Public Employee Press

Coney Island one year after Sandy
Beaches rebuilt
By GREGORY N. HEIRES



The city's nine public beaches sustained extensive damage because of Hurricane Sandy, raising concern that the 2013 swimming season might be curtailed.

But because of the effort of municipal workers like Associate Project Manger 2 Michael Azzollini, the city lived up to its pledge to open the beaches on schedule on May 24, seven months after the super storm struck the city a year ago this month.

Azzollini was a member of a team of city workers from the Parks and Recreation Dept. and the Dept. of Design and Construction who put in long hours to repair and upgrade the city's beachfront areas.

The project devoted $270 million to the rebuilding. That included remaking the Steeplechase Pier on Coney Island and constructing and delivering 35 modular comfort stations.

The Dept. of Sanitation removed 430,000 tons of storm debris in the Rockaways, Staten Island and Brooklyn so beaches could reopen and surrounding neighborhoods could return to some semblance of normalcy.

Throughout the summer, the Army Corps of Engineers placed a total of 4.5 million cubic yards of cleaned and sifted sand along severely impacted beaches, including 1 million cubic yards of sand on Coney Island, where Azzollini worked. Damage to boardwalks, surprisingly, was minimal.

Monitoring contractors

Azzollini's primary responsibility involved overseeing the installation of new, storm-resistant public restrooms and lifeguard stations, including showers and lockers. The work included installing showers and drinking fountains for the public and ensuring facilities were accessible to handicapped people.

Azzollini, a member of Civil Service Technical Guild Local 375 and an employee at Parks, worked with Michael Kenney, the local's 2nd vice president and a DDC employee, to monitor the work of the consultants and contractor for the Coney Island job.

"Our responsibility was to make sure the city was getting its money's worth for the work," Azzollini said. "We were the ones there daily basis, going onto the sites and keeping our higher-ups informed about what was going on."

An important part of the job involved quality control. "When things were not going right - there might be a poor choice of material or we may spot defects - we would say, 'Hey we don't like this material,' " Azzollini said.

The Lifeguards chose not to move in until July 4, which allowed the contractor time to address their concerns about the new stations, and some tasks were delayed until the end of the swimming season. Some minor glitches occurred, Azzollini acknowledged, but what's important was that the beaches were ready to open on time. Azzollini said he expected the project to be completed by October.

"This was a very intense project," said Azzollini, a 26-year veteran of the city workforce. "It was a rush job."