Extreme Makeover, Hempstead Turnpike Edition

A Call To Take Back The Turnpike

Forget Occupy Wall Street. Smack dab in the middle of the road, bisecting hamlets from Elmont to Wantagh (actually, Farmingdale), is that once venerable (really? when?) biway that, quite literally, carves its way through the very heart of America's largest, if not most blighted township -- Hempstead Turnpike.

Good old NY 24. Once described by The New York Times (as later adopted by this blog) as Twenty Miles of Ugly, and oft times, with its hodge-podge of ill-placed brownfields and dilapidated storefronts, as an open sewer, Hempstead Turnpike cries out for renewal, revitalization and a rebirth.

If the Champs-Élysées, with its cafes, cinemas, luxury specialty shops, and stately horse chestnut trees is the pride of Paris, and one of the most beautiful boulevards in the world, then Hempstead Turnpike, with its dilapidated streetscapes, leaning utility poles, gangle of overhead wires, and structures that are one side or the other of condemnation-worthy, is the bane of Hempstead Town.

Don't get us wrong. While the Champs-Élysées has its cinemas, luxury shops and sidewalk cafes (from which, it is said, one can watch the entire world go by), Hempstead Turnpike has the ruins of the Old Argo theater and the wasteland that is the parking lot of the Nassau Coliseum, and more after hours clubs, storefront iglesias, and purveyors of shlack than Paris could have laid claim to during Napolean's Reign of Terror. The Turnpike is where the masses run from, not throng to.

Decades of what can only be characterized as "turn-the-other-cheek" (not to mention checkbook) zoning, lackluster (if not entirely absent) planning, and sheer neglect by municipalities and commercial property owners alike, have given us today's excuse for a major bisecting roadway that transverses the township, leaving in its industrial waste-filled wake a scene straight out of The Great Gatsby. [They may, to a great extent, have reclaimed the Flushing Meadows of F. Scott Fitzgerald's day. Not so Hempstead Turnpike!]

Ugly, dirty, outmoded, the very mauling of Main Street. And let's not forget dangerous, too!

Designated as THE most dangerous road in the region -- a dubious distinction that both motorists and pedestrians are reminded of daily -- it is almost as if the Turnpike was made deadly as well as unsightly by design.

The roadbed of Hempstead Turnpike may be under control of the Department of Transportation of the State of New York, and the utility poles and appurtenances the stuff that keep the likes of LIPA in the money, but what lines the Turnpike -- the zoned, the exceptions, and the downright illegal -- all comes under the province (though certainly not the watchful eye) of the Town of Hempstead.

What could have been the pride of every community through which the Turnpike so ignobly passes has instead become the great detractor of suburbia. Rather than a mecca for shoppers, or an oasis for the meandering walker, Hempstead Turnpike has become the antithesis of sustainability. A means to get from here to there (unless it can be avoided). A distinct failure of aesthetics and mobility, the Turnpike is a declaration of defeat rather than a destination of choice.

Vison? None. Viability? Little. Promise? Only the broken.

From drawing board to drafting table, plans to bring new life to an old roadway perenially fall by the wayside. Each year, we hail "the Hub," "the new Elmont," the era of "Streetscape enhancement." And with the passing of the months, we witness only decline, dismay, and the ocassional Victorian-style streetlamp, shedding dim light upon a dreary boulevard of shuttered stores and broken dreams.

And so, having only recently survived earthquake and hurricane (not to mention the return to office of the very folks at Hempstead Town Hall who pride themselves -- at taxpayers' expense -- at giving us the very best suburbia has to offer (cue the white picket fence), we call upon residents to rise up, take to the streets (just don't try to cross Hempstead Turnpike), and join the crusade (call it a "movement," should it stoke the embers of revolutionary zeal) to TAKE BACK THE TURNPIKE!

Call Kate Murray's Helpline at 516-489-6000, and let them know you want a boulevard befitting America's largest (even bigger, when you include illegal renters) township. TAKE BACK THE TURNPIKE from the neglect, the missing Code enforcement, the hands of a Zoning Board/Planning Board which has demonstrated that it is not very good at either.

And as for you, our elected, if not highly exalted officials... No more talk of urban renewal plans, Lighthouse lite, distinctive planters and brick pavers. The time to TAKE BACK THE TURNPIKE has come!

We've tired of the artists' renderings and engineers' sketches. The mock-ups and wink-and-nods won't do it for us anymore. We want -- no, we DEMAND -- a Hempstead Turnpike that is attractive, inviting, open for business, and, yes, safe for pedestrians, cyclists and motorists alike.

Come Chambers of Commerce and civic associations. Rotary and Kiwanis. Lions and Pythians. John and Jane Q. Public. Stand up. Speak out. TAKE BACK THE TURNPIKE. This generation, and the hope of the next for a thriving, vibrant "Main Street," implores you to act today!

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For more on TAKE BACK THE TURNPIKE, email The Community Alliance at TheCommunityAlliance@yahoo.com, and follow us on Twitter at www.Twitter.com/CommunityAlli.

The Community Alliance

New Visions for America's First Suburb

Long Island 2035?

We Can Hardly Wait!

Actually, we can't wait. Not another generation. Not another decade. Not even another year.

Long Island's economy, infrastructure, mindset of suburbia, all need to come of age now, not some 25 years hence, best laid blueprints of planning councils and "visionaries" (as in the adherents of the "visioning" process, rather than those possessed of any real foresight) notwithstanding.

Long Island 2035 is, in its own words:

The Long Island 2035 Regional Visioning Initiative was funded by the New York Metropolitan Transportation Council (NYMTC) to help achieve a regional public consensus for where the next generation of Long Islanders could live and work, the transportation systems needed to support these settlements, and the institutional actions required to ensure a prosperous, equitable and environmentally sustainable Long Island. The project's findings are being used to help the Long Island Regional Planning Council produce a Long Island 2035 Comprehensive Regional Sustainability Plan.

