By JOSEPH KELLARD
"After they fixed up the bulkhead, they took down the fences [that blocked off the Tut Basin area], and now kids are coming in here at night, drinking and fooling around," Arata told the Herald. "It's become a lovers' lane, and when they go, they leave their garbage and beer bottles -- and break some of them."
After years of waiting for new bulkhead, Arata appreciates the fact that Nassau County finally reconstructed the deteriorated end of the canal. But he was displeased to hear that the Town of Hempstead might convert Tut Basin into a mini-park.
"That will only make it more of a magnet to kids who want to drink and hang out here at night," Arata said, pointing to empty Amstel Light bottles littering his property.
Some 20 feet long and 40 feet wide, Tut Basin is an undedicated roadway that runs between the rear of Gee Bee's property and the new bulkhead, and connects Royal Avenue to Westminster Road. The south side of the road began sinking due to both overloaded trucks using it as a cut-through and tidal action that blanketed it the more the former bulkhead eroded. The hazardous road was eventually fenced off, as sinkholes, overgrown weeds, garbage and rats emerged in the surrounding area.
The town discovered that the county was responsible for fixing the bulkhead, and that Tut Basin was an abandoned private road never designated part of the town's highway system. Once the county rebuilt the bulkhead, the town agreed to fix up and beautify the area.
Dorothy Donno, who lives adjacent to Tut Basin, said that while she too objects to turning the former road into a park-like area, echoing Arata's claim that it would invite teens to carouse there at night, she currently is more concerned about fencing it off once more for safety reasons.
Since the bulkhead work was completed and the fence was taken down on the Westminster side of the road, some motorists drive into the area only to discover it is fenced off at the other end, on the Royal Avenue side. "I now see a lot of older people driving in the area who don't realizing that it's not a street," Donno said.
She also noted that a new fence the county installed along the new bulkhead is about two feet from the canal wall, and that grass will grow high along this narrow stretch. "My concern is the weeds that are going to grow between the bulkhead and the fence," Donno said. "Who's going to cut that?"
"We're going to create a green space of some sort [on the Tut Basin road], with new curbing all the way around, and we'll fix the sidewalk that's busted up," Ed Sieban, executive assistant to the town board, said when asked if the town's intent was to build a mini-park in the area. "The area will be completely fenced in, with a gate so only we can get in to cut the grass and keep it clean. It's not going to be a place where people can hang out."
Sieban added that at Donno's request, the town would move the county's new fence closer to the bulkhead line, and that it plans to get started on these projects "in the next couple of weeks."
