Author Topic: Hurricane Sandy  (Read 39200 times)

Offline Editor

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Re: Hurricane Sandy
« Reply #30 on: January 01, 2013, 02:11:53 PM »
Yes, I contacted CBS Outdoor to address the problem. Let's see what happens.

Thanks.

Offline BLeafe

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Re: Hurricane Sandy
« Reply #31 on: January 04, 2013, 03:16:48 PM »
Fixed yesterday.............all is well and back to boring.


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Re: Hurricane Sandy
« Reply #32 on: January 16, 2013, 02:39:49 PM »
This was sent to me for posting...
______________________________
Press Release
From:  Rev. Steven McClelland
201-342-7570

First Presbyterian Church of Hackensack Provides Free Meals to AmeriCorps Volunteers

The First Presbyterian Church of Hackensack in concert with the Bergen Volunteer Center is providing meals to the AmeriCorps volunteers who are here to help the people of Little Ferry and Moonachie in rebuilding their homes from Hurricane Sandy.

Beginning on January 14 through the 29th members David Keller of Maywood, Betty McNair of Hackensack, Gilbert Robinson and Majory Appiah of Hackensack, Rev. Steven & Dotty McClelland and Steve & Tracy Manton of Oradell will be shopping, cooking and delivering 18 meals free of charge to the AmeriCorps volunteers who have come from across the country, providing tens of thousands of dollars in free labor to help our neighbors rebuild their lives and their homes.

First Presbyterian Church of Hackensack
64 Passaic Street
Hackensack, NJ 07601
www.fpchackensack.org
info@fpchackensack.org

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Re: Hurricane Sandy
« Reply #33 on: January 17, 2013, 12:33:33 PM »
YouTube Description: On October 26th, 2012, I shot this footage in Bergen County, Hackensack, NJ of some of Sandy's horrible destruction.


Offline BLeafe

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Re: Hurricane Sandy
« Reply #34 on: January 17, 2013, 04:09:44 PM »
YouTube Description: On October 26th, 2012, I shot this footage in Bergen County, Hackensack, NJ of some of Sandy's horrible destruction.

Very prescient of Mr. Suede to shoot this 3 days before the storm hit. ;D
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Re: Hurricane Sandy
« Reply #35 on: February 09, 2013, 01:50:29 PM »
Hackensack church feeds AmeriCorps volunteers staying in Moonachie and Little Ferry
Friday February 8, 2013, 8:22 AM
BY  JENNIFER VAZQUEZ
NEWS EDITOR
Hackensack Chronicle

"No charitable project is too small."


BERNADETTE MARCINIAK.STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
Volunteers from the First Presbyterian Church of Hackensack, in conjunction with other organizations, packed lunches, in the church's headquarters, for AmeriCorps volunteers during their weeks-long stay during which AmeriCorps assisted in the re-insulation of various trailer homes effected by the flooding that occurred as a result of Superstorm Sandy.From left to right, Dotty McClelland, Rev. Steven McClelland, Betty McNair, Tracey Manton, Steve Manton, David Keller, and Gilbert Robinson volunteered to put together lunches and dinners for the AmeriCorps volunteers who came from all across the nation to aid in the reconstruction efforts in Moonachie and Little Ferry after Superstorm Sandy.

That is the message that Rev. Steven McClelland from First Presbyterian Church of Hackensack wants to get across as he and a group of his parishioners, in conjunction with the Bergen Volunteer Center, and Rev. Kimberly Chastain from the church's larger branch, set out to donate lunches and dinners to the 18 AmeriCorps volunteers, who have been present in the trailer parks of Little Ferry and Moonachie, rebuilding the homes effected by the high winds and severe flooding caused by Superstorm Sandy.

"We are always looking at ways to give back," McClelland said. "So we thought, what is it that we are good at? Cooking."

The fact that they wanted to give back, coupled with the fact that there were young adults aiding those effected by Sandy, proved to be the opportunity McClelland and his volunteers were searching for in order to pass along a charitable deed.

