Construction officially began for a long-awaited beautification project at the New Hyde Park train station and Third Avenue in New Hyde Park.
The village started knocking down buildings last week to make way for an 18,000-square-foot parking lot. About 53 new parking spots will be added.
New Hyde Park Mayor Christopher Devane said one-third of the municipal parking lot at the station — about 44 parking spots — will remain. The remaining area — 27,000 square feet — will become a public park.
“It’s going to have pickleball courts, it’s going to have a dog park, there’s going to be a playground, a seating area and a basketball court,” Devane said. “It’s going to be beautiful.”
Devane said the Tin House located near the parking lot will contain bathrooms for park goers.
The police booth in the parking lot will be moved towards the Tin House.
This project is through a $5 million state grant that was given to villages affected by the construction of the Long Island Rail Road expansion project. The project, estimated to cost between $1 billion and $1.5 billion, involves installing a third track along the Main Line from Bellerose to Hicksville, including parts of New Hyde Park.
Devane said the state gave financial incentives for villages along the track to beautify the area.
“In September of 2021, we sign off on a deal saying you have three years to use this money or you lose it,” Devane said. “So that gets us to September of 2024.”
Devane said he had an architect design project ideas, which included curb cuts and benches by the railroad, but he said this would primarily be utilized by people who take the train and only visit the station for pick-up and drop-offs. He said he wanted to create a project that gives back to community members who bore the brunt of four years of construction.
“I said to a friend of mine who lives in the village that the only design we have is to make Third Avenue a pedestrian walkway and I was like ‘what can we do down here? The people really bore the brunt of this’,” he said.
After brainstorming, Devane came up with the idea of constructing a new park in the municipal lot at the station. He said the only way to make this work was to buy a few abandoned buildings — a deli, a factory, a house and a cleaner — that were owned by one person and turn them into parking spaces so that when the park is created, the number of parking spots won’t be dramatically reduced.
“Not only did we have to convince the state to do this, but we had to see if the owner would want to sell,” Devane said. “So we approach him and he said he’d sell and we came up with a number of $3.5 million.”
He said he notified the state and they were unsure about this purchase at first because the grant only allowed them to purchase property for green space. However, the village said it’s a “transferred green space” where they are making a parking lot and will transform parts of the municipal lot into a green space. This conversation went on for about 15 to 16 months until the property was purchased on Oct. 17 at $3.5 million.
“After 16 to 17 months, there will be one refurbished parking lot, one brand new parking lot and a 27,000 square foot park,” Devane said. “What a fitting end for these people on the south side who had to bear the noise pollution, the traffic, the trucking coming down here, they get a public park out of it.”
Devane said if the weather cooperates, the parking lot may be completed before the winter and construction on the park might start at the same time.