So, there you have it, in a nutshell. A study to reach a consesus leading to findings to be used in developing a plan. Hummmph! Imagine that. A consensus? On Long Island? Who's kidding whom?

Not just any plan, mind you, but a Comprehensive Regional Sustainability Plan (CRSP), to be promulgated by the Long Island Regional Planning Council. [Lousy acronym. Try, Comprehensive Regional Action Plan. CRAP. There. That's more like it!]

And this would be Plan Number, what, 100, since Long Island's various planning boards have been generating such initiatives -- and shelving them, accordingly -- from back in the day when Levitt first set eyes upon the fertile Hempstead Plain?

Don't misunderstand. We, at The Community Alliance, are all for planning. Just once in a while -- or in a lifetime -- it would be nice to see one of these "comprehensive" (that which, at one time, was called, "Master") plans evolve from "initiative" (as in "initiate," meaning "to begin") to fruition (as in, "implementation").

Visioning Workshops (which, from the photos, appear to be groups of people trying to piece together a giant jigsaw puzzle that somewhat resembles Long Island). A Visioning Workshop Final Report. [How could it be "final" if this is only an "initiative?"] A Visioning Initiative: Principles and Evaluation Benchmarks. [Benchmarks? Like in Iraq?]

Great stuff. On paper.

Years ago, we used to throw money (when we had money) at projects, with the hope that the more we spend, the better the mousetrap -- or Main Street -- we can build. That didn't work out very well.

Nowadays, we throw money to study projects, to talk about (excuse us, "roundtable") the future, to engage in "visioning" (as myopic as it may be), and to generate "findings" via footnoted reports, stylized charts (the more data, the merrier), and high tech PowerPoint presentations.

How's that working out for Long Island?

Yes, we have read the Visioning Initiative Final Report. [Isn't that an oxymoron?] We encourage you to do likewise. [At least take a look at the highlights. (Where's Warner Wolf when you need him?).

Lots of hard work and copious thought going into those 60 pages. Not all that much, however, that is either new or visionary.

By way of history, for instance, the Report opines:

As early as the 1960s, however, the problems associated with growth in these communities, such as increased congestion and fewer unspoiled open spaces, threatened the very qualities that attracted people here in the first place. A succession of village, town, county and regional initiatives emerged to address these challenges, including the creation of the Long Island Regional Planning Board in 1965, one of the first institutions of its kind...

Frankly, not all that much has happened on our Long Island -- save the sprawl, the Levittownization, the brownfielding, and the demise of downtown -- since.

History, indeed, repeats itself, particularly for those who refuse to learn from it!

Much of the hoopla surrounds a central, textbook philosophy -- the stuff  new urbanists (suburbanists?) might well embrace (and Jane Jacobs, were she still with us today, might deplore).

Yes, we're all for social and economic equity, a healthy environment, and sustainable communities. [Throw in a farmers' market, or three, and we've got a deal!] Somewhere along that long, green line, however, we need to shift from visioning and talking to actuating and doing. [Our old take on The Home Depot motto, Less Talking. More Doing.]

Bright people among the folks facilitating and participating in the Long Island 2035 initiative. [None, we note with more than passing dismay, from the Town of Hempstead, or so it would appear from the listing in the Final Report, where representation by TOH is conspicuous by its absence.] Surely, there must be a few among these visionaires who realize that, going down this road to 2035 (a road now more traveled and less maintained), we have been this way before, and, those Victorian-style streetlamps along Main Street aside, there hasn't been all that much progress.

Beyond the artists' renderings (almost all of which, in one incarnation or another, we've seen before), or allusions to what has been accomplished in suburbs far from Long Island's shores (not to mention the delusions of getting anything of virtually any scale -- short of a storefront facade -- to appear on our neglected and over-burdened landscape), there must be, one would think, a day of reckoning.

After all, one can't be expected to wait for the revitalization of Elmont, the resurgence of Wyandanch, or the reinvention of the Lighthouse at the Nassau Hub (which will happen, by the way, right after the reinvention of the wheel, for the 100th time) forever, right?

True, that day may come when those of us who have long advocated for change, for redevelopment, for the resuburbanization of Long Island beyond the white picket fences, have passed on to our final reward, whatever that may be. Or, perhaps, when the last of Generation Next has abandoned the land of strip malls, big box stores, unaffordable housing, skyrocketing taxes, and special district fiefdoms that consume every last breath -- and every last dollar -- out of a populace perennially promised the moon and too often delivered manure.

We can, as has become custom in these parts, simply keep putting off Long Island's future to, well, the future.

Or, someone -- anyone, really -- in the back of this Long Island 2035 bus, having sustained about all he/she can of "getting there is half the fun," can pull off the seatbelt, stand up, high tail it to the front, move forward of the yellow line, and shout at those behind the wheel, "ARE WE THERE YET?"
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What are your thoughts about Long Island 2035? Better yet, what about Long Island 2011? What are the initiatives you would like to see taken to improve the quality of life of Long Islanders, rekindle our sagging economy, revive our downtrodden Main Streets, and create a truly sustainable community for the next 25 years and beyond?

Write to The Community Alliance with your thoughts, ideas, suggestions, and comprehensive plans. Guest blogposts for publication would be most welcome. TheCommunityAlliance@yahoo.com.
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Follow The Community Alliance on Twitter at www.twitter.com/CommunityAlli. Better yet, take the lead in your community!
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Eminent Elmont

Ergo, No Argo

Well, Well. What do you know?

