$40M Rockland highway garage and maintenance facility opens

Rockland County Executive Ed Day and County Highway Superintendent Charles “Skip” Vezzetti led the assemblage of county and community leaders at a ribbon-cutting ceremony to formally open the county’s new $40 million highway department garage and maintenance facility that includes seven buildings across 24 acres.

Located at 26 Scotland Hill Road in Chestnut Ridge, the facility is on the border of Chestnut Ridge and Clarkstown, just north of the New York State Thruway’s Exit 14a. It includes an office building, operations building, vehicle storage for the fleet, a repair shop, a salt mound capable of storing 10,000 tons of salt for use during the winter months, a wash facility for large vehicles, a fuel station, and emergency generators with enough fuel in storage to keep them running for two weeks.

Rockland purchased the land on which the new facility was built for $1 from the New York State Department of Transportation.

The previous highway department facility had been built in 1935. In the 1960s after 30 years of service it became apparent that upgrades would be needed and, eventually, it would need to be replaced.

In 2020, the County Legislature approved bonding to finance construction of a new facility.

Rockland County Executive Ed Day said that by being able to wash large vehicles in the new the wash facility the county will be able to increase the life expectancy of the vehicles by 20%, resulting in substantial savings for the county.

“Pretty much everyone here had an incentive to getting this done,” Day said. “And a commitment to getting it done properly.” He pointed out that highway traffic in Rockland has increased and continues on the upswing and that the county’s highway department is responsible for 72 bridges and 170 miles of road.

Vezzetti, who has been highway superintendent since 2000, said that Rockland’s first county highway superintendent was appointed in 1906. He was Calvin T. Allison who served until 1946.

“The Rockland County Highway Department has moved from the oldest, longest continuously used county highway facility in the state to a modern state-of-the-art environmentally correct green facility located in the center of our service area to serve the residents of Rockland County in the most efficient manner with a far lower average emergency response time,” Vezzetti said.