PHOTOS BY KEITH HEUMILLER In the wake of superstorm Sandy, after Sandy Hook was pounded by a massive storm surge and more than 13 feet of floodwaters, many feared that the popular Shore destination was doomed to a summer of rebuilding.
Less than six months later, park officials and area business owners alike are looking forward to a promising summer season.
“People are happy to be back in the park, and we’re happy to have them,” Assistant Park Superintendent Pete McCarthy said in an interview a week before the holiday crowds arrived.
“We will be doing repairs as the summer goes along, but none of these repairs will have any impact on the visitors’ experience.
Most of the lingering signs of Sandy’s wrath have been cleared away. The seemingly endless mounds of sand that were strewn from end to end of the seven-mile national park have been removed; the unexploded ordnance found washed up on the beaches has been disposed of.
Two cyclists walk their bikes past a beachside pavilion at Sandy Hook on May 18. The park reopened to the public on May 1, after being shuttered for six months following a massive tidal surge during Sandy. All of the Hook’s parking lots — save the one adjacent to Fisherman’s Beach — have been reopened, and all six beaches are ready for beachgoers.
The park officially reopened to hikers and fishermen early this month, and summertime hours of 5 a.m. to 8 p.m. accompanied the reopening of the beaches .
“It was important for us to open on May 1, even though we still had construction going on,” McCarthy said. “Our goal was to reopen these facilities to the public, and we have been getting positive feedback since then.”
Sandy Hook’s resurrection comes as welcome news to business owners situated along the Route 36 corridor, which connects the park to the Garden State Parkway and points north.
Some areas of Sandy Hook, such as this bridge near Horseshoe Cove, are still off-limits to the public. Sandy-related repairs will be ongoing at the park throughout the summer. Cliff Moore, president of the Northern Monmouth Chamber of Commerce, said he hopes the summer will be a positive change of pace following a slow spring and an especially difficult winter.
“Things are still kind of down, but we are anticipating a decent summer,” said Moore, who also owns the IHOP on Route 36 in Keyport.
“For us, [the summer] accounts for a 35 percent increase in business over the rest of the year. Much of that comes from people traveling on the highway and stopping in.
“As soon as we found out that Sandy Hook would be reopening, it was jubilation all around.”
But it was a long road to recovery for Sandy Hook, as millions of dollars in federal funds and hundreds of hours of labor have gone into debris removal, road and trail repairs, infrastructure replacements and more.
Sandy Hook, a unit of Gateway National Recreation Area, has received approximately $30 million in combined federal funding, most of which has been allocated for building repairs, trails and beaches, according to National Park Service (NPS) spokeswoman Daphne Yun.
Sandy Hook also recently received an additional $5.2 million in Federal Lands Highway funding for road repairs and other work.
One of the major problems caused by the storm was the park’s loss of wastewater management capabilities. Without a fully functioning treatment plant, many of the park’s employees and all of its nonprofit research and environmental partners were forced to leave the park following the storm and relocate to homes and offices around the state.
The treatment plant is now functioning, McCarthy said, but control systems still need to be elevated more than a dozen feet above ground in order to comply with FEMA’s recommended base flood elevations for the site.
McCarthy said work also was ongoing to bring three of the park’s bathroom centers back online, to accompany the temporary bathroom facilities set up at each beach.
The Sandy Hook ferry landing was slated for a Memorial Day opening, while elsewhere repairs to bike paths, employee housing along Officer’s Row and various facilities near Fort Hancock will continue throughout the summer, McCarthy added.
The road leading to the Fisherman’s Beach parking lot needs to be torn out and repaved, Mc- Carthy said, which he expects to be completed by the end of August. Hartshorne Drive, the park’s main road, was still being worked on but was expected to be completed and ready for travel by the holiday.
Other facilities have already been restored or replaced and are back in working order.
A new concert stage, built at Area E to replace one destroyed during the storm, will host its first summertime concert on June 12. All of the Sandy Hook-based nonprofits — including the American Littoral Society and Clean Ocean Action — have returned to the park, according to Yun.
After hosting its graduation ceremony at Fort Hancock this summer, the Marine Academy of Science and Technology will reopen its doors in the fall, she added.
Moore said he and his neighboring business owners were preparing for a traditional level of summer traffic, bringing in additional inventory and scheduling enough staff to accommodate what he hopes will be a bright, new season.
“If we can do as much business as we did last year, that would be fantastic,” he said. “But we definitely feel better than we felt a few months ago. That anxiety is gone.”
Daily parking passes for Sandy Hook will be available at the front gate for $15, and season passes are available for $75.
The NPS also provides discounted daily passes to seniors 62 and over for $10, and free passes for permanently disabled visitors.