With this mindset, McClelland and his volunteers agreed that these AmeriCorps volunteers should be demonstrated that their hard work is appreciated.

While many individualsassume the best way to help those who lost everything, or suffered house mishaps, such as flooding, might be to pick up a hammer and set out to aid in the reconstruction of their homes, according to McClellan, that is not the case. The opportunity to help others is always present.

"[The AmeriCorps] volunteers are doing an incredible, fantastic job," he said. "But you don't, necessarily, have to go out and build a home in order to do something nice for someone.

"There are different levels of helping. You just have to ask yourself, what is the gift you have that you can contribute?"

With a plan in mind, McClelland and his group started making three lunches and a dinner a week during the entire AmeriCorps stay, which lasted three weeks.

Though there were 18 individuals participating in the rebuilding efforts, the group of volunteers packing up their food include 24 daily lunches "because some of them are big, strong individuals — they need more than one sandwich to keep them satisfied," said First Presbyterian volunteer Steve Manton.

Robert Williams, board member of Rebuilding Together Bergen County – an organization that assists low-income and in-need individuals with home repairs and rebuilding — and supervisor of the building project that AmeriCorps took part in, appreciated the act of kindness that, in turn, motivated his team.

"They appreciate it," Williams said. "I appreciate it. They are a team out in the cold. They start at 9 a.m. and they go through [noon]. They have an hour lunch and start up again at 1 [p.m.] until 4 [p.m.]. They work about six hours a day, so they do need a support mechanism."

Manton's wife Tracy, who also assisted in making the lunches and dinners that were prepared for the AmeriCorps volunteers, said that she never thought the act of making sandwiches would be so gratifying.

"You honestly feel good, especially when you hear back how much they appreciate what is being done," she said. "I mean, here they are doing something huge and they are grateful for the sandwiches that they are getting."

Kimberly Chastain, pastor of the Presbyterian Churches of Moonachie, Wood-Ridge and Lyndhurst and Director of the Moonachie, Little Ferry Relief Fund worked closely with organizing the reconstruction project that AmeriCorps took part in, as well as providing meals for them.

"[Congregations] got together to feed the volunteers," she said.

Kimberly Scarabello, who hails from Illinois and is one of the two AmeriCorps team leaders assigned to the reconstruction project, is one of the individuals grateful to all those who took the time to provide them with quality meals.

"It's really great and heartwarming Scarabello, 25, said. "It's really amazing how generous people are here. Feeding a group of 20 year-olds is not cheap…we all appreciate the effort."

Though McClelland aimed to get his congregation involved in giving back to the community, he is quick to shine the spotlight at his volunteers, the young adults of AmeriCorps and the work that they do. However, he mentioned that all volunteer work is part of a bigger picture.

"It's the circle of giving."

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Re: Hurricane Sandy
« Reply #36 on: February 17, 2013, 12:31:29 PM »
Sandy repairs continue in Hackensack
Saturday, February 16, 2013
BY  HANNAN ADELY
STAFF WRITER
The Record

HACKENSACK – The city will need at least $1.5 million to pay for repairs and labor related to superstorm Sandy, whose storm surge sent water barreling into the downtown, officials said.

The floodwater damaged pump stations, sidewalks, a firehouse, a police substation and city-owned cars and trucks.

"It caused significant damage. We've never seen anything like this," said John Niland, fire captain and coordinator of the city's Office of Emergency Management.

The direct cost to the city is unknown because claims are pending with insurance companies. FEMA will cover 75 percent of the cost of manpower and repairs, and the total cost of approved mitigation projects.

The Sandy-related costs also include debris removal, shelter operations, professional cleaning of city vehicles and the loss of a passenger bus that was used to take people to shelter.

The roof also was replaced at the Hudson Street firehouse, and repairs are under way on the firehouse's gutted first floor. The floor will be raised to lessen the risk of flood damage.

