East Hills added recreation capacity in two places this year, and only one of them is inside the park. Trustees spent the winter and spring approving a new playground at the Park at East Hills, a smarter reservation system for its courts, and a full slate of poolside programming. Then, half a mile away on Forest Drive, in a building zoned for industrial use, they approved something that has nothing to do with the park at all: an 8,100-square-foot indoor baseball training facility inside a 180,000-square-foot commercial structure. None of it required a tax increase. That combination, a park that keeps expanding and a village willing to zone recreation space outside its own gates, is the more interesting story than any single ribbon-cutting.
A budget that grew the park without growing the tax bill
The Village of East Hills adopted a roughly $15.2 million budget for the 2026-27 fiscal year, and the headline number inside it was not the total spend. It was the tax rate, which held at zero percent growth for the 16th consecutive year. The adopted budget totals $15,197,957, a slight decrease from the prior year's $15,243,731, with about $9.14 million raised through property taxes compared to $9.07 million the year before. Mayor Michael Koblenz put it plainly in his budget message:
"As the mayor and chief budget officer of East Hills, I am proud to announce that for a 16th year in a row, the budget contains an unprecedented zero tax increase for our residents."
Buried inside that flat number is a capital line for new interactive playground equipment at the park, which officials described as a major upgrade for local families. That is the pattern worth noticing. A village that has not raised its tax rate in sixteen years is still finding room to replace physical infrastructure, which means the growth in amenities this year did not come at the cost of a bigger bill. It came from budget discipline elsewhere, including a bond rating from Moody's that Koblenz cited as evidence of the village's financial footing.
A ballfield the park doesn't own
The more unusual move happened outside the park's fence line entirely. In January, the Board of Trustees scheduled a February public hearing on a proposal to allow an indoor baseball training facility at 100 Forest Drive in Roslyn, a site sitting in the village's Industrial A zoning district. By February 9, the board had unanimously approved a conditional use permit for the project, known as "The Yard," described by attorney Judy Simoncic as a training and development center for athletes of all ages and skill levels with a primary focus on baseball. The facility occupies about 8,100 square feet of a much larger 180,000-square-foot commercial building, meaning it shares its address with other industrial tenants rather than sitting inside any recreational parcel.
This matters for a reason that has nothing to do with baseball specifically. The Park at East Hills sits on more than 50 acres of land that once belonged to the Roslyn Air National Guard Station, and for most of the village's history, recreation investment happened inside that boundary. This year, the trustees signed off on athletic infrastructure they don't own or maintain, inside a building zoned for warehouses and light manufacturing. If you drive past 100 Forest Drive without knowing the backstory, you would have no reason to expect a batting cage on the other side of that wall. The village's appetite for youth athletics has started spilling into commercial real estate it never built and doesn't operate, which is a different kind of expansion than adding a slide to the playground.
The same six courts, a different login
Inside the park, the upgrades were smaller in scale but real in a way that changes a weekly routine. The Park at East Hills has six tennis courts, along with pickleball and basketball courts that residents access with a park card rather than a public drop-in fee. The village recently installed a new online reservation system for those tennis and pickleball courts, replacing whatever process residents used before, and the village's own site now asks players to create a fresh login before booking a time.
It is worth being precise about scale here, because it is easy to overstate what "more pickleball" means in a place like East Hills. Directories that track court counts across the broader East Hills area list dozens of courts, the kind of number that includes private clubs and shared residential amenities scattered across the wider ZIP code. The six tennis courts and adjoining pickleball space at the Park at East Hills are the ones that come with a resident card, and those are the courts that just got a digital front door instead of a sign-up sheet on a clipboard. That is a small operational change, but it is the kind of change that shows up in your Tuesday morning, not in a press release.
A calendar that stretches from a June pool party to an August wellness day
The park's programming this year ran well past the usual swim-and-sunbathe rhythm of a suburban pool club. Here is what the calendar actually looked like:
- Each June: Kids in the Park (KIP) hosts an end-of-school-year celebration at the pool, drawing hundreds of children for music, dancing, and games, with support from sponsor Joyce Styne.
- July 3: The village lit up the sky for its Fourth of July fireworks display, with a rain date of July 5, continuing an annual tradition that the village's own event listings describe as drawing thousands of residents and guests.
- August 24: The village held Green Day, Wellness Day poolside at the park, organized by Trustee Clara Pomerantz, bringing in nutritionists and fitness instructors to share information on health and wellness with residents.
Not every gathering at the park this year was a celebration. In April, more than 200 people gathered at East Hills Park for the second annual Drunk Driving Community Awareness Walk, held at the East Hills Village Theatre inside the park and organized by Roslyn High School juniors Summer Rosenbaum and Marielle Streiner. The walk honored Ethan Falkowitz and Drew Hassenbein, two 14-year-old Roslyn residents killed in a 2023 crash, and Deputy Mayor Brian Meyerson noted the strong turnout as a sign of how deeply the tragedy still resonates in the community. It is a reminder that the park functions as more than a recreation amenity. It is also where this community gathers when it needs to.
Here is a quick look at how the year's changes break down by location and purpose:
| Update | Where | What Changed in 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Playground equipment | Inside the Park at East Hills | New interactive equipment funded through the 2026-27 capital budget |
| Court reservations | Park at East Hills tennis and pickleball courts | New online login system replaced the prior sign-up process |
| Youth athletics | 100 Forest Drive, outside the park | Village approved "The Yard," an 8,100-square-foot indoor baseball facility, on Feb. 9 |
| Wellness programming | Poolside at the Park | Green Day, Wellness Day held Aug. 24, organized by Trustee Clara Pomerantz |
| Community memorial | East Hills Village Theatre, inside the park | Second annual Drunk Driving Community Awareness Walk drew 200-plus attendees on April 18 |
What this adds up to
None of these changes are large on their own. A playground refresh, a new login screen, a training facility in an industrial park, a wellness day, a memorial walk. Looked at together, they describe a village that has stopped treating "the park" and "recreation" as the same footprint. Some of the growth is happening on the 50 acres the village has owned since 2006. Some of it is happening in a leased commercial unit half a mile away that the village doesn't own at all, approved through a zoning process rather than a capital budget line. Both kinds of growth happened this year without moving the tax rate, which is the detail that ties the whole thing together. If you have a park card and haven't checked the new reservation system, or haven't heard that Forest Drive is getting a baseball facility, that is the gap this piece was written to close.
If you are weighing what any of this means for a home you already own here, or thinking ahead to a move within the North Shore, the Andréa Sorrentino Team knows this village down to its zoning maps. Reach out to request a confidential valuation and talk through what a changing East Hills means for your own plans.
