Firing up a plan to market LI products, services

A project to market Long Island products and services to local businesses was launched Tuesday in Melville.

Long Island First is the brainchild of Suffolk Legis. Wayne Horsley (D-Babylon), who introduced legislation last year to create it, along with Nassau Legis. Denise Ford (R-Long Beach) and the Long Island Regional Planning Council.

The group will launch a website, LIfirst.com, this summer and hold regular brainstorming forums.

"We're going to market Long Island to Long Islanders," Horsley told the group, which included top officials from the Long Island Association, the Long Island Farm Bureau, the Hauppauge Industrial Association, Brookhaven National Laboratory and Stony Brook University.

LIFirst.com will initially provide a place for local businesses to search for supply partners on Long Island. They'll type in their industry and the name of the product or service they need and will get a list of available local suppliers. They'll be able to place orders on the site, and may even receive discounts or other preferences for buying local, said John Paul Di Martino, a Horsley aide who will manage the website and group forums.

Phase two of the project will connect local businesses with Long Island colleges and universities to help tailor course programs and graduates to regional needs. Riverhead Supervisor Sean Walter supported the idea that colleges would focus on local business needs, noting the large number of law school and teaching graduates is probably more than the market needs.

Desmond Ryan, executive director of the Association for a Better Long Island, a developers group that isn't part of the initiative, said he supported the idea of a forum to link local companies with local suppliers, and pointed to grocery chain King Kullen's decision to use local produce. The devil, he said, is in the details. "It's going to take a lot of time, effort and energy on the part of the LIA to make it work," he said.

Di Martino, who heads the group's marketing subcommittee, said later phases of the program will link local products and services to consumers, and provide a single site for students, for example, to find internships, travel routes to jobs and affordable housing.