Thursday, October 1, 2026
Bay Park residents who have put up with construction along the Grand Canal since November will soon be rewarded with a sorely needed new bulkhead. With an anticipated completion date of April 30, the $3.6 million project is being funded through the Town of Hempstead’s capital improvement budget.
The new bulkhead will extend about a half mile along East Boulevard, from North Boulevard to Cooke Street. The previous structure was made of wood, according to Trish Kearney, financial secretary for the Bay Park Civic Association, while the new one is made of plastic and has a wood cap. It is designed to last 30 years.
Town Supervisor Kate Murray said that the town spends approximately $50 million a year on major projects like bulkheads and road repairs. “Certainly, preservation of our waterways [and] the land along our waterways is very important,” she said. “We’re always trying to keep pace with the infrastructure of our different neighborhoods, and bulkheading is such a serious project to undertake.”
Murray added that it was simply time to replace the aging bulkhead, which was first built in the 1950s and underwent extensive repairs in the 1980s. “Its lifespan had come and gone,” she said, “and we wanted to make sure that the health, safety and property values of our Bay Park residents were kept intact.”
The $3.6 million will fund not only the bulkhead construction but the project’s second phase, canal-area beautification. The cost of that work has been estimated at $750,000, and it will go out for bids in the coming weeks, town spokeswoman Susan Trenkle-Pokalski said, with construction set to begin this summer.
“The stuff we’re planning for the summer will include new sidewalks, decorative Victorian lighting, brickwork and plantings … so that will really be sort of the bow on the present,” Murray said. “That will be a very visual thing for our residents, but the bulkheading — obviously that’s a very serious improvement, and we’re delighted.”
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