Hempstead Village moves ahead with plan for skate park

A skate park named in honor of Jarred Newallo will be constructed in Hempstead's Kennedy Memorial Park. Credit: Newallo family
Hempstead Village officials are moving forward with plans to build a skate park in Kennedy Memorial Park and said it should be completed by Labor Day — a year after a prior administration said it would be opened.
The Hempstead Village board voted unanimously April 3 to approve a contract with the Los Angeles-based firm Spohn Ranch Skateparks. It will be named in honor of Jarred Newallo, an avid skateboarder who was killed in a 2014 sanitation truck crash at the age of 25. He had dreamed of a skate park for his friends at Kennedy Memorial Park, where he’d worked as a summer camp counselor for years.
“It’s a great facility for the youth of Hempstead,” Mayor Don Ryan said. “I think it’s going to be a joy for the community for years to come.”
The village should have design plans by the end of the month and construction is expected to begin in June and take about eight weeks, according to George Sandas, superintendent of the village’s parks and recreation department. The skate park is to include rails, curbs, benches and steps.
Former Mayor Wayne Hall Sr. had announced plans for the skate park in February 2017 and said it would open later that summer.
Officials said it took longer than expected for the application paperwork to go through the state.
The state, following urging from Deputy State Assembly Speaker Earlene Hooper (D-Hempstead), has given the village a $250,000 grant for the skate park and improvements to the kitchen at Kennedy Memorial Park.
The village skate park will cost $300,000, and the kitchen improvements will be $100,000. The village will allocate $150,000 toward the project.
The village received documents for the grant in November 2016 but did not return them to Dormitory Authority of the State of New York (DASNY) until February 2017, according to an agency spokesman. Other state approvals and DASNY’s review of the grant were completed in October 2017.
Newallo and his sister, Tara Newallo, spent their youth at Kennedy Memorial Park. Newallo’s father, William Newallo, has worked in the parks and recreation department since 1982. Newallo organized skateboarding clinics and DJ’d break-dancing sessions for kids at the park.
Newallo was working on the back of a Hempstead Town sanitation truck in 2014 when it collided with a second truck. He was pronounced dead at the hospital after suffering “crushing injuries” in the crash.
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