South Shore Beach Club Owners Are On A Mission To Be Open By Memorial Day
NEW YORK(CBSNewYork) -- Workers spent a blustery March day at the beach on Long Island, trying to meet a deadline.
The Sands of Atlantic Beach was wiped out during Hurricane Sandy. Cabanas were smashed into heaps of debris. Flood waters rose to the roof. The lobby was filled with muck.
But now a seven-day-a-week operation to rebuild it has reached the home stretch.
Club owner Stuart Yachnowitz wasn't getting any insurance money and was ready to throw in the towel, but told CBS 2's Carolyn Gusoff that there was something holding him back.
"Seven hundred and fifty families belong to the beach club. They look forward to it. It's their summer and I just couldn't take it away from them," he said.
The beach clubs that line the South Shore of Nassau County have given generations of families affordable beach access since the 1930s.
Many of those clubs were destroyed by Sandy, shortly after being rebuilt following Hurricane Irene. Now, workers are working around the clock rebuilding them to withstand the next storm.
"We are building smarter. We are going to try to put in flood vents so if we do have another surge we'll have vents in the cabanas and solid walls," explained Howard Taub, the owner of Sunny Atlantic and The Shores.
At The Sands, cabanas are being built to stand up to a Category 5 hurricane and owners are on a mission to have plumbing and electrical lines installed by Memorial Day.
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