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Bridgeview housing project signals new era clubs that he spent decades building. Paddy McGee’s, Coyote Grill and the Bridgeview Yacht Club all Thirteen years after Hurricane sustained extensive damage, and Sandy reshaped the South Shore, rising insurance costs made John Vitale, a developer and the reopening them increasingly president of Vitale Properties, impractical. In the months that followed, says the final piece of his waterVitale — along with front vision is rising his son, Dylan, now along the Barnum 38, his partner in Island shoreline. Vitale Properties — The Bridgeview, a chose a new direction 117-unit luxury apartfor roughly 10 acres ment building under of waterfront properconstruction on the ty: residential develformer site of the opment. That shift Bridgeview Yacht began with the ChanClub, represents that nel Club, an apartlast of Vitale’s propm e n t c o m m u n i t y, erties to be elevated built on the former above potential flood site of Paddy levels. The $45 milMcGee’s, which lion project stands as opened in 2019 and both a personal milewas fully leased withstone for Vitale and a in six months. The long-term investment Bridgeview is now in the future of rising beside the Long Island Park. Beach Bridge, reshap“It was a goal of ing a neighborhood mine to have completonce defined by nighted all my properties JOHN VITALE life into a residential and making them community. safe and flood-resilient for the “The synergies of housing just future,” he said. Vitale, 71, began rethinking his worked for the neighborhood,” waterfront holdings after Sandy Vitale said. The Bridgeview has been devastated the once-thriving strip of bars, restaurants and night-
By ABIGAIL GRIECO
agrieco@liherald.com
I
Courtesy Donna Kraus
Retired New York City police officer Merritt Riley, of NYPD With Arms Wide Open, back right, joined Oceanside High School ACE program students and staff in the reopened school store on Dec. 22. A grant from the organization helped prepare the store to open and will defray its start-up expenses.
ACE students relaunch school store By ABIGAIL GRIECO agrieco@liherald.com
The school store at Oceanside High School officially reopened on Dec. 22, marking the return of a hands-on learning space that had been dormant since the coronavirus pandemic. The relaunch, celebrated with a ribbon-cutting ceremony, is being led by students in the school’s Academic and Career Exploration program, and represents a renewed commitment to vocational education and real-world skill building. The store’s reopening was years in the making, according to the high school’s director of special education, Saudia Mahamed, who added that the pandemic disrupted the ACE program’s off-campus vocational opportuni-
ties. “We had been wanting to do this for years,” Mahamed said. “When Covid hit, a lot of the job sites that were part of our vocational program changed. The landscape of business really shifted, and the amount of work we could find in the community for students was impacted.” Rather than scaling back experiential learning, district leaders sought new ways to bring vocational training in-house. Reopening the store made it possible for students to practice workplace skills in a supportive, structured environment while remaining on campus. “We wanted to continue to build meaningful experiences,” Mahamed said. “That way, CONTINUED ON PAGE 9
sland Park has been good to me, and I’m hoping to return the favor and help the village thrive and continue what we call down here the renaissance of Island Park.
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