Huntington Town's housing proposal for Melville is a boon for LI

Long Island has a housing crisis. A recent study by Construction Coverage, a research and analysis firm focused on the construction industry, placed Nassau and Suffolk counties at 131 and 132 of 141 large counties in the nation for the percentage of housing growth over the past 11 years.

That inability to invest in residential housing has predictably led to rapidly increasing home and rental prices. This has made our region, already one of the most expensive places to live in the country, unaffordable for many.

For too long, development on Long Island has been stunted by restrictive zoning, lack of sewer infrastructure, and NIMBYism, where residents fearing change storm their local town hall with exaggerated claims that any new development will increase school size, stall traffic, and degrade the environment.

We are at a crossroads. We can lose the next generation of Long Islanders and our opportunity to be a dynamic region, or we can embrace new thinking for redevelopment, like the Town of Huntington has proposed for the Melville corridor.

Melville, long a central business office district, has fallen on hard times in the post-pandemic world. Many newer Class A offices along Route 110, the kind that offer modern top-tier amenities, are near full occupancy, but older Class B and C offices are withering away, largely vacant or underutilized. Eventually, their owners will challenge their assessments and will wind up paying much less in property taxes, which will require surrounding schools, fire districts, and other local governments to raise taxes on homeowners to compensate.

Town officials held numerous public listening sessions to gather community input on what the area’s future should look like. This is the gold standard for development because, without community input, projects are destined to fail.

In drafting code changes — such as permitting ground-floor commercial and retail space with three floors of apartments above — the board rightly relied upon feedback from Melville residents and surrounding communities during a yearlong series of listening sessions. The Melville Town Centre proposal is born out of the community’s desire to create a walkable neighborhood with a mix of residential housing and retail, including shops and restaurants with outdoor dining on wide sidewalks.

As the town begins the official public hearing process with the first session Tuesday, it once again seeks community input that may result in amendments to the proposed code.

The community has already galvanized support for development in a narrow area along Maxess Road, east of Route 110, with a cap of 3,000 units. Additionally, “pauses” are baked in to examine the process as it unfolds over years, undermining typical scare tactics like a recent preposterous claim that 40,000 apartments could be built.

The Town of Huntington has an opportunity to join the likes of Patchogue, Farmingdale, and Westbury, whose leaders mustered the political will necessary to enhance the value of their communities, build needed housing for young professionals and seniors, and create a pool of local talent for surrounding employers.

Long Island’s ability to grow industries like biotech relies on our ability to solve our housing crisis. Success in Melville can serve as a template for other communities to reexamine their underutilized neighborhoods and work with their communities to find solutions to address their housing needs.

The Melville redevelopment plan offers a chance for a better future for all Long Islanders. It’s a no-brainer we should all support.

THIS GUEST ESSAY reflects the views of Mike Florio, the chief executive of the Long Island Builders Institute.