Rebuilt Malverne park reopens after $6.3 million drainage upgrade

Thunderstorms like the one that soaked Long Island the weekend after Labor Day used to leave pools of standing water on the baseball fields in Malverne. With a new drainage system built beneath Whelan Park, this time was different.

“There was no standing water, no ponding, nothing that would prohibit the use of any of the amenities down there,” Malverne Village Mayor Timothy Sullivan said. In the past, “we would have to frequently deal with standing water issues,” he said.

The completion of a $6.3 million yearlong project to build the drainage system beneath what Sullivan said had been an underutilized park means rainwater is now directed into concrete basins and plastic tanks that slow absorption into the ground. That prevents flooding and filters the water that ultimately feeds into Pine Stream, which then feeds into the Mill River.

New park from scratch

During the construction, earthmovers turned the green fields into a dirt tabula rasa to install the drainage systems and build a new park from scratch.

The original park was built on a pond and was mostly used by Little League baseball teams, though the fields weren't regulation, Sullivan said.  The renovated park includes two regulation Little League fields, a larger one for the senior division and a smaller one for the junior division, and girls softball.

The new fields boast amenities including aluminum  bleachers, stone seating, dugouts, new scoreboards, lighting and a batting cage. Park renovations also include a half-mile path with fitness stations, lighting, educational signs about the park's history and ecology, a picnic area, dog run and improved parking.

Though the renovated park reopened to the public in June, it officially reopened earlier this month.

“Prior to the project, there was no drainage improvement at all in the park, so every drop of rain that fell would just drain right directly into the stream,” said Matthew Mohlin, department manager for civil engineering at H2M, a Melville-based firm that designed the project.

That runoff would bring trash, debris, fertilizers and animal waste directly into the stream. “As part of this project, we put in a series of on-site collection systems that catch the water before it gets to the stream and then it diverts into these buried chambers,” Mohlin said.

Those chambers are a combination of concrete dry wells and blue plastic tanks known by their brand name, Cultec Stormwater Chambers.

The wells and chambers buried at Whelan Park were designed for a “10-year” storm event that brings 5.3 inches of rain and can hold close to 100,000 gallons of water, Mohlin said.

The chambers are buried about 2 feet below the surface of the baseball fields and collect water through an array of perforated pipes near the surface, Mohlin said.

The water is stored in the system for several hours before it leaches into the ground, filtering through sand, he said. “The result is that the stormwater is basically cleaned before it gets into the stream.”

New York State funded the project as part of a larger effort to invest in storm infrastructure after Superstorm Sandy through the department of Housing and Community Renewal.

Earlier project disbanded

Sullivan said that the village, under a previous administration, had been approved for a different drainage project, but it wasn't built. Sullivan said that in 2021, he and former Mayor Keith Corbett created a new proposal for Whelan Park.

Since the park is owned by Nassau County, Sullivan said, the state wanted the village to ensure it had control of the property before it released the funds. Sullivan said that last year, Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman agreed to sell the park to the village for $1. That agreement was approved by the county legislature earlier this year, and Sullivan said he expects the State Legislature will approve the transfer next year.

Though the state approved the project to deal with drainage issues, tearing it up to install the water tanks meant putting it back together again. The village used this as an opportunity to add the other features.

"Prior to this project, the only real use of that facility was for baseball, whereas now it's attractive to a larger community," Sullivan said. "It's certainly been getting a lot more use than it ever had prior to this project."