It’s Uniondale, Not ‘East Garden City’

For years, activists and community leaders have been trying to persuade officials to rename the 3-square-mile stretch of Uniondale known as East Garden City — which they say does not actually exist — Uniondale.

Now Nassau County Legislator Siela Bynoe, who represents Uniondale, has taken the effort a step further, officially introducing legislation that would “eliminate the use of the term ‘East Garden City’ in Nassau County Government in every instance where the name Uniondale is both legally appropriate and accurate.”

This bill, which was introduced in the Legislature on Jan. 19, would eliminate the county’s use of East Garden City in “all county documents of any kind, including but not limited to legislative enactments, maps, software, internal or external correspondence and communications, and all agency records, county department records, and all records within each branch of county government, whether in digital or printed format.”

Since 2000, this small portion of northern Uniondale — between Hempstead Turnpike to Old Country Road — has been referred to as East Garden City in an effort to distance the prime real estate north of Hempstead Turnpike from the neighborhood on the south side, according to community activists like Jeannine Maynard, co-facilitator of the Greater Uniondale Area Action Coalition.

These efforts, which Maynard believes are “classist” and “economically racist,” have proved to be profitable for the county’s real estate industry. According to Homes.com, which shows listings and offers information, such as home values, for houses across the country, the average price of a home in the area designated as East Garden City is $223,000 more than those listed just south of Hempstead Turnpike, despite the fact that they are in the same school district.

“They wanted a better name for certain areas they wanted to promote north of the Hempstead Turnpike,” Pearl Jacobs, president of the Nostrand Gardens Civic Association, said. “They wanted it to be more attractive to real estate developers, so they call it East Garden City.”

In 2020, after 20 years of fighting what they insisted was a misidentification, Jacobs, Maynard and other local activists succeeded in getting East Garden City removed as a “census designated place,” meaning that residents of the area mistakenly called East Garden City would officially be recognized as part of Uniondale in the 2020 census.

“Local community activists, political leaders, and residents worked tirelessly to ensure that the geographic area of Uniondale would be designated as such during the 2020 United States Census,” Bynoe wrote in the introduction to her bill. “Following their advocacy, the United States Census Bureau rejected the legally inaccurate use of the name ‘East Garden City’ by removing it from the 2020 United States Census.”

But Bynoe said that despite that official action four years ago, some powers that be continue to use East Garden City in county communications, alerts, police reports and official documents, despite its “inaccuracy and divisiveness.”

As if that weren’t enough, a 2022 episode of “Jeopardy!” misidentified the Cradle of Aviation’s location as Garden City, when it is actually in Uniondale. Bynoe fired off a letter to the show’s executive producer, Michael Davies, in response.

“For many years, Uniondale community leaders have fought to ensure their hometown receives the full recognition that it deserves from government and media organizations,” Bynoe, the Legislature’s deputy minority leader, wrote. “Guided by a shared desire ‘to make Uniondale whole,’ they and the hamlet’s elected officials engage in sustained advocacy to ensure regional attractions such as Museum Row are not erroneously attributed to neighboring communities.”

“It is a fictitious designation — East Garden City does not exist,” Jacobs said. “I’m glad that Legislator Bynoe is doing something about it now, because it has been years that we have been advocating to retain the identity of Uniondale.”

According to Bynoe’s office, recent mistakes by the county have “illustrated the need for codifying this directive,” including “no less than 44 press releases” by the Nassau County Police Department throughout 2023 that identified that section of Uniondale as East Garden City.

The county also introduced new legislative maps after its redistricting last February that, according to Bynoe, “included the erroneous name, necessitating reprints.”

“The residents of Uniondale are rightly proud of their rich heritage, and they advocated diligently and conscientiously to ensure that their historic, diverse and inclusive home would be accurately reflected in the Census,” Bynoe added. “Through my legislative proposal, Nassau County will fulfill its responsibility to complete the realization of this important change — one that is a matter of fundamental respect for the people of Uniondale.”

“This legislation will help us tremendously,” Maynard said. “We need this for Uniondale.”