The Hempstead Town Board voted unanimously to take back Elmont -- or at least a vital part of the town -- by Eminent Domain. Bravo!

The once charming Argo theater -- now little more than a lowly brownfield, the next showing scheduled to play out somewhere at the intersection of blight and neglect -- to be demolished, a spanking new supermarket to rise in its stead. Hooray!

Kudos to the Town Board -- especially Councilman Ed Ambrosino, who has been a catalyst in the movement to raise Elmont from the ashes. And, we suppose, a big "thank you" to Town Supervisor, Kate Murray (the second in as many weeks. OMG!) for taking the next step in the suburban revitalization process.

Yes, we've heard all of this before, and have even borne witness to the votes of the Town Board, giving the legislative nod to such intended instruments of renewal and growth as blight designations and urban renewal plans, all signifying little or nothing on the great stage that is the gateway to Nassau County.

True, the owners of the rat hole that is the old Argo property, and neighboring properties, bent on keeping Elmont down in the dumps (literally) have sued the Town of Hempstead to stop the "taking" of their properties for a "higher use." [In this instance, the taking of the Argo in favor of a sewage treatment plant would be a "higher use."]

Still, the Town's vote in favor of progress along Hempstead Turnpike, that twenty miles of ugly, its willingness to stand up to those who would stall the renaissance that Elmont so desperately needs, and its commitment, at long last, to give the community what its residents have been clamoring for lo these many decades -- a supermarket -- speaks volumes. [Could finality for the Lighthouse Project be far behind?]

Agreed. We've heard this all before, in Elmont and other communities. And yet, where the Town folk could have stood pat, sitting on hands, heads firmly placed up respective posteriors (a neat trick, perfected to an art form years ago by Town officials in the "Stand Pat, Sit on Hands, Up Yours" Special Taxing District), waiting for the courts, or the likes of a modern-day Godot, to decide Elmont's fate, they did not. Instead, or so it would appear, they are preparing to "take" the bull (by Eminent Domain), rather than to simply dish it out. Huzzah!

With millions in grant money in hand (better use it before Dick Ravitch leverages it into debt), thanks to State Senator Dean Skelos and Assemblyman Tom Alfano, Elmont is poised, like the Phoenix (or was it Scottsdale?) to rise.

Will the demise of the Argo, clearing the way for the rebirth of the Elmont community, now come to pass? Or will best laid plans and Town Board votes fall short -- ala the Courtesy in West Hempstead and Grand Avenue in Baldwin -- leaving but blight and brownfields in the wake?

Time will tell. While caution dictates a "wait and see" here in Elmont, we're hoping to "see" sooner rather than later.
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From Newsday:

Town's renewal plan to uproot Elmont businesses

by CHAU LAM / chau.lam@newsday.com

Over intense objections from property and business owners, the Hempstead Town Board Tuesday adopted an urban renewal plan for Elmont that would uproot 23 businesses and force their landowners to sell to a developer who would build a supermarket.

Supervisor Kate Murray and the six council members voted unanimously to move forward with the redevelopment of the former Argo Movie Theater and adjacent properties in Elmont's business corridor, a stone's throw from Belmont Park racetrack.

Town officials said they will use the power of eminent domain to seize the properties if the four owners and the developer, yet to be named, are unable to reach deals on their own.

At Tuesday's public hearing, all four property owners urged officials to consider an alternate site, raising a host of objections from economic hardship to fairness.

Three of the owners expressed outrage that in a free country, the government could force them to sell their land to a private developer. That only happens, they said, in a Socialist or Communist country.

"It sounds like I am living in China," said Lawrence Liu, one of the property owners.

Edward Ambrosino, the councilman who represents Elmont, said residents and civic leaders met over the years to discuss ways to revitalize the community and concluded there's a need for a full-service supermarket.

The properties at Hempstead Turnpike and Elmont Road, when combined with an adjacent town-owned parking lot, could accommodate a 40,000-square-foot supermarket, Ambrosino said.

"We have an obligation to try to address the needs of our constituents," he said after the meeting. Years ago, Hempstead used eminent domain to acquire properties west of the Argo as part a plan to build affordable homes, Ambrosino said. Today, the site, totaling about 25,000 square feet, remains empty.

Under urban renewal, Hempstead is permitted to use eminent domain to seize properties that the town deems blighted or underutilized, said Eliot Bloom, special counsel hired by the town's Planning Department for the Elmont project.

Two developers, Darcon Construction of Elmont and Mattone Group of Queens, have submitted proposals to build a supermarket, Bloom said.

The planning department expects to recommend one of the developers to the town board in a month or two, Bloom said. The developer would then meet with the landowners to negotiate the sale.

Tess Mittman, who owns the former Argo Movie Theater, and Jay Oberlender, another property owner, are suing the town to stop the sale.

If underutilized property is a yardstick town officials use to seize private land, Oberlender said, then all property owners should be alarmed.

Remember The Nassau Hub?

Town Of Hempstead: Where Visionary Plans Have Gone To Die!

If it seems like eons ago when the Nassau County Legislature handed off the revitalization plans for the Nassau Hub -- the area encompassing the Coliseum -- to the Zoning Board of Appeals of the Town of Hempstead, well, not quite.

In reality, the so-called Lighthouse project has only been floundering about the catacombs of Hempstead Town Hall since last November, and, just days ago, on April 8th, the Town Board voted unanimously to begin the State Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQRA) process, issuing a positive declaration, and taking the first step in what is often a long and tortured road toward redevelopment.

