Santino: back to the drawing board for Merrick Ave. project

A sparsely attended town hall meeting hosted by Senior Town Councilman Anthony Santino at the Baldwin Middle School last week touched on topics ranging from burgeoning business in Baldwin to potholes, plantings and parking lots.

But the tide of conversation kept returning to a central theme: funding for the stalled revitalization project on Merrick Avenue. Santino addressed the issue in a brief statement, explaining that due to irreconcilable issues with the developer, Albanese Development, the project would be going back to the drawing board, and that new proposals for the mix of residential and commercial work were being sought.

While he acknowledged that halting the project was a setback, Santino affirmed his belief that business is coming back to Baldwin. He spoke of recent ribbon-cutting ceremonies at nine new businesses along Grand Avenue and the surrounding areas, and said, “I’m very happy to see entrepreneurs, small entrepreneurs, hiring in Baldwin. It’s nice to see so many new stores.”

Some of those who attended the meeting, however, did not share Santino’s positive outlook, prompting him to say, “Believe me, no one is looking forward to seeing that project move forward more than Supervisor Murray and I.”

Sensing the mood of the crowd, Linda Degen, co-chair of the Baldwin Civic Association, chimed in. “We are very frustrated, but the Town of Hempstead has been incredibly cooperative,” Degen said. “The town has been extremely responsive. We are hoping [to push this forward] but there’s not a lot that we can say right now. As the BCA, we are working on the beautification project, working to get new businesses. Give us a bit of time.”

The Merrick Avenue project was initially helmed by two developers who were ultimately unable to get anything done. Because it is a large undertaking, Santino explained, it may have to be subdivided into smaller, more manageable chunks, which could be parceled out to individual companies. He promised that this idea would be built into any new requests for proposals that the town draws up.