Bring on the buzz to Long Island

July 22, 2007

How's your weekend going?

Do anything interesting?

Meet anyone new?

Not in Manhattan, not out of town, but here, on Long Island, where you live.

Your answers to those questions might well determine whether the region will flourish or stagnate.

Long Island is growing older every day, and those demographics infuse the region with an urgency for us to design a landscape that will attract and keep our young. The sons and daughters who went off to college and didn't come back. Or the ones who stayed but now want to live in communities that don't necessarily revolve around single-family homes and the children who live in them.

Unless Long Island stops this brain drain, it won't prosper. Businesses offering well-paying jobs won't stay if the employment pool isn't top-notch. Young teachers won't come. The science and technology centers will continue to lose talented candidates to employers in smaller but pulsating cities.

Until now, discussions about the remedy focused solely on housing choices. While that is critical, it's not the whole package. To many, there's just not enough happening here.

Oh, to be young and suburban

Long Island is not an easy place to be young and single and happy. How can the nightlife, the entertainment, the arts and the professional sports offerings be improved?

And let's not be shy. Can we create a social environment more conducive to finding a date? Why does sex and the city seem an exciting combination, while sex and the suburbs is defined by desperate housewives?

This is our third editorial in a series seeking your ideas, expertise and understanding of your communities to help us shape opinions and start a conversation about the kind of change necessary to keep the region vibrant economically, culturally and socially.

So let's chat.

How much interest is there in an indoor lacrosse game in Yaphank? Would you see a modern dance troupe at a new performing arts center in Hempstead Village? Do you think Patchogue can develop an edge? Are you bored with regional theaters offering recycled Broadway shows that were mediocre to start with? Does it bother you that most places to eat after midnight are diners near the LIE?

Or, is it that Long Island's cultural offerings simply suffer from inadequate marketing? Did you know the region hosts four film festivals? Have you gone to one?

Can you accept that nurturing a richer cultural tapestry requires changing the landscape, including an increase of housing density in key locations? And how do we mesh this with our traditional definition of a suburb, revolving around single-family homes and the school districts that demarcate them? Will we ever see the day when the quality of life for adults will be touted as much as the quality of the schools as the reason for living here?

Plans large and small

Developments already proposed and projects underway could turn central areas of Nassau and Suffolk into true destinations within five to 10 years. All of these include plans for new entertainment venues and social spaces. The policy decisions made in the coming months - involving zoning, architecture and design - are sure to be controversial. Are there any PIMBYs out there who will say, "Please, in my back yard"?

The project proposed by Charles Wang and Scott Rechler is the biggest and most dramatic one in the works. It's anchored by a renovated Nassau Coliseum as a top-drawer concert hall as well as a modern hockey arena. Plans for the 77 acres surrounding it call for grand, walkable gathering places; office towers and mid-rise apartments; and retail stores and restaurants. Transportation innovations would link this center with the institutions and places surrounding it: Roosevelt Field, Hofstra University, Eisenhower Park and a stadium for a minor league baseball team.

In Suffolk, a mixed-use community of housing on county property in Yaphank envisions a smaller concert venue of at least 6,000 seats, which would convert to an ice hockey rink to host a minor league team and professional indoor lacrosse and soccer teams. As with most proposals for greater housing density, local residents want the amenities but oppose the housing. But that's what's needed to make these projects viable.