Windfall for new development

The days are officially numbered for three mostly vacant commercial buildings at Sunrise Highway and Rockaway Avenue. The state has awarded the village a $2.5 million grant, which will go to 363 Rockaway Associates, the developer of the planned Sun Valley Towers condominium complex.

The building will have four retail stores on the ground level and three floors of condos — 64 one- and two-bedroom units. The final design must still be approved by the village’s Building Department.

Sun Valley was one of only 79 projects — totaling $153.6 million — to receive funding through the Restore New York grant program. It received the most money of the five projects in Nassau and Suffolk counties. “Valley Stream led the Long Island grant recipients,” said Village Clerk Vinny Ang.

Village officials say they are ecstatic that the funding was approved. “This is a jump-start for the south side of Valley Stream,” Mayor Ed Cahill said, explaining that the project, combined with the 90-unit Hawthorne Court condo complex on Cottage Street, will provide a boost to the downtown. “These people will shop local,” Cahill said of the residents the two developments will bring in.

In anticipation of the questions he expects about why the state would award funding to a private developer, Ang said that the purpose of the Restore New York grants is to help make downtown areas more prosperous, and this project fills the bill. It will replace older, vacant store fronts with a building that will create new living space and generate far more tax revenue. “There’s more in the tax base,” Ang said, “so you pull less from the residents.”

Ang said the village is looking to revitalize its downtown by bringing more residents closer to the stores. “That is really the formula for success,” he said. “The people who live there end up being the regular customers and support the businesses.”