Even assuming that everything goes smoothly before both Town Board and Zoning Board, at best, it is unlikely that ground could be broken at the Nassau Hub before July, of 2009, more than a year from now (and, perhaps not coincidentally, at a time when Town of Hempstead Supervisor, Kate Murray, hopes to be campaigning for Nassau County Executive -- perhaps one of the few things the Nassau Hub plan has in its favor in the hope of moving the project along at more than a snail's pace).

The Town of Hempstead, through outside consultants and on its own initiative, will now begin to "study" the impact of the Nassau Hub plan. [And we know how much the Town "enjoys" the studious life, its myriad "Blight Studies" as cases histories in how to avoid the inevitable by studying the issue to death, adopting the study's findings, and then neatly shelving all plans, perhaps for further study at some undetermined, later date -- as in "never."]

Yes, we need to know the impact of a project the magnitude of the Lighthouse will have upon the likes of water, sewage, and, of course, traffic, but there has to be a way to streamline the process, so that the studies, to be followed by public hearings, to be followed by who-knows-what, do not drag out the Lighthouse project into the next decade, or beyond.

"We have seen the foot-dragging by the Town, on revitalization projects of a much smaller scale," said one Elmont civic leader, speaking on the condition of anonymity (so you know it wasn't Pat Nicolosi -- LOL). "Plans labor on the drawing board for a generation or more, artist renderings abound, and, but for the talk, few of the projects actually come to fruition."

Indeed. Elmont had its Blight Study -- as did neighboring West Hempstead -- and other than lofty plans, dozens of hearings at Town Hall, and promises of a bright future filled with renewal and Victorian-style street lamps, what have they got to show for it?

Exactly!

And so, with a project such as the Nassau Hub, perhaps of as great a moment for America's first suburb since the groundbreaking of Levittown, there needs to be the resolve -- a cautious resolve, but a resolve, nonetheless -- to move forward with all deliberate speed.

Toward that end, a group of concerned citizens known as the Long Island Lighthouse Political & Economic Alliance, is asking residents to sign an i-Petition urging the Town of Hempstead Supervisor to move the project along in its entirety (no piecemeal dissection need be applied here), in favor of (among other benefits), job growth, and increased tax base, a new home for our beloved (*&^%$@!) Islanders, and housing (at long last) for Generation Next.

We need to expedite the Lighthouse project, and not permit what too often becomes the habitual stall at Hempstead Town Hall, where even the best laid plans of community lay in repose and, ultimately, whither on the vine.

Redevelopment of the Nassau Hub -- on the global scale as envisioned by the Lighthouse plan -- is good for Long Island. After all, we are all Islanders -- even Kate Murray -- and to be sure, every island needs a lighthouse! :-)
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Click HERE to sign the i-Petition

Long Island Needs A Plan

And Legislators With The Moxie To See It Through

The last time there was any real planning on Long Island -- with somewhat skewed apologies to Lee Koppelman -- was when Levitt & Sons set out to build America's first suburban community.

Now, the Long Island Regional Planning Board (the first thing they need to "build" is a website) -- which planned much, but was able to implement little, mainly owing to bloated county bureacracies and opbstreperous town zoning boards that stymied even the best laid plans -- has plans for a Master Plan (yes, another Master Plan), one that will see Long Island through the next generation, and beyond.

The Plan will likely be fashioned on New York City's bold and visionary PlaNYC, an ambitious initiative that grows the city responsibly over the course of the next thirty years.

NYC's comprehensive blueprint covers everything from land, water and energy use to transportation, air quality, and climate change, promoting what is best in today's Big Apple, and envisioning what it will take to make Gotham a "model city of the 21st century."

Of course, a plan is only as good as the people who are willing and able to put it into action.

As concerns PlaNYC, of which congestion pricing was a not insignificant component, we have seen what inaction can do to snarl not only traffic, but the progress of a city -- and a region -- toward modernity.

If a regional Master Plan -- should we live to see one -- is going to benefit Long Island (as, surely, a prudent and well-implemented plan would), then we will need the elected and the appointed -- from Albany to town hall -- to hunker down and ante up, siezed of vision, of courage, of imagination, of independence, and, most certainly, of guts.

What we have seen, over the past half century of Long Island's lifetime, is a timidity on the part of local planning boards to plan, an avoidance on the part of legislators to act -- or at least to act in the best interests of their constituents -- and a brazen "who gives a damn" on the part of local zoning boards, which have given us unchecked overdevelopment, making Long Island the very model of everything than is wrong with suburban sprawl.

One need only to venture out on the major byways and thoroughfares of Long Island to see that they didn't get it right, and to spend some time at town hall -- where blight studies and "urban" renewal plans are all the rage -- to understand that they still don't get it.

Formulating that bluprint for Long Island's 21st century will require fortitude and forthrightness on the part of planners and legislators alike, and persistence from you and I, as involved citizens, to make sure that planning, and the development that must follow on its heels, is not only done, but done properly, without inordinate delay or watered-down half measures.

Let's get to it!
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From the Editorial Pages of Newsday:
Editorial: LI needs new planning blueprint

Long Island can't go on like this: choking traffic, little mass transit, lack of affordable housing, threats to open space, unbearable property tax burdens and a sputtering economy - to name a few of our problems. We need a smart plan to recommend specific actions, and we need the commitment of our public officials to carry it out.

The Long Island Regional Planning Board took a first step yesterday toward that kind of plan. It looked westward to New York City, whose PlaNYC is a model of both crunching the numbers and laying out doable recommendations.The consulting firm that had a lot to do with creating that plan is McKinsey & Co. And Long Island's planning board served notice yesterday that it intends to hire McKinsey to create a blueprint for sustainability here - unless another firm offers a better proposal. Local not-for-profits have offered $500,000 toward the eventual $1.5 million to $2 million cost of the study if McKinsey does it.

