Well, according to the article in the Feb. 16 Great Neck News, Jean Celender is finally going to get her Welwyn Road “beautification project.”
Everyone agrees that this area needs a major facelift, but this project is certainly not resident-friendly.
We’ll have bicycle lanes (surely you jest — a Sherman tank would be more appropriate on Welwyn Road), those wonderful slippery bricks on the sidewalks, and, oh yes, a “public plaza,” so aptly re-named by our illustrious full-time mayor after there were too many objections to her proposal of a park in front of the post office.
There will be a place where you can eat your lunch as you enjoy inhaling the fumes from the buses and listening to the racket of the Shop Delight delivery trucks unloading their wares in the fire lane—all while being entertained by the “Horn Concerto for Mercedes and Escalade” by the entitled composer Mimi Eimfurst.
You will have the privilege of watching the buses struggle to make the turn through the narrowed street from your front row seat in the “public plaza” in front of the post office. (As the street exists now, it takes most buses two or three attempts to make the turn.)
And what will you do with your garbage?
Once again, the resident parking disaster on Welwyn Road has been ignored by Jean Celender with no help in sight; and the parking garage for residents that was proposed a few years ago, has yet to materialize, if ever.
According to the rendering of the “beautification project” presented in the February 16 issue of the Great Neck News, it appears that residents will lose six parking spaces—three in front of Celender’s park/aka public plaza, and three more on Shoreward Drive, adjacent to the commuter lot.
With the resident parking disaster in the Welwyn Road/Shoreward Drive area worse than it’s ever been, now Celender is going to eliminate six more parking spaces! Where will the residents and people with legitimate business on Welwyn Road park after the Shop Delight employees usurp all the remaining spaces?
Celender has given tacit approval for the large number of non-resident Shop Delight employees to continue to park illegally in the Welwyn Road/Shoreward Drive area for up to 12 hours daily; during a 10-month period, VGNP code enforcement issued 200 tickets in the Welwyn/Shoreward area, which amounts to 20 tickets per month — fewer than one ticket per day—and Jean Celender has made no attempt to curb Shop Delight’s violations.
The late B. Mussolini, of historical fame, attempted to bring back the glory of Ancient Rome to Italy, regardless of the consequences to his people; the Welwyn Road project is Celender’s latest attempt to bring glory to herself and Village of “Neck Plaza” regardless of the consequences to the residents.
If Mussolini had lived to see this, he would have been right proud; but alas, Jean hasn’t made the trains run on time.
Leo Pfeifer
Village of Neck Plaza
(We want our “Great” back!)
