Making room for storage

Longtime East Rockaway business is demolished

Posted

A 71,000-square-foot building at 499 Ocean Ave. in East Rockaway, home to W.M. Berg Inc. since 1967, was demolished last week to make way for a new business. Safeguard Self Storage will take its place.

Berg, which had a government contract to manufacture aircraft parts for export, closed in 2007 and moved all of its operations to Milwaukee. Once a family business, it is now a part of Rexnord Industries, a producer of controls and automation parts with operations worldwide. Berg was the largest employer in the village.

East Rockaway Mayor Bruno Romano said that Berg also leased a warehouse, since demolished, where ROK Health & Fitness now stands, almost directly across from Berg on the west side of Ocean Avenue. “They kept their first building after they moved,” Romano said, “and they tried selling or leasing it, but with no luck.”

Romano added that the main building, which was just a few yards north of the East Rockaway train station, was inundated by 4 to 5 feet of water during Hurricane Sandy in 2012. (Mill River runs behind the property, less than a quarter-mile south of East Rockaway High School.) “It wasn’t gutted, it’s just been sitting there like that,” he said. “It was sold to Safeguard Self Storage, who had to demolish the building because of extensive mold and damage.”

Romano said that Safeguard has also acquired a small parking lot adjacent to the property, and will have two employees there per day. “They may add some parking for people who are loading and unloading their belongings,” he said, “but we don’t anticipate a lot of traffic.” The East Rockaway Zoning Board approved Safeguard’s application last August.

Memories

East Rockaway resident Maria Germano McClure said she started working at Berg when she moved to the village in 1975, at age 16. Her brother also worked there. “I was there for 36 years until Berg moved to Wisconsin,” she said. “I started [by] putting stock away and typing invoices. I moved up to customer service, and by the time Berg moved I was in senior customer service, helping engineering. We had some good times there.”

McClure recalled that many local residents worked there, as well as students from the nearby high school and a lot of local moms. “They were always flexible with the students’ and the moms’ hours,” she said.

Romano said that the village had hoped to entice some small businesses or medical offices to the property, but any new owners would have had to demolish the building. “We tried reaching out,” he said. “We tried to network out to businesses, but the cost was too high for them if they had to put up a [new] structure.”

The new storage facility, he said, will operate seven days a week, within “normal” business hours. “It’s not a 24-hour-a-day operation,” he said.

“I would rather see condos go up and keep it residential,” said another resident, Siobhan Kearns. “It would bring more young couples and families who commute. It would also result in them frequenting our local stores, waterfront restaurants and community as opposed to bringing in random and transient people from different areas who may rent a storage unit. When people don’t pay their storage, then other people can come in to bid on the auction of the unit. It shouldn’t go there when we have a camp and nursery school with young children across the street.”

But Romano said he believes this is a positive move. “I’d rather see something there than nothing,” he said. “When the opportunity came to sell it, we couldn’t deny the application. Everything looks pretty good. It’ll be another business in town. It will be maintained.”

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