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New York
Sen. Schumer Is Surprise Speaker at 2009 Vision Long Island Awards
''Smart growth is the future,'' said New York Democratic Senator Charles Schumer, a surprise guest speaker at Vision Long Island's 2009 Smart Growth Awards presentation luncheon in Woodbury, commending smart growth advocates and pledging his continued support for their immediate and long-term sustainability goals, especially for expansion of mass transit.
''All of the investment we've made in the quality of life and education on Long Island will be seen in the next 50 years,'' he told about 600 officials, planners, conservationists, developers and other luncheon participants, stressing the importance of dense mixed-use projects like the planned 150-acre Lighthouse redevelopment in Uniondale, Nassau County, for which he seeks federal funds to improve roads, sewers and other area infrastructure.
Expected to generate some $4 billion in private investment and create 19,000 permanent jobs, reported New York Times writer Peter Applebome earlier, the megaproject would include a renovated Nassau Coliseum, sports complex and sports technology center, a convention center, canal and pedestrian plaza, office buildings, and 2,300 high-rise hotel and residential units.
Promoted by Nassau County Executive Thomas R. Suozzi as the centerpiece of his smart-growth vision for ''New Suburbia,'' the project has encountered ''pretty muted'' criticism so far, the writer observed, perhaps because Long Island residents, mindful of the area's invention of tract houses and suburban sprawl in the late 1940s, ''realize that, particularly in this miserable economy, Nassau desperately needs a second act, and this may be the only game in town.''
Still, Executive Suozzi disclaims a ''postsuburban'' shift, expecting 90 percent of the county to remain unchanged.
''We want to be a new suburbia,'' he told the writer. ''We want to keep the good stuff about suburbia and get rid of the bad stuff about suburbia. But the old model of suburbia began 60 years ago with Levittown. It's no longer sustainable.''
And that's exactly the conclusion at the root of Vision Long Island and its annual Smart Growth Awards program, launched in 2002.
This year's winners, selected from among nearly 50 submissions in 11 categories, report Long Island Business News writer David Winzelberg and Long Island Press writer Michelle Regalado, included 12 individuals, municipalities, organizations, companies and plans, all committed to change in land use and development patterns.
They included Lori Baldassare of the Mount Sinai Heritage Center, Trammell Crow Residential, the North Shore Land Alliance, TRITEC, Kingdom Family Holdings, the Nassau Suffolk Coalition for the Homeless, Islip Town Councilmen Steve Flotterton and Phil Nolan, the Dennis Organization, the Town of Brookhaven, the Village of Amityville, and Glen Cove Mayor Ralph Suozzi.
See details at www.visionlongisland.org. -- New York Times, Long Island Business News, Long Island Press 6/19/2009
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