This month, the council approved a $51,000 project to repair the Mercer Street pump station, where floodwater knocked out the electrical controls. The city will move the controls to a higher level as a precaution.

Saltwater corrosion could lead to more problems months down the road, with the potential to damage wiring and other equipment, Niland said. "There's always unforeseen damage, especially when you get a surge of saltwater," he said.

City officials say they're planning improvements based on their experience during Sandy. That includes elevating electric controls and upgrading generators that power city services during outages.

The city also has started using Nixle, an information service to alert the public to safety threats through the Internet, email and cellphones.

Fire Chief Thomas Freeman said he has asked the city manager to consider buying a surplus military vehicle that can operate in up to 5 feet of water. It would cost $7,500 to $8,000, he said.

During the superstorm, emergency workers used boats to evacuate some 200 people. One person, a 69-year-old South Hackensack man, died after he drove into floodwaters and drowned.

Email: adely@northjersey.com

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Re: Hurricane Sandy
« Reply #37 on: February 18, 2013, 10:40:44 PM »
Emergency repairs approved for Hackensack pump station
Monday February 18, 2013, 11:55 AM
BY  JENNIFER VAZQUEZ
NEWS EDITOR
Hackensack Chronicle

The city council approved passing of two resolutions meant to repair the Mercer Street Pump Station that was damaged by Hurricane Sandy in October.


BERNADETTE MARCINIAK/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
At the city council meeting on Feb. 5, the governing body approved two emergency resolutions to repair the Mercer Street Pump Station that was damaged during Hurricane Sandy. The storm's rapid-rising flood waters proved to be too much to handle for the pump station, resulting in the damage of its controls. The pump station is located underground, in the general area of, the Mercer and River streets intersection, pictured above.

The governing body approved the resolutions during the Feb. 5 council meeting.

Both resolutions state that the council "has been advised that an emergency affecting the safety and welfare of the citizens of the City of Hackensack and the general public did occur when the Mercer Street Pump Station became damaged."

The pump station is located at the intersection of Mercer and River streets - an area that is prone to flooding.

"We have always had a flooding issue in that area," City Manager Stephen Lo Iacono said. "We had pumps installed to alleviate the problem."

The pumps, and the corresponding controls installed, are located underground, around the vicinity of a parking lot located by the intersection.

"The pumps work by having the water that begins to accumulate forced, in essence pumped, into the Hackensack River," Lo Iacono said.

While the pumps are waterproof, the force and water level by recent storms proved too much for the system, according to Lo Iacono.

"When [Hurricane] Sandy hit us, the water rose so high and so quickly in the area that it overwhelmed the controls," he said. "This blew the controls."

This damage requires emergency repairs and emergency electrical repairs totaling $50,900.

The emergency repairs, not including the electrical repairs, total $33,866. The remaining repairs are electrical costing $17,034, according to the resolutions.

"The electrical repairs include the wiring and installment of the controls," Lo Iacono said. "The 'regular' repairs is the physical part - the dismantling of the controls."

J. Fletcher Creamer of Hackensack was awarded the contract for the emergency repairs of the pump station. McCue Electric, LLC, also from Hackensack, was awarded the emergency electrical repairs contract.

In emergency situations, there is no need for public bidding.

According to Lo Iacono, since the repairs associated with |the Mercer Street Pump Station "are considered a mitigation project, the city hopes to get reimbursed 100 percent by FEMA [Federal Emergency Management Agency]."

Email: vazquez@northjersey.com

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Re: Hurricane Sandy
« Reply #38 on: February 20, 2013, 12:19:28 PM »
PSE&G proposes $3.9 billion program to strengthen grid after Sandy
Wednesday, February 20, 2013   Last updated: Wednesday February 20, 2013, 12:02 PM
BY  RICHARD NEWMAN
STAFF WRITER
The Record

Public Service Electric & Gas Co. plans to invest as much as $3.9 billion over the next 10 years to protect energy grids from severe storms, the Newark-based company said Wednesday in a press release as the utility seeks to address infrastructure needs of the state in the wake of superstorm Sandy last fall.


