| Newsday "Today is a positive step forward for the Rockaway Peninsula," City Councilman Joseph Addabbo Jr. (D-Rockaways) told about 200 people who gathered for the groundbreaking for the first phase of the project in weather that everyone agreed was fitting for a day at the beach. "We've seen groundbreaking before and heard of many plans, but this is the one that has heart and reality to really go forward," Addabbo said. "It's a grand day for the Rockaways," said Councilman James Sanders Jr. His sentiment was repeated by speakers at the 3 1/2-acre site less than a block from the ocean between Beach 73rd and Beach 74th streets where 32 single- and two-family homes will be built. "It took us almost 40 years to get here," said Jerilyn Perine, commissioner of the city Department of Housing Preservation and Development, noting that plans for the 117-acre Arverne Urban Renewal Area were passed in 1964. Arverne-by-the-Sea will include 2,300 residential units in a mix of houses and mid-rise condominiums; retail stores; a school; a day care center; a community center; and 10 acres of new parkland. The developer is Benjamin-Beechwood LLC - a joint venture of Benjamin Development of Garden City and the Beechwood Organization of Jericho - which will obtain private financing for the project. Alvin Benjamin, president of Benjamin Development, said a "city within a city" was being built "that will indicate to everybody that New York is not only on its way back but on its way to being bigger and better." Benjamin said about 50 workers would be employed in the first phase. Union members and local contractors voiced concern about who will get the jobs. With a huge rubber rat symbolizing non-union labor, about 60 members of Local 45 of the Carpenters Union demonstrated outside the site. Benjamin and Les Lerner, president of the Beechwood Organization, said the unions and local contractors would get jobs over the five years the entire project will take to complete. |