuhl said.
It took approximately one year from the time when final plans were originally submitted in the fall of 2013 to begin construction on the village project’s final phase. The village board accepted a $1.46 million bid from Bohemia-based J Anthony Enterprises for work on the final phase of the project last spring and the state DOT approved the contract last August.
As the village contractor was set to start preliminary work, Barbieri said village officials asked the state DOT to temporarily suspend its work on the Jericho Turnpike makeover in New Hyde Park after state contractor Tully Construction, had completed its principal work, including construction of the center medians.
But Barbieri said J Anthony Enterprises was unable to mobilize its crews to begin the work, causing a delay of more than four weeks.
At the time, state DOT spokesperson Eileen Peters attributed the delay to miscommunications with the village. Tully resumed the final phase of its work to repave side streets along Jericho and install the countown traffic lights in October along with plantings in the center median.
“There was some confusion and things were delayed,” Barbieri said.
The final delay in the project occurred in the last week of June, when the state DOT suspended the project after funding was halted by the Federal Highway Administration because a May 31 deadline for completion of the project had passed. Paperwork not submitted by the village on time prompted the temporary suspension, the state DOT said.
Lofaro credited Jim Fonda, state DOT designer, with ultimately assisting the village to finish Operation Mainstreet.
“Jim saw how we struggled and we’re so thankful he was on the project to help shepherd this along,” Lofaro said.
“While these multilevel projects are often very challenging, they often prove to be very rewarding for all parties,” Peters said.
