Riverhead Town is planning to restore the Navy airplanes on display at Grumman Memorial Park in Calverton, after the town and the National Museum of Naval Aviation — which owns the planes — received complaints about their deteriorating condition.
The F-14 and A-6 aircraft on display in the park are rusting, and their paint is fading and cracking. Birds have made their nests within the planes, and parts of the planes are covered in bird feces.
The conditions of the planes have some people, including a former Grumman employee, expressing their dismay to town and museum officials.
“I’m 750 miles away from Calverton, but seeing the photos [I] had to question if they are being maintained,” Lee Norberg, a former Grumman employee who now lives in South Carolina, wrote in an email to Supervisor Yvette Aguiar, which he shared with RiverheadLOCAL. “They aren’t a pretty picture and deserve the care and maintenance you agreed to with the National Naval Aviation Museum. They are supposed to represent their true Historical Contribution, a rusting F-14 is not.”
The two planes were loaned to the town starting in 2000 in an effort to create a park honoring the aviation history of the former Grumman (later Northrop Grumman) facility that manufactured and tested aircraft for the Navy from the 1950s until 1996.
The Navy transferred the the entire site, including the area for the roadside Grumman Memorial Park, to the Riverhead Community Development Agency in 1998. The park sits on the northeastern edge of the property, along Route 25.
Representatives from the National Naval Aviation Museum emailed Aguiar on March 22 after they received a tip from a different member of the public about the condition of the planes. The email asks the town to supply the museum with a scope of work for each aircraft detailing the current condition and a refurbishment plan for each.
“Providing the general public with honorable looking static display aircraft goes a very long way in promoting pride in naval aviation history,” museum Aircraft Loan Manager Lenore Taylor wrote in the email, provided to RiverheadLOCAL by Assistant Town Engineer Ken Testa.
The town obtained a scope of work on May 15 for the refurbishment of both planes from EEC Static Display Aircraft Painting Service, a contractor specializing in military aircraft restoration located in Center Valley Pennsylvania. The restoration of both planes is estimated to cost $67,000, according to the scope of work.
“Obviously the town is respectful of the significance of the former Grumman site and the military aspect of the place, and we try to do everything we can to maintain them, but it is a bit of a task,” Testa said in an interview.
The money for the refurbishment will be designated for the project from the second of two $750,000 community benefits agreement payments the town expects to receive from L.I. Solar Generation, the developer of a 198-acre solar farm in Calverton, according to Deputy Town Attorney Annemarie Prudenti.
“Once that money is secured and is appropriated into an account for me, I would then immediately issue a purchase order,” Testa said. The refurbishment would be done either in the fall or the spring, he said.
The town also attempted to reach out to the Cradle of Aviation Museum in Garden City asking for help restoring the planes, Testa said. Staff and volunteers from the Garden City museum have previously helped the town clean the planes and touch up their paint. According to Testa, representatives from the museum said they could not be of service.
The park is maintained by the town on a weekly basis, Testa said. The planes are hosed down every spring and are lightly power-washed every three years, Testa said.
“We try to keep the bird waste off of them and clean it up as soon as it gets on them. And we try to block the areas where the birds get into the planes,” Testa said.
“It has been like 20 years, I think, that those planes have been out there. So given that much time has transpired out in the weather, it seems like we got a good run for our money on the original refurbishment,” Testa said. “And if we do it now and we do it right, it will last another 20 years.”
RiverheadLOCAL photos by Alek Lewis
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