To be a success, any plan must have strong action recommendations, plus staunch political backing.

A word of warning: One of the 127 initiatives in PlaNYC was congestion pricing, which timid Albany lawmakers have just killed. The lesson is not that we don't need a plan, but that even the best blueprints need courageous politicians.

Whatever McKinsey recommends, if the top leaders of the two counties don't fight for the tough changes this study is likely to urge, we'll be stuck in the same sad rut.

Copyright © 2008, Newsday Inc.

Smart Growth Comes To Long Island

If Not To Stay, Then At Least To Visit

Did you know that New York State has a "Smart Growth Cabinet?" [We didn't even think they had a Smart Growth Night Table.] And wait until the armoire arrives.

Actually, a Smart Growth Task Force was created by former Governor George Pataki (remember him?) back in 1999. Look how smart we've become since then, and that level of "genius" that permeates through the marble halls in Albany is positively remarkable.

Seriously, though, the Governor of New York has assembled some of the finest minds in government (oxy what?), creating what is being touted as a "Smart Growth Cabinet," tapping Paul Beyer to be the State's top Smart Growth Smarty. [Can anyone tell us who Paul Beyer is -- or was, before he was appointed as New York State Director for Smart Growth Planning?]

Beyer was on Long Island -- Hauppauge, specifically (at the H. Lee Dennison Building, the very heart of smartness in Suffolk County) -- to talk about spiraling suburban sprawl, and to say to the folks at the Long Island Regional Planning Board (before whom he was speaking), "I'm not here to tell you what smart growth is on Long Island..." [Frankly, I don't know what it is myself...]

Geez, Paul. If you won't tell Long Islanders what smart growth is (he declined to define the term), who will? Surely, we can't wait another twenty-five years or more for the Planning Board (that last bastion of "best laid-away plans," such as it has always been) to figure this one out!

Yes, as Mr. Beyer explains, we need to create "places" again. And not simply "places" for "places" sake, but places with a sense of place. [We can still see the puzzled looks on the faces of members of the Planning Board. Faces that just can't fathom a sense of place in a place misplaced by suburban sprawl and zoned disgrace.]

Truth be told, in creating the Smart Growth Cabinet, Governor Spitzer made no mention of Long Island. Lower Hudson Valley? Yes. Adirondacks? Yes. Catskills? Yes.

Long Island wasn't even on the proverbial map. [Perhaps we missed it while we were under that Cone of Silence of Get Smart (Growth) fame.]

Oh, we've got places all right. Most of us can sense that.

Blighted places. Brownfield places. Economically distressed places. Places that used to be called the suburbs, now reclassified as part and parcel of some not-too-bright-growth urban renewal plan.

Not many places where our workforce and college grads can hang their hats, though. Too few open spaces, those sacred, now built-out places that used to be places we could walk, play, rejuvinate.

No real plans in the hopper, either -- aside from those long ago shelved, or more recently frowned upon and discarded by local town boards and their supervisors - to scrap the sprawl in favor of economically vibrant "downtowns" -- you know, those walkable, convivial, energized places where, ideally, we could work, live, and play. Places that were -- and could again be -- a whole lot more than vacant storefronts, crumbling facades, and block after decaying block of vacuous void.

What has happened to so-called "smart growth" on Long Island, other than the talk?

Well, as Maxwell Smart would have said, we've "missed it by that much!"

Okay, its a "bottom-up" process, as Mr. Beyer tells us.

Yup. That's what one could hear the folks at the Long Island Regional Planning Board saying as they headed to Hauppauge's local watering hole after the smart growth conference. "Bottoms up!"
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Spitzer's smart-growth czar visits Long Island
BY DANIEL WAGNER
daniel.wagner@newsday.com

In his first regional visit since becoming Gov. Eliot Spitzer's smart growth czar, Paul Beyer told an audience of public officials, civic and business leaders yesterday that "smart growth" -- a term he declined to define -- is essential to economic prosperity, but that it must be addressed by localities before the state can act.

"If we don't manage growth with a sense of creating places again, places with a sense of place," New York will lose its "economic competitiveness," said Beyer, whose official title is New York State Director for Smart Growth Planning.

Speaking before a meeting of the Long Island Regional Planning Board in Hauppauge, Beyer recalled a "great life growing up on Long Island" but said the region had failed to control the way it was developed in recent decades."Sprawl was basically uncontrollable," he said, and there were "economic benefits from sprawling development patterns."

The definition of "smart growth" is hotly contested, with some advocates cleaving to official standards set by national groups and others applying the term to any project that includes a mixed-use or pedestrian-friendly component.

Beyer would not articulate the state's definition of "smart growth," saying "I'm not here to tell you what smart growth is on Long Island ... Don't think we're going to give you the answers."

But he said that proper planning focused on issues like targeted density and access to public transportation that could solve a host of problems; from insufficient housing stock for young people and empty-nesters to the perceived conflict between economic development and open space preservation.

Because of the region-specific concerns that drive planning, Beyer said, it should be a "bottom-up" process, with local leaders sharing ideas with regional representatives and members of the Governor's Smart Growth Cabinet.

Copyright © 2008, Newsday Inc.

Beautiful Downtown Baldwin

Will It Look As Good On Grand Avenue As It Does On Paper?

You know, we can't beat up on Hempstead Town all the time. [Well, actually, we can, but if we say something nice, it just may catch them off guard.]

Town Supervisor Kate Marray, along with Councilmembers Dorothy Goosby and Tony Santino, recently unveiled the plans and drawings for a revitalized and rejuvenated Baldwin business district, and we must say, it looks fantastic.

