New Hyde Park PAL Gym Reopens After Renovations

The New Hyde Park Police Athletic League Gym reopened its doors to campers on July 9 after an eight-month renovation project.

Built in 1980 the Denton Avenue facility had been damaged by two floods, one in October 2005 that damaged the gym floor itself and the parking lot outside the facility and another in July 2007 that warped the gym floor to such an extent that various sections were lifted up.

“It happened on a Friday night and I was home, off-duty at the time,” officer Kevin Worth said of how he learned about the first flood via a late-night telephone call. “Everything here was four feet of water and mud. (We) were basically standing at the top of the staircase there looking down at what could have been a six-lane pool; from that point on we knew we had our work cut out for us.”

The flooding had caused the concrete slabs under the gym floor to rise, lifting and buckling the floor up at different heights within the structure as well as ruining the playing surface and also necessitating a thorough cleaning and repainting of the entire facility.

“I’ve been coming here for years as a resident of the community, it’s been a resource for generations and kind of a unique resource because there are very few places for young people to go and have recreational and social time; it’s been a real gem,” Nassau Legislator Richard Nicolello, R-New Hyde Park, said as various campers were enjoying a floor hockey tournament. “To see what it looked like then and to see what it looks like now is truly astonishing.”

The renovations, taking about eight months to complete and totaling about $600,000, were paid for with funding from the Town of North Hempstead, Nassau County and grants as well as a loan from Nassau County PAL.

“To fund this, to gather the funding, took seven years,” said Worth, who has been an officer for 27 years and assigned to the PAL for 20 of them and to the New Hyde Park location for 13 years. “There were times when I just wanted to say ‘I can’t do it’ and people... it took every ounce of my strength to get this done.”

Since the PAL leases the facility from the town, one of the first stops that Worth made was to North Hempstead Supervisor Jon Kaiman to ask for assistance.

“Part of what we do is all about solving problems and confronting things that just seem unsolvable,” Kaiman said. “Years ago this place was in crisis. We had the opportunity to have a dialog with Kevin Worth and some of the folks at the PAL and we had the idea to bring in the folks from the county, Rich Nicolello and bring in our state senator and form some partnerships and do this together. THere’s something to be said for having faith that when you have a good idea and good people behind it that good things will happen.”

While the town came up with engineering costs and floor and other pieces that totaled $100,000, Nassau County also chipped in another $100,000 along with other contributions from the state while other costs were covered by insurance moneys.

“This here is the house that Kevin built,” Sen. Jack Martins said. “What we see here today is really the product of extraordinary work of kevin Worth, the Nassau County Police Department PAL, a very committed community that wanted its heart back; this has been the heart, certainly the recreational heart of the New Hyde Park community for generations.”

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