This Sunday, Sept. 19 will be "Groundbreaking Day" in East Hills, as construction will begin on the Park at East Hills.

The day's events will begin at 4:30 p.m. and will take place at the village hall on 209 Harbor Hill Road.

When the event was announced last July, village officials said that 19 buildings would, in time, be removed in order to make way for the park's many amenities, including a large modern outdoor swimming pool, sports fields, tennis courts, children's playgrounds, a senior lounge, and other facilities, including basketball courts, a hill for snow sledding, bicycle paths, and an amphitheater area.

Over the past few months, the village has also taken bids for the demolition of the buildings and asbestos removal.

The entire park project is expected to take just over two years to be completed. The end result will be a 50-acre state-of-the-art park. Village residents voted to approve the park in a Oct. 8, 2003 referendum on a $17 million bond, the money of which would be used for park construction. The referendum passed by 1,149 to 333 margin or 77 percent in the affirmative. The vote total represented the highest positive vote in village history. The $17 million bond also represented a decrease from the $28 million that was the village's original estimation of the bond act.

The first order of business after the 2003 referendum was to gain financing and lock-in low rates. On December 18, 2003, at a public bid, Citigroup funded the project and the Village received an average rate of only 4.25 percent for the public improvement serial bonds. The rate was obtained because East Hills maintains one of the highest Moody's ratings for any village its size (Aa3).

Ever since the Air National Guard base, which stood in East Hills since the late 1940s, was scheduled to be shut down, village officials were aware that the site might be replaced by low-income housing, a major commercial post office processing facility or a drug rehabilitation center. Indeed, the Department of Housing and Urban Development did express an interest in the property as a future site for low-income housing.

At the same time, village officials had long hoped to turn the area into the village's first park. Village officials moved quickly to purchase the facility from the U.S. Air Force. With the help of Rep. Gary Ackerman, congressional committees approved the idea of a village purchase. Eventually, the village did purchase the property for a cost of a little over $3 million. On Dec. 9, 2000, the property was officially transferred from the Air Force to the Village of East Hills.