By KEITH GRANT
After nearly two decades of neglect, many of Long Beach's streets have been repaved or completely overhauled over the last few years. Currently, Laurelton Boulevard is about as smooth as a backwoods country road, but when reconstruction work is completed by springtime, it will compare more to Daytona Speedway.
While many more roads around town are in serious need of attention, officials say that only a handful at a time can realistically be taken care of.
"There are probably 25 to 30 streets in the city that need to be paved," said City Manager Bruce Nyman. "That's $2 million, maybe more." Furthermore, "When you reconstruct a street, you have to put in new sewers, new pipes. It could cost a million dollars to [reconstruct] one street."
One of those streets in dire need of reconstruction is Ocean View, which runs through the West End just yards from the beach. The 3/4-mile roadway has fallen apart despite years of patch work, and some West End activists feel it's long past due for a full makeover.
"It's probably the worst street in Long Beach," said Jim Conlon, co-president of Citizens United to Remove Barriers. "There isn't a section of it that isn't cracked or in bad shape."
One improvement to the street he credits Mr. Nyman with is the installation of flower beds in the road at Arizona and Maryland avenues that divert traffic off of Ocean View toward Beech Street. "That's stopped vehicle traffic from shooting right on by," Mr. Conlon said.
The street, though, has become much less a road in recent years than a promenade for joggers, walkers, bikers, and courageous roller-bladers, but presents as much, if not more, of a problem for pedestrians than its many cracks and ditches would to vehicles, Mr. Conlon feels.
"The conditions are where someone can get hurt," he said.
The maligned roadway will have to wait its turn, however, as the city has several other repair projects on its checklist for 2001. Among the major work will be the replacement of the three bridges over the East End canals, as well as major reconstruction of at least three streets in the canals area.
"The reason the canals are being done first is that they are in such poor condition that some of the sewers are collapsing," Mr. Nyman said. "Once they collapse, it costs about $100,000 to fix the sewer. We had three or four [sewers collapse] last year."
The City Manager said nearly two decades of a strapped economy prevented Long Beach from doing any road repair in the 1970's and early '80's, and the city is now playing "catch-up," spending about $2 million to $3 million per year on the overdue projects. He said the city expects to spend about $4 million on the work planned for next year.
The state has supplied the city with millions of dollars for road repairs in recent years, but Mr. Nyman said those monies have to be used for major streets, such as Park Avenue or Broadway.
"We're not going to get state money to repave a street in the West End," he said. "There isn't that kind of money available for local roads. All of the money we're going to spend on those will come from our own money."
One freebie project the city is currently enjoying is the repaving of Park Avenue from Maple Boulevard to Long Beach Road. That stretch of Park is a county road, Mr. Nyman said, and must be maintained by the county. With Nassau's shaky financial status threatening many of its public works projects, Mr. Nyman said the city was lucky to get the work done at this time. The work, which has forced traffic into one lane each way in spots, was expected to take only a few days.
As for the city's own roads, Mr. Nyman suggested the neglect of the past was no longer an option for officials.
"You have to maintain the roads," he said. "If 15 or 20 years ago -- when this city did no work at all on the roads -- they had done two or three a year, we'd be there."