DON SMITH/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
PSE&G line men working to restore power on Moonachie Road in Moonachie on Saturday, Nov. 3, 2012. PSE&G said it has asked the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities for approval to invest $2.6 billion over five years and may seek approval for $1.3 billion more in spending in the following five years.

"Reliability is no longer enough,'' said Ralph Izzo, PSE&G chairman and chief executive officer. "We must also focus on the resiliency of our systems to withstand natural disasters. Sandy was a defining event for all of us; the state's entire energy infrastructure needs to be rethought in light of weather conditions that many predict will continue to occur."

PSE&G's program, called "Energy Strong," would include protecting more than 40 utility installations from storm surges, strengthening distribution lines, making the electric grid smarter and easier to restore customers, and modernizing the gas distribution system.

The program would include $1.7 billion to raise, relocate or otherwise protect switching and substations, $1.04 billion to replace and modernize 750 miles of low-pressure cast iron gas mains and $454 million to deploy new system monitoring technologies. It would also include $215 million to improve pole distribution systems, in addition to other improvements.

The utility said the program could prevent massive power outages like the one that happened following superstorm Sandy in October, create 5,800 jobs, and have "little overall impact on residential or business customer bills," citing the lower cost of natural gas and anticipated rollback in 2014 and 2016 of charges related to deregulation of energy supply markets.

During Sandy, 2 million of PSE&G's 2.2 million electric customers lost power because of damaged switching and substations, damaged poles and electrical equipment, and downed trees that brought down wires.

- Richard Newman

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Re: Hurricane Sandy
« Reply #39 on: April 18, 2013, 04:25:55 PM »
Students return to Hackensack school devastated by Sandy
Thursday, April 18, 2013 Last updated: Thursday April 18, 2013, 12:16 PM
BY  HANNAN ADELY
STAFF WRITER
The Record

HACKENSACK – Students at the YCS George Washington School have returned to their classrooms five months after superstorm Sandy sent water nearly 2 feet deep rushing into the building, causing $400,000 in damage.


CARMINE GALASSO/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
Assemblywoman Valerie Vainieri Huttle greeting students Wednesday at YCS George Washington School in Hackensack. The school was flooded in superstorm Sandy, forcing the children to attend class in another school.


The school, which serves 80 special-needs students, has renovated its offices, the kitchen and five therapy rooms on the first floor. The gymnasium is still in disrepair.

"It was heartbreaking to see, especially because the gym was just refinished," said principal John Cerniglia, during a tour of the school Wednesday with Assemblywoman Valerie Vainieri Huttle, D-Englewood.

The private school, part of the non-profit Youth Consultation Service, rented space at a Washington Township parochial school while its building at 368 Hudson St. was repaired. Students returned March 25.

The school had no flood insurance before Sandy because it wasn't considered to be in a flood zone. Since the storm, the flood map of the area in which it's located has been revised. One insurer paid $30,000 and FEMA paid $300,000, but the school still has to raise $70,000 to fix the gym and to buy a new stove, said Richard Mingoia, YCS president and chief executive officer.

The gym is more than a play center, Cerniglia said; it also is the hub of school life as a place where students eat lunch and have assemblies and science fairs.

It had been remodeled a year before the storm with new floors and scoreboards.

Now, the floor is exposed hard cement and the wall padding needs to be replaced. The students play in a small space in the parking lot, or occasionally at a park across the street, and they eat lunch in their classrooms.

Asked about the storm damage, 13-year-old student Precious Lamb of Paterson said she was worried but now is hopeful.

About her return to the school, she said: "When I saw the gym, I felt bad. But they say they're supposed to fix it. I'm really excited to see that."

The students have coped well, officials said, despite being moved from their surroundings. The school tries to keep a stable and safe environment for the children, who have behavioral problems and learning disabilities. Half the students live in a group home, and many have dealt with difficult family situations.

At the school they get individualized attention from staff who focus on social and emotional well-being as well as academic growth.

