10 questions with Superintendent Louis Santora

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There’s a new buildings superintendent in the village, and his name is Louis Santora. Santora recently replaced Ausberto Huertas, who left to become buildings superintedent in Garden City.


The Herald sat down with Santora to learn more about him, get a refresher on the village’s building codes, and discover why being a building supervisor is a necessary and thankless job.

1. Welcome to Malverne, Louis. The residents probably want to know a little about you. What’s your background?

I’m from St. James, and am a licensed architect with a degree from New York Institute of Technology. I’ve been a licensed architect since 1994. I previously worked was a building inspector in the Incorporated Village of Ocean Beach, but I did everything over there: fire marshal, plumbing inspector, building inspector, and more. Before that, I practiced my own architecture business. Nowadays, I don’t have much time for that. I used to work for Sbarro’s in their architecture department in the 1990s.

2. Why were you interested in working for our small village?

You guys aren’t as small as you think. Ocean Beach — now that’s small. Malverne is definitely a step up, and a lot more responsibility than where I used to work. That was the main reason, I was interested — this is a move up, more of a challenge. It’s ten times the volume than what I was getting there.

3. Many residents complain about the building department’s strict rules. Are they really strict compared to other incorporated villages?

Basically the building dept is always viewed as the bad guy. Our job is a thankless job obviously, but we have New York state building code and Malverne zoning code to follow. Our job is to enforce that to the best of our abilities. Some things are just black and white and some are grey, and I understand that. I want to help people get through the process as painlessly as possible while enforcing the rules as they come before us.

4. What do you hope to achieve in this position?

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