Garage near Hicksville LIRR station opens

The commute before the commute has ended.

Long Island Rail Road riders in Hicksville awoke yesterday to long-awaited news: the Town of Oyster Bay opened its new 1,440-vehicle garage a block from the train station. With that, parking and shuttles from Broadway Mall and Sears -- nearly a mile from Long Island's busiest LIRR hub -- will end April 1.

"This is a pleasure," said Lynn Goodman, a stockbroker from Plainview, as she made her way to a 6:25 a.m. train to Penn Station.

In addition to eliminating a shuttle ride, the garage will shelter Goodman's Hyundai SUV -- what she calls "my baby" -- from snowy winters and sticky summers.

"I was definitely getting car washes more often," she said of parking at the mall.

The old garage, built in 1971, closed in June 2008 after workers discovered cracks in its concrete-and-steel T-beams. Before deciding to rebuild on the same site, at the corner of Duffy Avenue and Newbridge Road, town leaders weighed residents' concerns about the facility's profile.

While the new garage was designed with the same vehicle capacity, it has two levels below grade, one at grade and one above. The old building had three levels above.

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"It's not a skyscraper," said Oyster Bay Public Works Commissioner Rich Betz.

New features include nearly 90 security cameras that send images to a Public Safety Department booth and that department's Syosset headquarters, energy-efficient LED lighting and a sensor-operated display board updating the number of available spaces.

The project cost $65 million, some of which was bonded. Roughly $35 million went toward construction, with the remainder paying for the old structure's demolition and asbestos removal, property acquisition, road improvements and temporary parking lots and shuttles.

Yesterday morning, Tom Landers, a union electrician from Hicksville, was one of the first commuters to park in the new structure.

"Nice. Clean," he noted, walking to catch his pre-dawn train. "Probably worth the money."

Only Town of Oyster Bay residents with valid commuter parking permits can use the garage, which will be open from 5 a.m. to midnight Monday to Friday, and closed weekends. Officials can remotely open gates to help people returning to their parked vehicles later.