The Marsh at the End of Slice Drive Waited Thirteen Years for Its Building

"The Marine Nature Study Area is a gem for Long Island, and of Oceanside." Ned Black taught biology, earth science and marine science in Oceanside schools for 50 years, and he said it to the Herald in May 2018. In the same interview he said that many residents didn't know the preserve existed.

At the time, the 52 acres at the end of Slice Drive had a working marsh and a temporary classroom. The Town of Hempstead had already rebuilt the outdoor half of the preserve after Hurricanes Irene and Sandy. The building where kids learned what they were looking at was the part still missing.

The building is now back. The marsh outside has spent this whole time going through its seasons, and October is when some of them end.

The outdoor half came back first

Sandy hit in 2012 and left the education building "barely standing," according to the Herald. By 2018 the Town had already put in a new boardwalk and restored the display areas, fly boxes, fencing and trails. Lessons for visiting students went on in a temporary classroom. The Herald reported groups coming from as far away as the North Shore and Suffolk County.

"We've been just hanging out waiting for things to happen," Michael Farina, a biologist and teacher at the MNSA, told the paper that year.

The order of the repairs explains why the MNSA can feel brand new and familiar at once. The trails and boardwalks people walk today were back in service years before the new interpretive center. If you skipped the preserve during the long building gap, the marsh you missed was largely open the whole time.

From grant to open doors

The rebuild is clearest as a set of dates:

• 1970: The MNSA opens on Earth Day.
• 2012: Sandy leaves the education building barely standing.
• May 2018: The Herald reports that FEMA is "set to provide a $1.4 million grant" to rebuild the facilities. The old education and administration buildings sat below FEMA flood plain elevation standards. The plan was to replace both with one building of about 2,600 square feet. Bidding was expected to start "this fall."
• June 16, 2023: Bids for new construction are due to the Town. The work is split into separate general, electrical, plumbing and HVAC contracts.
• 2025: The MNSA's own site, under the heading "New Building 2025," says the 2,600-square-foot interpretive center is "officially open and ready for action."
• February 5, 2026: The Town opens scheduling for its 2026 Saltmarsh Ecology Tours "following a comprehensive reconstruction."

Bidding was expected in fall 2018, and the bid deadline turned out to be June 2023. That gap of nearly five years accounts for much of the wait. Councilman Anthony D'Esposito had told the Herald in 2018 that just getting the project to that point took at least two years of "overcoming various funding and regulatory hurdles."

Neither the Town nor the MNSA site gives an exact opening day. The $1.4 million is the grant figure reported in 2018. It isn't a final project cost, and no published final cost turned up in my research.

What's inside now, and what's still coming

The Town describes the new center as flood-resilient and fully accessible, with modern classroom space and an observation deck looking out over Middle Bay. The MNSA's own page calls the deck "the best seat in the house," with views across the entire 52-acre preserve.

The hands-on exhibits haven't caught up with the building. The same page lists the interactive educational displays as "COMING SOON LATE 2026." A visit this month gets you the deck, the classroom building and the trails. The high-tech exhibits are still to come.

The 2018 plans also included several fish tank displays, solar panels and geothermal cylinders. The Town's current facility listing mentions marine-life displays and saltwater aquaria featuring local species. Its photo gallery shows a toadfish as an example of the bay fish on display.

October closes a few windows

The new building is year-round. The marsh runs on its own calendar, and the Town's own descriptions show which parts of it are ending now.

The resident osprey family, which the Town says you can visit "from Late April to late August," has already left for the year. Diamondback terrapins are in the marsh "from early June through October." That makes this month the last chance to spot one until next summer.

The Town's gallery also highlights other wildlife, though the gallery doesn't say which of these stay into the fall:

• Yellow-crowned Night Herons feeding on purple marsh crabs
• Great Egrets and Green Herons
• The clapper rail, which the Town bills as "elusive"
• Muskrats feeding in the grass, which the Town says are harmless
• Fiddler crab "armies" in the intertidal zone
• Black Skimmers, which the Town says can reach 25 mph skimming over the water

Town pages give different totals for bird species seen at the site. One listing says "over 216" and another says 287. Either way, it's a long list for a 52-acre preserve squeezed into southern Oceanside.

Two Saturdays with a guide

South Shore Audubon Society runs free public bird walks most weekends from late August through early June. Both of its Oceanside walks this fall fall on Saturdays, October 10 and November 14, and both start at 9 a.m. Saturday is the only weekend day the MNSA is open. The Town lists public hours as Tuesday through Saturday, closed Sundays, Mondays and holidays.

To sign up, text Joe Landesberg at 516-467-9498 with your name and a number to reach you in case the walk is canceled. Walks are called off for rain, snow, or temperatures below 25°F. Audubon says it especially encourages kids to come.

Before you go

If you're coming from Sunrise Highway, Audubon's directions take you south on Long Beach Road, left on Waukena Avenue, then right on Park Avenue at the light, left on Golf Drive and right on Slice Drive. From Waukena on, brown signs point the way.

Group tours are scheduled around the tides, and the Town's ecology tours split the marsh into four zones: subtidal, intertidal, supratidal and fringe. The tide makes a difference on a solo walk too. The fiddler crabs live in the intertidal zone, which is only fully exposed when the water is out.

The same water, told indoors

To learn what this shoreline was before 1970, Oceanside Library has a local-history talk on Sunday, November 8, from 2 to 3 p.m. in the Theater at 30 Davison Ave. "Oceanside & Rockville Centre: Ties to the Water" covers Mill River, the oyster industry, baymen, sea captains, shipwrecks and how the area's waterways have changed. Pair it with the November 14 bird walk and you get the history one week and the living marsh the next.

Back in 2018, Ned Black said the interpretive center gives people "a sense of what the South Shore of Long Island, the natural part, was like before it was developed." The library talk covers the developed part of that story.

Fixing up Oceanside's shared green spaces doesn't stop at Slice Drive. On September 12, Oceanside Community Warriors volunteers weeded, cleared leaves, and planted pansies and mums at Detective Luis G. Alvarez Memorial Park, where Nassau County-funded underground irrigation had been installed and tested. The group's annual Fall Festival is October 17, and the proceeds go to beautification projects. An event listing puts the festival at Parking Field 6 on Lawson Blvd., with free admission, food trucks, live music and local vendors. The listed hours are inconsistent, so check the start time with the organizers before you go.

If the observation deck shows you a corner of Oceanside you'd never really seen, I'd like to hear about it. At Nicholas Santillo, I keep track of the places that make this part of the South Shore what it is. If you make it to an Audubon walk at the marsh this fall, tell me what you saw. Let's Connect.