The typical boilerplate "best is yet to come" of the press release aside -- and what would Town Hall be without it -- the planned redevelopment, actually promulgated in cooperation with the Baldwin business community and local residents, offers a whole lot more than the usual sidewalk planters and Victorian-style street lamps.

Indeed, the plans are impressive, in-line with smart growth initiatives, and spot on in creating a walkable, shopable, inviting downtown, sans sprawl and that big box store wall that cuts the community off from its residential, suburban roots.

True, we've seen renderings before -- in places like Elmont, West Hempstead, and points east -- with little to show for them on Main Street but for that Facade Improvement sign hailing Murray and the Town Board. Still, if the plans lay out as advertised -- along the very avenue of thinking we've envisioned and called for of our town's planners -- Grand Avenue could be grand, indeed.

Time will tell, of course, and all of us understand that even the best laid plans of Hempstead Town have a habit of going astray. But let's not kill the goose before the egg is laid.

"The remake of downtown Baldwin will be a victory for everyone," concluded Murray. "Shoppers will enjoy a great destination, workers will benefit from construction jobs and long-term employment, and neighbors will see home values enhanced by a more vibrant and attractive downtown."

We certainly hope so!

Where Planning & Zoning Don't Mix

In Hempstead Town, Even The Worst Laid Plans Get Variances

At first blush, it seems like a good idea -- the local Zoning Board also acting as Planning Board. After all, if the plan for development, revitalization, or renewal is sound, why bog down the process with too much bureaucracratic red tape?

The Planning Board draws up the plans, considers the proposals, examines the options, then, in virtually the same breath -- save a pro forma public hearing, or two -- approves the variances, the issuance of permits, and the exceptions to both standards and rule of law (if not reason) necessary to move the project forward.

Government streamlining at its best, yes?

Well, not quite.

First off, in the generally accepted scheme of things, a planning board may not consider or issue variances, hear appeals from the official responsible for zoning administration, or issue interpretations of zoning provisions. In fact, that happens to be the law in most jurisdictions.

There is, after all, an inherent conflict of interest.

It should logically follow, then (as if logic dictates any practice engaged in by local government), that a planning board and a zoning board cannot be the same entity; the same folks being obliged to pass on the legal muster of the plans offered up by that very body politic.

Next, consider that few zoning boards either know or take the time to understand even the basic precepts of planning, and you have bad plans -- or no plans at all -- being ratified by the bad planners who promulgated them.

Add to the mix the inherent politics of cronyism, favoritism, and the "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" that is the hallmark of local zoning boards, and you have the recipe for disaster from drawing board to implementation.

The Town of Hempstead is not unique in this regard, where zoning board serves as planning board. [We wonder, do they get two salaries, or double benefits, for sitting as both?]

We simply use Hempstead Town as our illustration because (a) we know it all too well, and (b) it is a prime instance of where the mix of zoning and planning -- or the inherent lack thereof -- clearly does not work. At least it doesn't work in favor of residents who, by default, must endure a paucity in planning, overshadowed only by the laxity in zoning.

For anyone who wonders whether planning and zoning on the same plate -- a broken plate, at that, the set having gone out of production more than a century ago -- is such a bad thing (or half as bad as we make it out to be), we point you in the direction of the nearest unincorporated business district, be that along Hempstead Turnpike, Sunrise Highway, Merrick Road, Dutch Broadway, or a so-called "Main Street" near you.

Indeed, if you reside in an unincorporated area of the Town of Hempstead -- over which the Town's Zoning Board of Appeals has primary jurisdiction for both planning and zoning -- a walk through your local business district will likely demonstrate two truths: (1) That little or no planning -- at least not in the last half of a century -- went into the development of the area; and (2) that zoning, from application through the wholesale carving out of exceptions to the long-established rules, and in enforcement of the code that, in theory, sets the standard, is haphazard, at best, and nonexistentent, at worst. [Maybe not "at worst," on second thought. No zoning at all -- as in "hands off" by the Town -- would, in many instances, have yielded better results.]

And then there's the ever-present issue of who's zoning/planning board is it, anyway, with political appointees (okay, let's call them what they are -- hacks) making the decisions on what gets built (or not) and where.

Face it. There isn't one person in Hempstead Town outside of Town Hall who can say, at least with a straight face, that Katuria D'Amato got her "full-time benefits for part-time work" job on the zoning board because of her all-consuming knowledge of the code or her abiding interest in preserving anything other than the stagnant political atmosphere that pervades America's largest township.

Indeed, it wouldn't be a stretch to venture a decent guess that a D'Amato on the zoning board -- or is it planning board -- favors not the average Joe who owns a cape on a 60' x 100' lot in Elmont, but rather, that well-connected developer, or that former Senator from Island Park who got every varience he -- and his new wife -- needed to build that McMansion on the beach.

Most residents of the Town of Hempstead probably don't know, even now, that the Town's zoning board also serves as its planning board. There's been so little planning of note, after all. Then again, given the "anything goes" zoning in Hempstead Town since Levitt built his homes more than 60 years ago, we think most residents would be surprised to learn that Hempstead Town has a zoning board.

Suffice it to say that one would be hard pressed to find code provisions that haven't been excepted, or stipulations regularly honored in the breach, with the violations overlooked, this by a zoning board of appeals that regulates development in Hempstead Town with the same zeal and aptitude that lumberjacks regulate the preservation of the Brazilian rain forest. Hmmm. Hempstead Town used to have trees, too, didn't it?

To say that the Zoning Board of Appeals of Hempstead Town has done a lousy job of it over the last 50 years would almost be too kind. To place in the hands of this very board the authority to plan for the township's next 50 years is nothing short of absurd.

To mesh planning with zoning may have, as the old adage goes, "seemed like a good idea at the time." Its not. And for places like the Town of Hempstead, it has proven to be disasterous.

