Officials envision more public spaces near Glen Cove Creek

Glen Cove city officials are hoping to transform much of a former industrial site on the south side of Glen Cove Creek into parks, athletic fields and other “green uses,” connecting it to the Garvies Point development on the creek’s north shore.

An Oct. 12 open house will allow residents to give their input on proposed changes. One plan puts a field for football, soccer and lacrosse on a former city composting site, and parking across the street, where a long-unused incinerator is being demolished.

Long term, another athletic field, a splash park, a pool, and picnic and play areas are among options being discussed, said city parks and recreation director Darcy Belyea.

“The whole goal is to make that south side of the creek less industrial and bring it back to the public,” Belyea said on a recent afternoon while standing at the composting site, the air filled with the odor of the nearby asphalt plant.

Glen Cove is a coastal city, but, “unless you go to one of the two beaches, you’re not accessing the waterfront,” she said. “This opens it up for everybody.”

The composting and incinerator sites will be overhauled first, Belyea said. Next to the incinerator property is the city waste transfer station, which Mayor Reginald Spinello said he wants to close by 2019.

Belyea stood outside a cavernous aluminum building at the site, watching backhoes and bulldozers sort mounds of trash and recyclables. She imagined an indoor recreation center with batting cages and an artificial-turf field “if it were cleaned and we could get the smell out.”

The city eventually hopes to transform other properties into recreation and park space, to complement the eight existing ballfields farther inland from the creek. But “there’s no determination at all that any one of these particular properties would be targeted for reuse,” said Ann Fangmann, executive director of the Glen Cove Community Development Agency.

Uniondale-based RXR Realty is in talks to buy the asphalt plant, said Frank Haftel, first vice president at RXR. The goal “is to bring it more in line with the public uses and public spaces that are part of Garvies Point,” Haftel said, referring to RXR’s project on the north side of the creek that is to include 1,110 condominiums and apartments, parks and other amenities.

Belyea envisions an esplanade on the south shore traveling over a creek bridge to connect with the esplanade planned for Garvies Point.

But none of the proposals are final, and the city is awaiting residents’ ideas at the open house, Belyea said.

“We want to hear what they have to say as to what they want there,” she said.