Building a better suburbia

Imagine a Long Island that was 50 percent open space. Or a hub of agriculture, housing and business along Route 110 in Farmingdale. Or even a new neighborhood of rental housing, businesses and parks formed from modified single-family homes and funded entirely by its residents.

These were just some of the ideas for Long Island’s future that were presented by the Long Island Index as winners of its Build a Better Burb contest on Oct. 4.

The Long Island Index, in conjunction with the Community Development Corporation of Long Island, announced the seven winners at the CDC’s 40th anniversary gala at the Crest Hollow Country Club.

There were 212 submissions from 30 countries, and a panel of seven judges chose six winners, along with one design chosen by the people of Long Island who voted for it online.

“The way we build on Long Island is kind of ‘same old, same old,’ because we have a very hard time accepting some very new ideas,” said Ann Golob, director of the Long Island Index. “So we thought we needed another way to talk to people about this. So what we decided to do was to come up with this competition, where the idea would be to see what people would tell us would be some really great ideas. And then we can put these pictures in front of Long Islanders to say, ‘here’s an idea of what might be possible.’”

All of the winning submissions came from people and architectural groups from New York City, something that Golob found surprising. Some of them were focused on specific areas – one idea called for densifying Levittown while keeping single-family homes, while another idea was to build a new agricultural, housing and business center in Farmingdale called AgIsland – while others looked at Long Island as a whole.

“They were definitely very innovative,” said Lynne O’Leary, vice president of marketing and development for CDC, of the designs. “A lot of them, we have the infrastructure in place, but it needs to be updated and adapted. It got the conversation started.”