Just don't take our word for it. Walk the streets in the business districts of the unincorporated areas of the township, and witness, first hand, the devastating impact of bad planning (or no planning), and zoning that serves the special interests of real estate developers and the politically well-connected, not yours.

The Best Laid Plans

End Of An Era At Long Island Regional Planning Board

After some forty years at the helm of a ship that more often listed while adrift in a sea of bureaucratic mayhem than it smoothly sailed the charted course, Lee Koppelman, Executive Director of the sometimes troubled Long Island Regional Planning Board, has retired.

New York, including much of Long Island, had it's Master Builder in Robert Moses, while Long Island uniquely held claim to it's Master Planner, Lee Koppelman. Both had their share of critics and detractors, as well as their hard-core supporters. Both were men of grand vision, whose foresight, in the case of Moses, sometimes failed to mesh with -- or so much as take into consideration -- the realities of an evolving community, and, in the case of Koppelman, regularly failed to win the embrace of entrenched political operatives.

Stymied by the stranglehold of town zoning boards and small-minded technocrats, and holding little if any sway over either, the Long Island Regional Planning Board, along with many of Professor Koppelman's best laid plans, floundered.

There were some successes en route, such as the creation of the Pine Barrens preserve. In Suffolk, Koppelman championed the preservation of open space. In Nassau County, his proposals, including pleas to build affordable housing and hopes of developing a light rail system, were mostly ignored.

Failures, and there were a few, including the haphazard development of the Route 110 corridor, were largely the product of institutional malaise and governmental arrogance rather than Dr. Koppelman's own perceived shortcomings.

Unlike Moses, who wielded great power and commanded the ability to raise large sums of money for his pet projects, all Lee Koppelman could do was to offer what he considered as prudent advice, too much of it, unfortunately, falling upon deaf ears at both county and local levels.

Among, Dr. Koppelman's ideas, first advanced during the 1960s, and incorporated into the 1970 "Comprehensive Plan for 1985" were:

Transportation: Expand the highway network, build two bridges over Long Island Sound, revamp the Long Island Rail Road and establish an integrated bicounty bus system.

Housing: Build 400,000 new units by 1985, including 128,500 rental apartments for residents under 25 and over 65.

Land use: Cluster construction to preserve open land, acquire parkland, limit development in North Shore estate areas and on the East End, and preserve at least 30,000 acres of farmland.

Taxes: Create countywide taxing districts to pay for schools and impose county sales taxes to prevent an anticipated doubling of the average Long Island homeowner's tax bill in 15 years to pay for increased public services.

They weren't listening then, and, lip service to "smart growth," "downtown revitalization" and school and special district "consolidation" aside, for the most part, those who rule the roost over regional and community-based plans are not listening still.

Today, there is a call, chiefly by the Island's two County Executives, to strengthen the Regional Planning Board. James Larocca, the Board's Chairman, and the newly appointed Board members, have the opportunity to seize upon the vision of Messrs. Levy and Suozzi and search out a successor to Dr. Koppelman who would boldly go where no planner dared -- or was permitted -- to go before.

Long Island stands at the crossroads in it's course as America's first suburb. Property taxes spiraling ever-upward. Housing out of reach to all but the extremely wealthy. The commercial base fleeing. Traffic at a standstill. The water below is tainted. The air above, stagnant. From taxes to transportation, there appears to be little in the way of a plan, master or otherwise.

Lee Koppelman wanted Long Island to think and act like the region it is. He would have delighted as well, we believe, had we acted more locally on the community front to create neighborhoods that felt more like, well, neighborhoods, rather than the strip malls and sprawling brownfields that have all but destroyed that sense of community the neighborhood was intended to promote.

Sometimes, neighborhoods just happen. The best of them develop and thrive naturally, without the intervention of either master planners or master builders. At other times, community needs the boost that only a regional plan -- one that takes into account the vitality of the neighborhood -- can provide.

Now is the time for the Long Island Regional Planning Board to take the helm again and, with vision, leadership, and a dash of tenacity, to ply Long Island's waters with a full head of steam. It is also time for Long Island's 2 counties, 13 towns, 2 cities, and 93 villages (and we haven't begun to include in the count Long Island's 126 school disticts and 700 some-odd "special" districts) to board the ship and begin to row together in the same direction at the same time.

As Lee Koppelman said some forty years ago, "We can't afford to wait!"

If Only We Had A Tour de Hempstead

The Town Of Hempstead Needs Lance Armstrong

Thomas Friedman had a nice Op-Ed piece in today’s New York Times. [SEE, Learning From Lance.]

Ostensibly, it spotlighted the pinpoint focus and detailed planning engaged by Lance Armstrong (who wore the coveted Yellow Jacket for the 7th year in a row at the grueling Tour de France), juxtaposed against the apparent lack thereof by the U.S. government – in areas seemingly vital to both our economy and our national defense.

Whether or not you agree with the politics, the thought-process (of which there is evidently little inside the Beltway) merits consideration on the local level.

Sure, one would think that the president – and Congress, for that matter - would have a strategy to reduce reliance on fossil fuels, to stabilize Iraq so we can actually get on with the war against terror, and to keep jobs in the good old US of A, so we don’t have to speak with someone in Bangladesh every time our Internet service goes down.

Same said, for sure, as we think local and act local. When illegal housing has been a problem for some twenty odd years (okay, they were all odd), one would presume that our local leaders would come up with a workable strategy – as Thomas Friedman put it, “to thoughtfully plan ahead and to sacrifice today for a big gain tomorrow.”

Yes, we are caught up in eternal NIMBYism – “build that affordable housing, but not in my backyard,” but if we’ve been complaining about the very same issues for the past two decades and they’re only getting worse, clearly we have neither followed Lance Armstrong’s lead nor kept pace with the ever-changing realities of the new suburbia.

