There was plenty to celebrate as the Greenvale Civic Association held its 50th anniversary dinner last Sunday at the Greenvale Town House restaurant.
Greenvale is a pleasant little hamlet of over 1,000 people, sandwiched between East Hills and the road leading to Glen Cove. That Greenvale has maintained its small-town charm in the midst of suburban sprawl was an occasion enough for celebration. But as important, is the affordability of the area. Real estate can be found for $200,000 onward and potential residents, depending on their exact address, have the luxury of sending their children to two of the top school districts in the state, Roslyn and North Shore.
Greenvale is also unique in that its territory encompasses both the Town of North Hempstead and Town of Oyster Bay. The civic association is lucky enough to have John Fabio as its president. Fabio, celebrating his 15th year in that position, is a former councilman for the Town of North Hempstead and someone familiar with the workings of local politics.
The goal of the civic association is essentially the same as other such groups in the Roslyn area. “We are trying to prevent our little residential community from being innuated with commercial development,” Fabio told The Roslyn News.
The civic association’s biggest success in recent years, Fabio added, concerned expansion plans by the electronic giant, P.C. Richard, which has a franchise in Greenvale. After two years of negotiation, the civic association was able to force P.C. Richard to reduce the size of its expansion and to have the final product constructed in a state-of-the-art style, something very rare for such a franchise.
Other than development, traffic remains a concern for the civic association.
“We are faced with a challenge of tremendous amounts of traffic,” Fabio said, referring to the intersection of Northern Boulevard and Glen Cove Road. “We are working with the towns for a remedy curtailing the cut-through traffic through residential streets.”
The informal dinner party took place from 3 to 6 p.m. at the diner. In addition to a full-course dinner, there was also a handsome anniversary cake. Each civic association member received a handsome 19-page commemorative booklet, which detailed the history and the purpose of the civic association and that of Greenvale itself, from its beginnings as Bull’s Head to its transformation at the turn of the century, from a rural hamlet to a destination of Gilded Age families and their mansions to, finally, the Vanderbilt Cup races in the early decades of the 20th century, sporting events that drew up to 250,000 sports fans to little Greenvale, further assisting the area’s growth.
The day was an occasion to honor the association’s two previous presidents, Larry Steuber and Raymond Grunewald. The booklet reiterated the civic association’s goals of “[maintaining] the highest standards of our quality of life.”
Such a goal remains a challenge. Indeed, a timetable of Greenvale’s history reveals that in this year alone, a new shopping center at the northeast corner of Northern Boulevard and Glen Cove Road is under construction. In Wheatley Plaza, a Stop & Shop supermarket has replaced the Pathmark store. A road re-surfacing project from Glen Cove Road to Route 106 in Oyster Bay is underway and a new firehouse is being planned to replace the old house on Locust Street. And so, it is with good reason that the commemorative booklet included the following statement.
“In many ways, Greenvale is the victim of its own success. With ever-expanding commercial development come the attendant challenges of increased traffic, noise, pollution, reduction of green space…and the ever-increasing costs of living. It is a never-ending struggle to maintain our suburban quality of life in the face of all these challenges. It makes the role of the organization that rises to challenge developments that adversely impact on our quality of life. With community support, we will continue to fight for the best interest of our residents. We stand ready to serve for the next 50 years.”
