Builders talk about Avalon's defeat

Developers are wasting time if they don’t get political and community “ownership” of their proposals early on, builders and Long Island officials said Wednesday in a panel discussion on “cutting red tape,” the morning after the Huntington Town board rejected a 490-unit housing complex.

“This battle is being won or lost on the ground,” said Christopher Capece, development director for AvalonBay Communities, which was denied approval for its $100 million project for Huntington Station.

The discussion in Bethpage, hosted by the Building Long Island magazine, was supposed to focus on streamlining the permit process but instead, AvalonBay’s plight highlighted what some considered a bigger problem.

Tritec Real Estate  co-founder Bob Coughlan, who is in the midst of a major retail and housing venture in Patchogue Village, said there are so many competing opinions about priorities, from affordable housing to infrastructure, that it’s hard to get everyone on the same page. Unlike his company’s experience getting approval from a Virginia suburb of Washington, D.C., Long Island is much less centralized and has so many more fiefdoms to cover.

"Why do you want to go through that process when we can go to another community and get it done a lot faster,” Coughlan said.

That’s why developers should marshal political and community support in the “quiet” before proposals are announced “so that everybody has some type of ownership of the project,” he said.

Despite a lot of support, the AvalonBay project fell through in a 3-2 vote from the town board after many residents complained it would overburden the school district and create traffic problems. 

During the breakfast panel, Capece said his boss, Matt Whalen, went to the firm’s Virginia headquarters to explain why the project went down: “There are some very difficult conversations going on right now.”

He said it was important for supporters to show up at meetings and e-mail local leaders because small groups of opponents can sound like “300” people, especially with social media.

After the meeting, Capece said his firm had lobbied the community early on, starting with school district officials.

“Would we have done anything different?” he said. “I don’t think so. I think we reached out to every community group who had a stake.”

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