A Roadway Deteriorating For Decades In Queens Gets Partial Restoration

QUEENS, NY — A stretch of coastal road that neighbors in Douglaston say has been deteriorating for decades was partially restored this week.

Shore Road, which runs along the perimeter of Little Neck Bay in Douglaston, was restabilized from West Drive to Bayview Avenue in a $4.9 million project completed Thursday.

Queens elected officials celebrated the project's expediency at a ribbon cutting, saying the Department of Transportation and Department of Design and Construction — which funded and managed the project, respectively — rallied to fix the roadway from further collapse after a 2018 nor'easter left it in a "perilous state," as Queens Borough President Donovan Richards put it.

"Thankfully, the DDC and DOT were more than up to the task of completing the necessary repairs quickly and under budget, and in an aesthetically pleasing manner as well," he added. The project finished $700,000 under budget after about a year of construction.

The most recent effort to save Shore Road from collapse started in June 2021 — including repairs to an embankment and a total of 3,450 square feet of roadway and walkway — but calls to fix issues along Shore Road have been ongoing for decades.

"It’s falling into the bay in a nutshell," George Schmidt, then chairman of Douglas Manor Association's Shore Road Reconstruction Committee, told QNS of the roadway in 2012, amid another attempt to remediate the road.

At that time, neighbors said they'd been seeing damage on Shore Road since the early 1990s, citing erosion, partial road collapses and giant potholes, Patch reported.

Now, neighbors said they're pleased to be able to use another stretch of the roadway as a promenade, which is what it was designed for in 1906, according to Douglas Manor Association president Pia Thompson.

"Shore Road is an important part of the fabric of our community," she said. "[It is] a place where we can take a leisurely walk and meet neighbors or just reconnect with nature."