By Laura Lane
Residents in nearby neighborhoods say that, over the years, they have dealt with the smell of garbage, grease poured down storm drains by a restaurant, overfilled dumpsters from the supermarket, rodents, dim lighting, poor drainage and an icy parking lot during winter.
The latest problem was a six- to eight-inch-wide hole that, if the
ground around it had collapsed, could have sent a person 15 feet into a drainage tunnel that sits near the side entrance of the mall.
After weeks of phone calls by the area civic groups and a few visits by Merrick elected leaders, the hole was filled last Friday. Residents, however, remain dissatisfied. They say the mall must be better monitored, calling it an eyesore and a danger zone.
"That hole was the right size for a child's foot," said Michele Walsh, Central Merrick Homeowners Association president, as well as president of the South Shore Joint Council of Civic Organizations. "The
Merrick Mall never cleans anything up unless some complaint is made by the civic associations. And this is more than a pothole. Whatever is under the ground is not stable."
It's unclear who had the hole filled with tar. The mall owners on record, Barry and Bruce Kirshner, did not answer the phone at press time. What is clear is that three weeks passed before the hole got filled.
By then, Nassau County Legislator David Denenberg (D-Merrick) was trying to get the Town of Hempstead to fine the owner daily for violations until the problem was fixed. He had also approached Nassau County police, but was told they could not help since the hole was on private property. Denenberg had even approached the county Department of Health in search of a health-code violation.
Denenberg reached a dead end in looking for the Kirshners, though he said has not given up. Like everyone, Denenberg would like to know if unconfirmed reports that the Merrick Mall has been sold -- which are circulating around the community -- are true.
New York State Assemblyman David McDonough (R-North Merrick), who is revitalization liaison for downtown Merrick, has tried to find out if the mall has been sold, as well.
And Barry Fox, president of Merrick Park Home Owners Association, said he had heard that the mall has been sold and that a major store inside it would be gutted. But he did not know who might have bought the mall.
When contacted about the potentially dangerous hole in the mall's pavement, Susie Trenkle, Town of Hempstead press secretary, said she was unsure how the town handled situations like this one, since the hole was located in a privately owned parking lot. Concerned by its potential danger, though, she fired off a memorandum to the town's Building Department.
Residents now wonder when the next problem will arise at the Merrick Mall and who they should contact for help, since no one is sure anymore who owns the property.
"We have floods in the lot all the time," said Fox. "And when it rains, there is a lake there, which backs up garbage into the drains. The manholes should be inspected too."
Fox said he has hundreds of letters from residents about
the Merrick Mall. "This hole is just the most-recent state of
decrepitude that the lot is in," the civic leader said. "If this one area [in the pavement] was rotted out, I wonder how many other areas are too."
