New Hyde Park residents are set to have a new park adjacent to the village’s LIRR stop this spring.
The village is nearing completion on a park filled with children’s playground equipment, pickleball courts, a small grassy field, a dog park, a fountain, a gazebo, picnic tables, benches, public restrooms, a new police booth and over a dozen trees.
While construction is expected to wrap up within the next 10 days on the park, which sits between South 11th and South 12th Street on 3rd Avenue and used to be a municipal parking lot, Mayor Christopher Devane said the village will officially open it to the public in the spring, once the weather improves.
The park is funded by a $5 million state grant provided to the village to offset the impact of the MTA’s Third Track Project construction.
“We’re really proud of what this has become,” Devane said. “The people on this side of the village really did bear the brunt of all the noise and air pollution for four years [from the Third Track Project], and to have the result of it end up being green space and a park where kids can come down and play is great.”
The village also planted a young pine tree in the park, which Devane said will become the official village Christmas tree and is set be decorated with more lights and ornaments each year as it continues to grow.
The park’s completion will mark the end of a roughly six-year-long debate and renovation process surrounding the plots of land directly adjacent to the LIRR station between South 11th Street and Baer Place on 3rd Avenue.
In 2019, the former owner of the plot of land between South 12th Street and Baer Place, where commercial businesses previously stood, had proposed developing a four-story apartment building.
The idea was met with aggressive community pushback and shot down, leading the owner to propose a storage facility, another unpopular idea. Devane said he approached the owner after being elected in 2021, suggesting that the village purchase the land, which it did in 2024 for $3.5 million of the $5 million grant.
The village converted that plot into a parking lot using another $300,000 of the grant, allowing it to build the new park on the old municipal lot, located between South 11th and South 12th, without reducing village parking. That land opened as a new parking lot, along with a smaller plot on South 12th Street behind the new park, earlier this year
Devane said he believes the new park will revitalize the area near the train station, which he said is “blighted” and frequently desolate.
“I really think this park is a fitting end to all of this,” the mayor said. “A lot of people just come down here to pick people up and drop people off. Hopefully, now, it can be kind of a meeting place where families can come down.”
He said the village believes it will remain within its $1.2 million budget, or the remainder of the grant, to complete the park’s construction, but is prepared to contribute a small amount of additional village funds if necessary.
“We think it’s going to be a great addition to our village,” Devane said.
