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Face-lift coming for Jones Beach water tower

BY JENNIFER BARRIOS | jennifer.barrios@newsday.com

7:18 PM EDT, May 8, 2008

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Long Island's best-loved 78-year-old is about to get a face-lift.

The septuagenarian in question is the Jones Beach water tower, which has been showing its age.

Long cracks run along the 231-foot structure's exterior of brick and limestone.

Inside, the steel frame that supports the 300,000-gallon water tank is deteriorating.

And a section of copper is missing from the tower's green-tinged roof.

All will be fixed with money in this year's state budget, which earmarks about $130 million for infrastructure maintenance at state parks. The Jones Beach tower's copper roof, the structural steel framing encased in concrete, and portions of deteriorating brick and limestone will be replaced at a cost of $3.3 million.

Long Island's state parks received the state's biggest chunk of infrastructure money -- $27.4 million.

State Parks Commissioner Carol Ash said the money is a good start toward combating years of neglected maintenance at many Long Island parks.

"We realized parks would continue to deteriorate, people would be increasingly unhappy and so they would stop coming, which would just start a cycle which is both unhealthy for them and us," said Ash. She spoke from the West Bathhouse office of one of her predecessors as state parks chief, master planner Robert Moses.

Health and safety issues were the top priority in choosing which projects to target first, Ash said. Next came the park's popularity. At about 7 million visitors a year, Jones Beach is one of the region's most visited.

On Thursday, Ash and local legislators toured the Jones Beach tower. Modeled by Moses on a Venetian campanile and completed in 1930, the tower has been fenced off from the public since 2002, when the exterior cracks became noticeable.

Inside, the 186-foot steel water tank dominates, lit only by a few bulbs as daylight filters in through tiny windows. A narrow pathway of wooden planks edges the tank, protecting visitors from the puddles of water that seep up through the ground.

The tower supplies water to the restrooms, bathhouses, swimming pools and buildings of Jones Beach State Park.

Legislators, including Assemb. David McDonough (R-Merrick), whose district includes the park, picked their way around the tank, gazing up at what they could see of the structure before it disappeared into darkness. The only way up the tower is a ladder attached to the tank itself.

McDonough said he was glad about the refurbishment. "It's a landmark on Long Island," he said. "This tower is over 70 years old, and now it's finally getting restored."

State Sen. Charles Fuschillo (R-Merrick) called it "the jewel of the state parks system."

Work is scheduled to begin this summer and take about 18 months. A somewhat less prominent water tower at Robert Moses State Park was refurbished several years ago.

Ash said she hopes that the Islandwide projects are the first of many that will maintain Long Island's parks, including the sweeping lines and classic designs on the public buildings seen through by Moses.

"It's up to us to make sure that the vision that was there really stays the vision," she said. "The parks are for the people, and we should take the best care of them and put as much infrastructure as is needed so that people can continue to come and enjoy."