By Richard Tedesco
But a tour of the interior of the building bears signs of a myriad of basic repairs that badly need attention.
One of the most serious, over-arching problem in the center is the roof. Evidence of serious water ingress is evident on both floors of the 32-year-old building, beginning with the gymnasium floor now under repair.
Water damage from the leaking roof caused the gym floor to buckle, recently prompting emergency repairs undertaken by county workers, according to Jonathan Davis, the community center's executive director.
Davis reports that the workers used maple wood in attempting to fix the oak wood floor. The resulting mismatch made it necessary for the county to engage a subcontractor to fix the floor, which is currently undergoing a major refinishing job.
Davis declined to estimate the cost of the repairs and at deadline, representatives of the county depart of Real Estate Development were unavailable to comment on the situation. But it seemed evident that fixing the roof - leaking in different areas for the past several years - would have forestalled the need for the gym floor fix.
"It's all over the place," said Davis about the numerous roof leaks. "That's been a problem."
The problem is evidenced by water damage to ceiling tiles throughout the rooms on the first and second floors of the building. Tiles discolored or bulging, apparently from water ingress, can be seen in the first floor foyer and virtually all the rooms off the main hallways on both floors of the structure.
The county has dispatched engineers to evaluate the roof, Davis said, but has not settled on a comprehensive solution to solve the problem.
The county's recurrent solution has been to patch spots on the roof, according to Davis, a process which has apparently shifted pooling water to other areas of the roof, eventually causing it to leak in other places. "They patched and patched and it leaked and leaked," he said.
Davis estimates that a rubberized roof ostensibly good for 10 years, would cost Nassau County approximately $250,000.
He points out that the problem of those water-damaged ceiling panels represents an immediate health hazard because they ultimately produce mold. "We have young children in here. You have to replace those."
On a daily basis, there are 82 children in the center each afternoon for day care alone, according to Davis.
The biggest recurrent problems are frequent breakdowns of the building's boiler and the air conditioning system. When the building was first erected in 1975, Davis said, it was designed with the assumption that a full-time superintendent would be located on-site to address heating and air conditioning issues. But there is no full-time maintenance person on-staff.
"They tried to convert it to a computer system and they have not fixed it," he said.
Beyond the building facility itself, there is a soccer field and basketball courts on the 7-acre tract of land that the center sits on. Those external areas were developed by the county a decade ago at a cost of $1.5 million.
The soccer field endures heavy use by members of the community in the form of pick-up games and a youth soccer league based at the center, and its condition reflects it. The grass surface is pitted expanse of uneven ground with large brown spots and areas where usage has eliminated the grass in sections completely.
Like the problems in the building's interior, the field represents a potential safety hazard, particularly to the grade school children who gather for soccer practices and games there on weekly basis.
Quite apart from doing any landscaping do improve the surface, the county apparently doesn't even cut the grass on the field on a regular basis. Overgrown patches of grass stand in stark contrast to the bare spots that could cause young, inexperienced players to slip and fall on the surface.
Some of the fathers of the boys in the soccer league rercently offered to cut the field on their own, but Davis doesn't want to encourage the county to evade its responsibility to maintain it. "Once you cut it, it's on you," Davis observed.
Legislator Jeffrey Toback (D-Oceanside) has publicly stated that the county has not been a good landlord for the Inwood community center - a primary argument being employed for the idea of selling the facility. The evident signs of neglect are a silent, but eloquent, testimony that clearly support Toback's statement.