This is not to say that we want to see Kate Murray or Harvey Levinson don their racing gear and head off on tricycles through the hills and dales of the Hempstead Plain (or, come to think of it, to have the race for Town Supervisor decided by the outcome of a sporting event. We can picture that Tug-of War, and it ain’t pretty), but the fact remains that the tried and true – or even the attempt to fix the tried and true – simply doesn’t cut it.

We have no doubt that if Kate Murray had a magic wand [Be nice. We’re not going there – today!] she would wave off the evils of illegal housing, outrageous property taxes, unchecked zoning violations and, yes, those outmoded Sanitary Districts. [Why, if Kate had that wand, and her druthers, she’d probably whisk into oblivion some of the very irritants who surround her at Town Hall – assuming they showed up other than to collect a pay check.]

For better or for worse, there is no magic wand, and our Supervisor – who is, by any measure, astute, charismatic, engaging and photogenic – is rarely left to her own devices in terms of exerting enough “willpower to triumph” over those cancers that now ravage, and threaten to consume, America’s largest township. In short, that “strategic focus” is missing at Town Hall.

Whether the result of complacency – 100 years of one-party rule will do that to you – or the benign neglect that flows from a party leadership that long ago made the decision to forego the south shore in favor of points north, what has become clear is that Hempstead Town Hall lacks both direction and focus, with the best laid plans (many of which were laid eons ago) falling by the wayside or gathering dust in the catacombs.

We don’t blame Kate Murray – although, at times (all right, at all times), it may appear that way. It is not a lack of smarts, of ability, or of any personable attribute that distinguishes a passive government from a proactive one. We consider Kate Murray to be among the best and the brightest on all of these counts. [And while we kid her for being “smilin’ Kate,” face it, that grin is contagious.]

No, misogynists that we may be, Kate-bashers all, the problem is not Kate Murray. The problem at Hempstead Town Hall is a failure – more like a refusal - to let go of the past, and an innate need to preserve, at almost any cost, the status quo. Say anything, do anything – or do nothing at all – just to preserve the status quo.

There isn’t a soul at Town Hall who doesn’t recognize the fact, for instance, that the Sanitary Districts are dysfunctional, and downright cost inefficient. True, as well, for Water Districts and the many other “Special” Districts that tax greatly but provide residents with little in return. Attempts to justify their continued existence, whether advanced by District Counsel, a local Councilman, or sitting Commissioners, are both laughable and preposterous. Yet, the basic instinct to protect these fiefdoms – and the stream of party loyalists they produce – overrides even the mere consideration of initiatives that may change the very essence of the way the Town of Hempstead conducts business, provides services and tackles community problems.

So, when we, as residents and community activists, raise our voices to complain – whether about longstanding problems, such as illegal rentals, or of the more ephemeral, like accumulating trash along “Main Street” - we get a friendly nod, a pat on the back, and a temporary, often knee-jerk response – what we at The Community Alliance have dubbed “the Band-Aid approach.”

Kate Murray once asked a gathering of local civic leaders, “What would you want us to do in a perfect world?” Kate, in a perfect world, you’d have Mike Deery call a news conference so you could boldly step up to the microphones, and firmly make the following statement:

“My name is Kate Murray, and I stand before you to say that this is not Joe Mondello’s Hempstead Town. Heck, Joe Mondello doesn’t even live in Hempstead Town. The hell with Joe Mondello. Ladies and gentlemen, this is YOUR Hempstead Town. Today, we concede to a pattern of inertia. We accept, at long last, responsibility for holding America’s largest township in place, as the rest of the world moved forward. We acknowledge than we can do more, take less, and hold the line on those @$#%!* mailings.

“Today, we begin to clean house at Hempstead Town Hall. The folks you voted out of office years ago, and who found refuge on the Town payroll, are gone, their positions filled by qualified residents – Democrats, Republicans and the unaffiliated – who will not only show up for work every day, but will work for you every day.

“Today, we take the first steps to consolidate the Sanitary Districts under Town of Hempstead Sanitation, assuring that every homeowner enjoys the same level of service, and every homeowner pays the same tax rate.

"Today, we are pleased to announce that the Town has hired twenty new Building Inspectors, assuring that every hamlet and unincorporated area will have the dedicated Code enforcement its residents pay for and deserve.

“Today, we pledge to hold that line on ALL Town taxes, and to take control of every entity that bears the name and seal of the great Town of Hempstead.

“Today we not only make the promise, but begin to live the promise, that those elected to serve the people of the Town of Hempstead will not only aspire to do the job, we’re going to get the job done.

“In the Town of Hempstead – in YOUR Town of Hempstead - the buck will not only stop here, with your Supervisor, it will stop, and linger longer, in your wallets.

“Today, we return the Town of Hempstead to the people of Hempstead Town!”

Okay, we can all wake up now. . .

When “change” becomes a four-letter word, and the fear generated by the prospect of change brings out a barrage of lies, misrepresentations, half-truths and the completely inane, we have to ask ourselves one simple question: Can we do better? At the very least, we owe it to ourselves to try.

For all intents and purposes, there has been no change – either in power or direction – at Hempstead Town Hall since 1907 (the year the electric vacuum cleaner was invented). A house, especially one that local government calls home, should at least be broom swept (if not vacuumed) once every hundred years, don’t you think?

To quote Thomas Friedman, if out of context, “maybe we have the leaders we deserve. Maybe we just want to admire Lance Armstrong, but not be Lance Armstrong. Too much work. Maybe that's the wristband we should be wearing: Live wrong. Party on. Pay later.”