Cerniglia said students carried boxes and unpacked when they got back to their school.

"They were so happy to be involved," he said. "They were just glad to return."

Email: adely@northjersey.com

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Re: Hurricane Sandy
« Reply #40 on: October 20, 2013, 10:37:31 PM »
North Jersey landlords pump up the power post-Sandy
Sunday, October 20, 2013    Last updated: Sunday October 20, 2013, 2:10 PM
BY  LINDA MOSS
STAFF WRITER
The Record

Since Superstorm Sandy battered New Jersey nearly a year ago, it hasn't been business as usual at Alfred Sanzari Enterprises.

The Hackensack-based real estate firm — which owns and manages more than 6 million square feet of commercial, industrial and residential properties — has taken several emergency-preparedness measures. Most of these were in response to concerns and requests from tenants, said David Cali, Sanzari's vice president of property management.

The company is upgrading four of its emergency generators, including one at its Court Plaza office complex in downtown Hackensack, he said. It has also bought portable flood-protection barriers, called AquaFence, for that property. In addition, Sanzari has contracted to use temporary generators and supplemental heating, ventilating and air conditioning units during natural disasters.

Addressing communication issues, Sanzari struck a deal with Send Word Now, a Manhattan company, to set up a portfolio-wide emergency notification system. This allows Sanzari to quickly disseminate information about its properties to commercial tenants and employees through phone, email and text messaging.

Generators, emergency plans

"You need to have some level of emergency preparedness in place, and the ability to react quickly in the event of a crisis," Cali said. "If you don't have the basic necessities in place to make that happen, you're going to be behind the eight ball."

In the wake of Sandy, North Jersey commercial landlords are facing a lot more questions, and demands, from current and prospective tenants. In the past, tenants may have been lax when it came to due diligence, several landlords said. Now, business continuity during a calamity is a tenant priority.

Tenants are armed with a checklist of questions regarding how a building fared during the Oct. 29 tempest, and are inquiring about a property's emergency plans, flood-zone status, generators, redundant systems, cloud services and even whether the building's electrical systems are out of harm's way.

In response, and to stay competitive, Sanzari and other landlords have taken steps to protect areas that house essential building services such as boilers, electrical rooms and telecom conduits.

For example, landlords are buying generators or teaming with tenants to install them in buildings. Post-Sandy, some tenants are demanding generators powerful enough to keep their businesses operating in the event of a prolonged power outage.

"Many of the landlords have instituted protective measures for when storms do occur," said Bob Martie, executive vice president for Colliers International in New Jersey. "How else do you remain competitive unless you take these measures and have them in place?"

To prepare for the next disaster, tenants and landlords are reviewing their leases to address issues regarding insurance policy limits, deductibles, liability for repairs, termination or reducing or abating rent payment.

"Good leases can help prevent bad problems," said Jerry Nelson, a real-estate law specialist with the Stark & Stark law firm in Lawrenceville.

A number of North Jersey real estate executives said the same thing about post-Sandy leasing: During walkthroughs, tenants today have a long list of questions.

"People are asking not only is it in the flood zone, but did this building flood?" said Martie. "And they want representation if it did or it didn't. Did the town flood? Were the traffic patterns interrupted as the result of any flooding? They had let this all slide in the past."

That's been the experience of Cushman & Wakefield Inc. in East Rutherford, whose purview includes leasing office buildings on the Hudson County waterfront.

"In today's world when you're thinking abut renewing or relocating or signing a new lease, you've got to be concerned about weather patterns," Cushman Executive Director David Stifelman said. "Do I need to be on the water? Should I be farther away from the water? Should I be farther up in the building? What's the infrastructure of the building? Was it affected by the last storm?"

Such concerns are coming from industrial tenants, who want to know if a building is within a 100-year and 500-year flood plain under new maps from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said Rob Kossar, executive managing director and market director for Jones Lang LaSalle's New Jersey and Long Island operations. Those FEMA maps are online.

