By JUDY RATTNER, DAN ISRAELI and JESSICA OTIS
As one of the prime areas of focus, Elmont has long been discussed by local leaders as a potential home to new families and young professionals, due to its proximity to New York City and the current plans for economic development along Hempstead Turnpike.
During a forum that spanned breakfast and lunch and included a walking tour of Rockville Centre, Nassau County Executive Thomas Suozzi shared his views and facilitated discussion. Sponsored by the Nassau County Planning Federation, the conference began with the premise that Long Island needs to expand its tax base and become an exciting place for young people to live.
The fear is that college graduates and young adults have their sights set on Manhattan, Brooklyn and other urban areas that offer easy commutes to work and ready access to shopping, dining and other leisure activities. Ideas, Culture and Education, or ICE, was the acronym used to describe the amenities that attract people to a community.
Describing this concept as "the key to our future," Suozzi spoke of Nassau's suburbs, the first in the nation and the most mature, as a wonderful place to live, with great schools, not much crime and open spaces. He said the challenges facing the county are the same as those facing other suburbs, with younger people not settling in the communities where they were raised.
In addition to tax base expansion and ICE, other major defining characteristics of a "cool" downtown, Suozzi said, include the presence of a number of multi-story, mixed-rental co-op and condo units near a train station that attract unmarried young professionals in their 20s and 30s as well as young families. This housing should be within walking distance of restaurants and a variety of retail establishments.
Creating attractive downtowns would not only counter the trend of young people leaving Long Island, he said, but would help reduce taxes and traffic and eliminate the county's pockets of poverty. Suozzi said the concept neither abandons the current understanding of suburbia nor encourages the urban sprawl dubbed "Queensification," but instead "takes the great things we love [about our suburbs] and enhances our quality of life."
Suozzi came prepared with visual aids. A slide show of attractive downtown scenes was accompanied by maps and written descriptions of many of the county's downtown areas. One handout suggested that Rockville Centre, Long Beach, Garden City and Great Neck were already cool downtowns. Mineola, Westbury and Glen Cove are "on the way," and Elmont, Hicksville and Hempstead "should be" cool downtowns.
In Elmont, revitalization has already begun in the form of a $2.5 million grant to restore the Argo Theater Site, distributed by the Empire State Development Corporation and its Restore New York Project. Municipalities across the state received over $100 million in Restore New York funding, and Elmont's share was the biggest.
The plan is to build a large shopping center at the site, which is currently occupied by a 99-cent store, a print shop and a barber shop, and attract a string of private enterprises along Hempstead Turnpike. Hempstead Town Councilwoman Dorothy Goosby said that Elmont, the home of Belmont Park, is a great model for the "cool" downtown concept. She has been working with civic leaders on a visioning process for urban renewal.
"It just doesn't get any cooler," Goosby said of Elmont. "It's home to horse racing's Taj Mahal and host to the most prized jewel in the Triple Crown. We've got great parks, young families and an active senior center. We are moving forward with an urban renewal plan at Argo, and we've already started new streetscaping."
Hempstead Town Councilman Edward Ambrosino agreed that there is enormous potential in Elmont, but that it would only be achieved with reform of the town's zoning code. He said he believes that current restrictions prohibit Elmont and other potentially "cool" downtown areas from becoming sustainable.
"We need to take the zoning code and burn it," Ambrosino said. "Zoning codes need to be fluid, they need to embrace change. [The laws] we have now weren't written with the future in mind, and have become obsolete. They were designed to preserve the status quo, and we need to rewrite the zoning code to match the needs of 2008."
Ambrosino referred to several complaints he had with the current code, primarily the law that prohibits apartment units from being built over commercial property. He also noted problems with current setback requirements and a need for mandatory uniform aesthetics for stores as other examples of adapting to the times.
Ambrosino also acknowledged the key role Belmont Park will play in the visioning process. "We need to leverage Belmont Park and the surrounding area to create a Belmont Park village," he said. "There is such a disconnect between the Belmont Stakes and the community. If we have a venue that attracts over 94,000 people, it should translate into low-hanging fruit for local businesses."
Emphasizing that no area should be left out, Suozzi called for community representatives to come up with both short- and long-term visions of what they see for their own localities. He said the county was not interested in overseeing planning or zoning "or telling local areas what to do," but he offered the county's services as a "coordinating influence" in assembling a "big picture." And he vowed to continue the conversation and to coordinate with creative efforts throughout the county.
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