Long Beach off the hook for $10M boardwalk bill

The Federal Emergency Management Agency reimbursed the city nearly $10 million to cover the remaining costs associated with rebuilding the boardwalk and repairing damage to several city facilities. Photo by Christina Daly/Herald

Christina Daly/Herald

City Councilman Scott Mandel, far left, former State Assemblyman Harvey Weisenberg, Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Nassau County Executive Ed Mangano, Sen. Charles Schumer and City Manager Jack Schnirman screwed in the last plank of the new boardwalk in 2013.

Ryann Ruzika/Herald

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The Federal Emergency Management Agency has given the city $10 million to cover the remaining costs of its boardwalk reconstruction and for repairs to city facilities that were damaged in Hurricane Sandy.

Over three years after the storm, U.S. Sens. Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand and U.S. Rep. Kathleen Rice announced Tuesday that FEMA had reimbursed the city through a federal grant.

“The boardwalk in Long Beach is the cultural, recreational and economic heart of this city, and that’s why it has been so important for us to rebuild it and make it stronger,” Schumer said in a statement. “I am pleased that FEMA is reimbursing these funds so that the City of Long Beach and its taxpayers are not on the hook for these much-needed expenses.”

Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced in August that FEMA had agreed to restore more than $9 million of previously denied Public Assistance program funding to reimburse the city for rebuilding the boardwalk. FEMA had previously committed to funding the project, but declined to cover the additional expense of improving the structure through the use of more durable materials, such as a tropical hardwood, and adding a retaining wall beneath it and concrete edges in the center of the span.

FEMA said it would cover only 90 percent of the cost of the rebuild. City officials successfully appealed that decision, and FEMA has now reimbursed the city for an additional $8.3 million for the boardwalk and $1.5 million for repairs at the sanitation garage, the beach maintenance and highway garage building, and the pay loader shop.

“We had to fight them, but we got it,” Jim LaCarrubba, the city’s commissioner of public works, told the Herald. “We filed an appeal with the help of the state, and FEMA reversed their decision. They deemed the wave wall as a mitigative component of the boardwalk, and some other things they awarded us for as well, things they originally denied.”

The 2.2-mile-long boardwalk, destroyed by Sandy, reopened in October 2013, following a $42 million reconstruction project the city began that April. City officials had initially estimated that the project would cost $44 million, but it was brought in under budget and ahead of schedule.