"In the old days, people would be like: Oh, so what, once in a hundred years, I'm not going to worry about it," Kossar said. "Now they're like: I'm worrying about it."

The biggest tenant concern real estate executives said they have to address is providing power during a calamity. Some tenants may just want to know that a building has a so-called backup life-safety generator to run elevators and lights in stairwells, for example. But following Sandy, there are tenants who want to go beyond that, with generators that will permit them to continue operations.

"They want a building with a generator that can power their space," Martie said. "So if you, as a landlord, have that, you're shoulders above your competition who haven't made that investment."

Tenants interested in this kind of power redundancy usually "want some sort of commitment from building management to be able to assist in these kind of situations, so it's a big deal," said Michael Seeve, president of Mountain Development Corp. in Woodland Park.

The Princeton law firm Hill Wallack, concerned about its ability to conduct business during a prolonged power outage, recently signed a lease for a building that Mountain Development is constructing in Princeton with Gottesman Real Estate Partners, Seeve said. The law firm now is in the Carnegie Center in Princeton.

"They wanted basically full redundancy," Seeve said. "Their view was it's not enough just to have phone service and computers. If the air conditioning's not working, they really can't work."

If a tenant wants more than a life-safety generator, then a discussion with the landlord must ensue. The parties must determine if such a generator is permissible, who will install it and who will bear the cost, real estate officials said.

"Every tenant of a decent size wants to have provisions for a generator," said Matt McDonough, a Transwestern managing director in Parsippany. Such generators cost anywhere from "tens of thousands of dollars to easily into six figures," he said.

"It's expensive and it gets complicated," McDonough said. "You typically have to go through a site-plan approval. If you're going to put a big $600K generator out in the back, the town's going to want to know about it."

At 10 Exchange Place in Jersey City, a former tenant left behind a large generator, Stifelman said. Cushman is doing a cost analysis to determine if the company should offer use of the generator to individual tenants or employ it throughout the office building and have an edge on its competition.

When Sandy hit, many buildings in lower Manhattan were disabled for months because their mechanical systems and electrical switches were housed in basements and lower levels that flooded. There are tenant concerns about avoiding similar problems on the Jersey waterfront that landlords are addressing.

"In Weehawken, we've also taken some precautionary measures, in terms of having critical mechanical and electrical equipment relocated to levels that would be unaffected by similar circumstances," said Gus Milano, managing director of Hartz Mountain Industries Inc. in Secaucus. "We moved them up."

Such gear was traditionally placed in basements and other lower levels of buildings that tenants didn't want to lease, Kossar said. To move this equipment can mean dislocating current tenants and can be costly, he added.

"It's not inexpensive, but you do what's practical," Milano said.

There were lawsuits filed over landlord-tenant disputes stemming from Sandy, said Nelson of the Stark & Stark law firm.

"Commercial landlords can reduce risks by improving documents and procedures now before the next storm or disaster," he said. "For example, some court cases have found that tenants were required to pay rent based upon language in leases, such as language stating that landlords were not responsible for failure to supply electricity."

Real estate brokers insisted that Sandy's flooding in the Meadowlands hasn't put a damper on investor appetite for the limited choice industrial properties in that area of North Jersey, with its proximity to New York City.

"We're selling some buildings that had four feet of water in them," said Andrew Somple, senior vice president at NAI James E. Hanson in Hackensack.

Email: moss@northjersey.com

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Re: Hurricane Sandy
« Reply #41 on: February 01, 2014, 12:05:34 PM »
http://parade.condenast.com/258909/brookehauser/long-after-the-super-bowl-ends-these-kids-will-have-a-reason-to-cheer/   (includes two photos)

Long After the Super Bowl Ends, These Kids Will Have a Reason to Cheer

by Brooke Hauser

For many of its students, the YCS George Washington School is a safe haven. But after Superstorm Sandy hit in 2012, the special education school in Hackensack, N.J.—serving at-risk children, the majority of whom have been removed from their homes for reasons including behavioral issues, abuse, and neglect—was in shambles.

