Bond proposal rejection reflects need for new town board

Nassau voters resoundingly defeated the proposed borrowing of $400 million to replace the 39-year-old Nassau Coliseum and construct a new minor league ballpark at Mitchell Field. The Aug. 1 vote was rushed and ill-timed, with voters insufficiently informed as to what the proposal would entail. There was no opportunity to weigh the potential costs to taxpayers of the bonds’ issuance against the loss of income to the county absent the building of a new coliseum. Had the vote taken place on Election Day like most bond referenda, the taxpayers would have been spared the approximately $2 million cost of the special election.     

Moreover, as a result of the vote’s outcome, there is a significant possibility that the Islanders will find a new home outside of Nassau County once the team’s lease with coliseum expires in 2015. Not only have we lost the possibility of thousands of new badly needed jobs, both in the short-term for construction and in the long-term, we face the loss of massive tax revenues in the event the Islanders leave.

It didn’t have to come to this. In 2008, Charles Wang and developer Scott Rechler of RXR Realty Inc. submitted their proposal to the Town of Hempstead for the Lighthouse at Long Island. The proposal would have developed the entire 77-acre property surrounding the coliseum. The projected $4 billion investment would have come at no cost to the taxpayers and would have provided for a renovated coliseum, 2,300 residences including two hotel and residential towers nearly 40 stories tall, a canal and pedestrian plaza, a sports complex and sports technology center, a movie theater, a convention center and office buildings. More important, it could have created 75,000 construction and secondary jobs and 19,000 permanent jobs. It could have provided badly needed revenues. In short, the Lighthouse had the potential to become a shining example of smart-growth in Nassau County without imposing any financial burden on its residents.

Given this opportunity, one would think that the Town Board would have embraced the project or, at the very minimum, worked with Wang and Rechler to “tweak” the project to everyone’s satisfaction. Instead, the response was silence. The board simply failed to communicate with Wang and Rechler. Even after Wang set a deadline of Oct. 3, 2009 for a zoning hearing, the board failed to take any action. And when the board finally decided to act, it spurned the Wang/Rechler proposal, opting instead in July 2010 to develop its own proposal — a scaled-down version that called for 5.4 million square feet of construction, as compared to the Lighthouse proposal of 10 million to 13.5 million square feet.

The new proposal reduced the amount of contemplated housing to 500 new residences and limited building height to nine stories for hotels, effectively precluding the two 36-story towers that would have included a five-star hotel and luxury residences and were the centerpiece of the Lighthouse project. Reaction to the Town’s proposal was swift. Even  Nassau County Executive Edward Mangano acknowledged, in a joint statement with the Lighthouse Development Group, that the town’s proposal “did not appear to achieve the goals of the county and the developer,” and was “economically unviable for both the developer and owner of the site.”

The board’s proposal resulted from a fear of density and a concern that the Lighthouse project did not reflect the suburban nature of the county. This shortsightedness neglected to recognize that we are no longer in the 1950s. It is the same shortsightedness on the part of the board that caused years of delays in making the necessary zoning changes that allowed for the razing of the Courtesy Hotel in West Hempstead (a welcome event for which Kate Murray and Councilman James Darcy, who voted against those changes, now take credit.)

It is time to recognize that density need not be avoided at all costs. It is time to recognize that economically feasible smart development is necessary to allow for short-term and long-term job creation. It is time to recognize that if we are going to stem the tide of residents leaving Nassau County because they cannot afford to raise their families here, we must be open to working with developers to formulate proposals that meet the needs of our communities. Since it appears that the Town of Hempstead Board is unable to recognize that this time has come, it is time to change the Town of Hempstead Board.

Owen Rumelt, a West Hempstead resident and partner with Levy Ratner, P.C. a labor law firm in the metropolitan area, is the Democratic and Working Families Party candidate for the Town of Hempstead Town Council, Third District.