Call it a slow-cooked Italian dish. The city’s first Italian-American community center, “Il Centro,” finally opened its Bensonhurst doors on June 21 — nearly a decade after the project was first announced. Construction of the center, at the corner of 18th and Benson avenues, was delayed for years because of hundreds of complaints neighbors filed with the city about the construction and debates with the builder, according to the chairman of the board for the Federation of Italian-American Organizations, which owns the property.

“The delay basically was a result of the bureaucracy and the innate factors in constructi­on,” said Jack Spatola. “Every time [there was a complaint], an inspector would come and stop work. Some of the other delays were going back and forth with the builder and the owner related to the value engineering.”