“The Hackensack River overflowed and completely gutted the first floor,” says Richard Mingoia, president-CEO of the nonprofit YCS (Youth Consultation Service). For six months, the traumatized kids had to go to a nearby school because theirs was under two feet of dirty ­water and filled with mold.

Enter the NY/NJ Snowflake Youth Foundation, the charity arm of the NY/NJ Super Bowl Host Committee. The organization, which has raised millions from supporters (including the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation) to renovate more than 40 local facilities for kids, donated funds for a new computer lab and rebuilt the school’s gymnasium, where students play sports, stage theater productions, and attend after-school programs.

“The gym is really the heart of the school,” says Mingoia. “The renovation has helped give these kids a second chance at a normal childhood.”

Most football fans aren’t thinking about community service on Super Bowl Sunday. But using the game to draw support for a local effort is nothing new.

“Historically, the NFL has done a singular project in each Super Bowl city. Our region isn’t just one city, so doing just one project seemed totally inappropriate,” says host committee CEO Alfred F. Kelly Jr.

In fact, the Snowflake Youth Foundation is only one part of the committee’s plan. Over the past few months, it has organized a blood drive and a coat drive and planted 30,000 trees. “We wanted to use the platform of this great American game to make sure that we did well for the community,” says Kelly.

He sees some important takeaway lessons that can apply to any hometown looking to come together for a common cause. For starters, it helps to choose a cause that people can agree on—such as supporting youth—and the more people involved, the better. “On the grassroots level, we had 75 or so high school football teams wearing our Snowflake Youth Foundation decal on their helmets, and each player made a $5 to $10 contribution,” Kelly says. “Did that raise a lot of money? No, but it got players involved, and I think that building awareness is as important as getting big corporate gifts.”

Of course, not every city can host a Super Bowl, but there are still plenty of ways to help. “It could be the annual fair, a huge rivalry football game, or a ­marathon, where you’ve got a lot of people excited,” Kelly says. “Whenever a community has a big event that galvanizes a large percentage of the population, they ought to step back and think, ‘What else can we make happen?’”
« Last Edit: February 01, 2014, 12:23:32 PM by BLeafe »
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Re: Hurricane Sandy
« Reply #42 on: February 09, 2014, 11:40:15 AM »
Superstorm Sandy ruined a school gym, but the NFL helped restore it

Saturday February 8, 2014, 11:04 PM
By TARA SULLIVAN
RECORD COLUMNIST


HACKENSACK – The shine from the shellacked wooden floor is blinding; the blue of the wall-mounted cushions dazzling. The painted midcourt logos gleam in the slivers of sun peaking through the fresh, new curtains hanging just below the ceiling.

If these gym walls want to talk someday, they will tell a story of cooperation, of generosity, of philanthropy and of hope. They will tell a story of recovery, of how one battered school on the corner of Hudson Street rebuilt so much of its Sandy-stormed self, and how the final piece of the cooperative financial puzzle came from a wholly unexpected, yet somehow perfectly fitting source, how that final windfall finished the school’s gym.

The Super Bowl has long since packed up and left New Jersey’s borders, retreated from its New York City invasion, returning traffic patterns to their usual muddled mess, removing the extra rim of security that had encased MetLife Stadium. The NFL’s eyes have already shifted to an Arizona skyline, to the site of next year’s Big Game, to the climate-controlled arms of a domed stadium.

The Super Bowl footprint is gone.

Yet for a small school in Hackensack, the imprint remains.

“We are part of the Super Bowl legacy,” says Ruthie Harper, co-executive director for YCS, the private entity that runs Hackensack’s George Washington School. “Their generosity will outlive the Super Bowl and will benefit thousands of New Jersey schoolchildren for years to come.”

(See photos and continue story at http://www.northjersey.com/columnists/Sullivan_Superstorm_Sandy_ruined_a_school_gym_but_the_NFL_helped_restore_it__.html?page=all

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