Skating Ahead: STV Designs New LIRR Elmont Station to Serve Belmont Redevelopment

STV is bringing its design expertise to the Long Island Rail Road’s (LIRR) first new station in more than 45 years to improve transit access to a growing area currently undergoing significant redevelopment.

STV is the architect- and engineer-of-record for the Elmont Station design-build project on the Bellerose Terrace-Elmont, NY border, which is led by Judlau and owned by MTA Construction & Development (MTA C&D)/LIRR. The 19,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art station is a key component of the $1.26 billion Belmont Park Redevelopment Project, which includes the new 19,000-seat UBS Arena – home to the New York Islanders hockey team – as well as a hotel and retail village.

Located between the Queens Village and Bellerose stations on the LIRR’s Main Line, and straddling the heavily traveled Cross Island Parkway, Elmont Station, which partially opened to eastbound revenue service in late 2021, will relieve pressure on the existing seasonal-use station directly south of it that serves the Belmont Park racetrack, while also improving commuting options for area residents.

STV managed the overall design process and developed final architectural, structural, systems and civil designs, plus specialized mechanical designs for a platform snowmelt system. STV also provided project controls services, geotechnical analysis, construction staging plans and maintenance and protection of traffic schemes.

The station’s architecture was designed to mimic the aesthetic of the arena.

“The LIRR wanted the customer’s game day experience to begin when they arrive at the station,” said Alexander Napoli, P.E., vice president and senior project manager in New York. “To achieve this design cohesiveness, the arena’s colors, textures and finishes were used as the design’s starting point.  The red brick station has a green standing-seam roof and eye-catching platform canopies that run the full length of the station. The canopy glazing system is translucent, allowing natural light in while providing a visual barrier to the adjacent residential community.”

STV’s civil engineers and landscape architects prepared designs for the area immediately adjacent to the station, including grading, new utility services, lighting and landscaping.  

A key challenge for the project team was minimizing disruptions to the Cross Island Parkway. During a shutdown of the parkway ahead of the arena’s eastbound side opening, cranes and self-propelled modular transport (SPMT) vehicles were used to hoist 75-plus ton steel girders into place over the parkway, parallel to the Main Line tracks at the western end of Elmont Station. The girders are supporting the platforms for the station.

“Our traffic planning group worked with the New York City Department of Transportation to determine the optimum window of time that a full shutdown of the Cross Island Parkway, which has peak hour traffic counts greater than 4,500 vehicles, could occur,” Napoli said.  “The civil team developed detour plans for highway and local traffic diversions throughout Queens and Nassau County.”

To accommodate the station platforms that span the Cross Island, STV designed a 130-foot-long steel bridge to support the north and south platforms that was structurally independent of the remainder of the platform structure.

Once the station is fully constructed – planned for the start of the 2022-23 hockey season in the fall – the finished facility will have three levels: a grade-level entrance, a platform level, and a 20-foot-wide pedestrian overpass bridge with elevator services that links the eastbound and westbound platforms. The platforms will feature a full-length canopy. A clean contemporary appearance was achieved through the use of continuous signage that doubles as a raceway to conceal the station’s electrical and communication systems.  

“The finished station stands to fully connect the area to all of the major hubs that serve the region,” Napoli said. “That includes full-time service to Belmont Park Racetrack, as well as Penn Station, Atlantic Terminal in Brooklyn, and the new Grand Central Madison under the terminal once that is completed.”