Long Beach
HERALD Also serving Point Lookout & East Atlantic Beach
Gayden will stay another year
L.B. restarant faces fines
Honoring this week’s hero
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VOL. 31 NO. 34
AUGUST 20 - 26, 2020
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Gyms eyeing their return Cuomo allows reopening on Monday, with limitations By DARWIN YANES dyanes@liherald.com
Courtesy Anne Hayes
BIKRAM YOGA IN Long Beach before the pandemic. Owner Anne Hayes said she looks forward to her students’ return, but knows it will take a while before things are back to normal.
The announcement that many gym owners were anxiously awaiting came on Monday, when Gov. Andrew Cuomo gave his blessing to reopening those facilities as soon as next Monday. Like other reopenings, however, there will be limitations. Fitness centers will be allowed to open at 33 percent capacity, and masks must be worn at all times, Cuomo said in a news briefing. The facilities will also have to perform
health screenings; patrons will be required to use sign-in forms to help with potential contact tracing; and ventilation systems must be upgraded to help prevent the transmission of Covid-19. Closed since March, gyms are reopening as the state sees its lowest infection rate since the coronavirus pandemic began, 0.7 percent. Cuomo said that gyms must be inspected, or be ready to be inspected, by local officials by Sept. 2. Localities will also determine whether gyms can CONTINUED ON PAGE 5
Tax abatement front and center at Superblock hearing By JAMES BERNSTEIN jbernstein@liherald.com
There weren’t the huge crowds some had expected when Nassau County economic development officials held a hearing Wednesday night on the largest building proposal in Long Beach in decades: a project to construct hundreds of condominium and rental units on the Superblock. Instead, Richard Kessel, chairman of the Nassau Industrial Development Agency, which will decide whether to approve a $23 million, 25-year tax abatement for the project, called the hearing one of the most unusual
the county has held. There was no decision on the tax abatement plan proposed by the Garden City-based developer Engel Burman Wednesday night, Kessel said. Instead, there were chairs spaced six feet apart, and a turnout for both the afternoon and evening sessions of only about a dozen people. The hearing was also virtual, and more people were online than in the ballroom of the Allegria Hotel, the site of the hearing. “We haven’t had an in-person hearing since March,” Kessel told the audience. “So this is extraordinary. You don’t see many in-person hearings anywhere in Nassau County these
days.” A half-dozen people who were opposed to the project said they did not like the idea of providing a tax abatement to a multi-million-dollar developer. Meanwhile, another half-dozen said they favored the project, asserting that Long Beach needed the tax revenue and the jobs. Many of those in favor said they were union workers. Michael Bosco, a resident of Long Beach for 30 years and a union carpenter, was typical of the development’s supporters. “I was always in favor,” Bosco said at the beginning of the evening portion of the hearing. “Now, with Covid, I would think more
people would want to live closer to their homes and their jobs.” But Katherine O’Leary said she was unhappy that Engel Burman threatened not to build the complex unless it received the tax abatement. “The taxes fall on the residents,” O’Leary said, testifying, like Bosco, in person. She said taxes in the city have been
raised in each of the past three years, and that many in Long Beach are unemployed because of the coronavirus pandemic. “I also disagree that the [Superblock site] is blighted,” O’Leary said. “I think of it as open space. I would prefer that a swimming pool be built there. I resent having to pay taxes for CONTINUED ON PAGE 3