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Mostly Cloudy Storm damages Hendrickson Park administration building
Recreation department will be moving out
The Hendrickson Park administration building will no longer house Valley Stream’s recreation department. Three feet of water in the building during a heavy rainstorm on Aug. 14 has prompted village officials to move the department to the Firemen’s Field clubhouse and seek other uses for the 45-year-old building.
“Unfortunately,” Mayor Ed Fare said, “the administration building frequently gets water damage. This was so severe. There’s going to be storm damage again another day.”
Recreation Director Tom Roberts, who has worked for the village for 12 years, said this was the worst storm damage he has ever seen. Two or three times a year the building gets water in it, he said, but typically only a couple of inches. During the Aug. 14 rainstorm, in which Valley Stream got about eighth inches of rain in a half-day, water came up to the top of the desks.
Two refrigerators and several chairs were actually floating in the building during the height of the flood, Roberts said. Most of the chairs will have to be thrown out, Roberts said, because even after they dry there will be mold. That includes about two-dozen new padded folding chairs.
After the water receded, village electricians came to the building, opened up and dried out each outlet before turning the power back on. Water came up higher than the central air conditioning units outside and damaged those. And Roberts said he has to throw out lots of damaged paperwork, office supplies and recreation supplies.
Once the recreation department moves out, all the sheetrock walls and wood paneling will be removed. Fare said that only the exterior and interior cinder block walls will remain.
A remediation company was brought in last week to assess the building and make plans to remove the mold. Fare said because of the significant damage and the likelihood the building will fill with water again, he made the decision to just have all the walls removed. That will not only get rid of the mold, he said, but open up the building and create larger spaces for programs.
Fare said he considered several options for the building, which was built in 1966 and expanded in 1986. He thought about having it demolished, adding a second floor, or just abandoning it and putting up a pre-fabricated building on higher ground in the park.
Instead, he decided to relocate the recreation department to the Firemen’s Field Clubhouse. Currently, Public Safety is housed there, but Fare plans to move them to 195 Rockaway Ave., a building the village is looking to acquire to serve as a the court and Village Hall annex.
The administration building, he said, can still house the village’s various programs such as the Halloween and Christmas tree lighting festivities. But it will be little more than concrete walls and floors. That way, he said, if it ever floods again the water will go in, the water will go out, and leave workers with no damage to repair besides some mopping up.
“We’ll still use this building,” Fare said. “We can’t keep records here. We can’t have employee desks here.”
Fare said he would look to keep some services for residents at Hendrickson Park, such as getting pool passes. That would be moved to the pool building, which Fare is looking renovate starting with a new entrance building this fall.
Senior program on the move
The Silver Threads senior group will move to Firemen’s Field, after 45 years at Hendrickson Park. Senior program Coordinator Barbara Diglio said the administration building was actually built for seniors.
“They love this place,” she said. “They love coming here with the lake, sitting by the lake. I think a few of them are going to be upset. They’ve been coming here for years.”
All senior programs were cancelled last week and this week, including the yoga program, knitting and all social days. Diglio said she hopes to be up and running by next week at the Firemen’s Field Clubhouse. “I’m sure it will work out,” she said, “but it’s going to take a while to adjust.”
Diglio said the water damaged some of her files, as well as the knitting group’s supplies. However, she said the completed knitting projects, which are donated to local nursing homes, were saved along with the group’s board games.
Fare noted that before the rain storm, the village did take precautions. Computers and vital records were removed. However, he said he was expecting the building to take on only a few inches of water, not three feet. “We had two months worth of rain in one morning,” he said.
Roberts said it is fortunate the flood happened at the end of the summer instead of in May or June, when the recreation department is at its busiest in processing applications for the pool and various summer programs. Most programs, with the exception of martial arts, had ended. The last class of that program, which is held at the administration building, was postponed.
Recreation department workers have been packing up whatever they can salvage. Those supplies will be loaded into two water-proof trailers until the department can get settled in its new permanent home. Recreation will share close quarters at Firemen’s Field until Public Safety moves to Rockaway Avenue.
For Roberts, Diglio, recreation attendant Carol Thomas and the village recreation staff, their days of reporting to work at Hendrickson Park’s administration are just about over. “As long as I’ve been down here, this is the worst,” Roberts said of last week’s water damage. “This was really the nail in the coffin.”
