NEW DORP BEACH — The city is putting out a second attempt to contract with a construction company to rebuild a senior center that was destroyed by Hurricane Sandy, after an earlier attempt was brought down by wage disputes.
The Parks Department invited companies to issue proposals for the reconstruction of the New Dorp Beach Friendship Center, at 128 Cedar Grove Ave., which was destroyed in the 2012 storm.
The project has been delayed by almost a year after the first contract was canceled in June because of issues with wage agreements, according to the Parks Department which owns the land.
If the new bid is successful, the agency expects construction to start on the senior center as early as mid-2017, a spokesman for Parks said.
The center, located beneath the Our Lady of Lourdes church, was destroyed after Sandy flooded the space with nearly 15 feet of water, Marie Didato, state coordinator for the club, previously told DNAinfo New York.
The storm water destroyed the furniture and collapsed the walls, with the floors being the only part of it to survive, Didato said.
The center has been closed since, forcing many of the nearly 100 seniors who visited daily to travel to the Great Kills Friendship Club instead. About 40 of them have been unable to get there, Didato said.
"They've lost 20 pounds because we gave them breakfast and lunch. Some of them got really frail," she previously told DNAinfo New York.
"Prior to that, they were active."
Soon after the storm, seniors joined local elected officials to call on the Parks Department to rebuild the center. The city eventually budgeted $1.5 million for the work in 2014, with Borough President James Oddo and Councilman Steven Matteo allocating another $300,000.
The Parks Department first put the reconstruction out to bid earlier this year and got the first proposals in March, the agency said.
Construction was expected to start in the summer but issues over the hourly wages set in the contract caused the bid to be rejected in June.
The deadline to submit for the second bid is Jan. 31.
