KEARNY —
A summer has passed with Kearny’s Hickory St. playground eerily devoid of sounds of children at play, as the long-neglected facility has remained closed for a slowly proceeding facelift.
On March 8, the town governing body awarded a $316,029 contract to D’Arminio & Sons of Hackensack for construction work on the park, including repaving the surface.
Then, on March 22, the mayor and Town Council followed up by ordering new play equipment from Marturano Recreation Co. of Spring Lake for $108,159.
Paving is still in progress and much of the new play items, including basketball poles/backboards, are in place but the job remains incomplete.
At the Sept. 13 council meeting, Michael Neglia, the town’s consulting engineer, acknowledged that the project “has gone slower than anticipated.”
Playground fencing has been done and additional perimeter fencing was expected to be installed soon, he said.
As for the new basketball court, Neglia said paving has been completed and “we’re waiting for the oils to get out of the pavement before the coating is applied. … One of the (half-court) basketball courts will have to be re-set.”
“They’re beginning with topsoil and seeding and we should be getting over the finish line in the next two weeks,” Neglia added. “We had hoped to have it finished by now.”
Elsewhere, a case of mixed signals ended up delaying the start of a long-planned upgrade at Pettigrew playground at Washington School, Neglia said.
For the past year or so, the town and the Kearny Board of Education – which owns the property – have gone back
and forth about how the job should proceed, with school officials having expressed concerns that the redesigned playground should not be in conflict with a nearby gate access point used by school buses so as to create a possible safety hazard.
At any rate, Neglia said the contractor, Reivax Contracting Corp. of Newark, started work prematurely “without first notifying us” or the LSRP (Licensed Site Remediation Professional) monitoring the project.
Consequently, Neglia said, the contractor had to pulled off the site “but he should be back shortly,” as soon as the state Department of Environmental Protection signs off on it.
An asphalt cap was expected to protect against any disturbances of sub-surface historical fill at the site.
Last week, it appeared that Reivax – which the town awarded a $203,558 contract on June 28 – was staging his machinery at the property while awaiting the go-ahead.
Joseph Vuich, a member of the Neglia team, told The Observer that part of the playground’s re-design would permit children to more directly – and safely – access the play area.
Meanwhile, in other infrastructure developments, Neglia said that because Gov. Christie has frozen Transportation Trust Funds, money allocated to repave Davis Ave. (Bergen Ave. to Dukes St.) and Peden Terrace (Passaic Ave. to Belgrove Drive) would not be readily released so paving those streets “is completely on hold.”
However, he added, the town is able to use funding from a state Department of Transportation grant to do water improvements under those streets.
Additionally, Neglia said the town will use proceeds from municipal bond sales to finance resurfacing and water main repairs along Devon St. (Bergen to King St.), Elm St. (Bergen to Garfield St. and Quincy to Midland Aves.) and Forest St. (Oakwood Ave. to Midland). He said he expected that the contract would be awarded by mid-October.
And, he added, the town will use Community Development Block Grant funding and some municipal funds to pay for repaving of Maple St. (Halstead to Grove Sts.), Hoyt St. (Devon to Kearny Ave.), Chestnut St. (Hoyt to Wilson Ave.) and Patterson St. (Kearny to Maple). This project should be done by year’s end, he said.
