Riverhead Town to spruce up Grumman monuments
The F-14 Tomcat and A-6 Intruder aircraft on display at the Grumman Memorial Park in Calverton will soon be getting a makeover, officials say.
The Riverhead Town Board voted Tuesday to have the aircraft refurbished. Officials say the planes, which have been on loan from the National Museum of Naval Aviation and have been in place at the Enterprise Park at Calverton since 2000, have fallen into disrepair.
“Maintaining the planes and painting them is really specialized,” said deputy town attorney Anne Marie Prudenti. “It takes probably a year to paint them and maintain them.”
The town’s engineering department reported in May that the planes “are in need of repairs and refurbishing” and came up with a cost estimate of $67,000.
The board discussed this issue at its work session last Thursday and voted Tuesday to allocate funding not only for that work but also for restrooms at EPCAL and a number of recreation projects.
The cost of restoring the aircraft will be covered by money from the Solar 1 Community Benefit Agreement, which was intended, among other things, for “promotion and advancement in education, arts, community and historic heritage.” It is one of two such agreements the town has with Nextera, a solar company whose project the town approved a few years ago.
The public restrooms that were approved Tuesday will cost $250,000. They will be prefabricated buildings from a company called Sourcewell and placed at the EPCAL parks, which have not previously had such facilities.
The other projects to be undertaken with funding from Nextera’s Community Benefit Agreement included a new swing set at Wading River Beach ($13,500), basketball court improvements at Stotzky ($36,500) and improvements at the Stotzky Park walking trail ($100,000).
