Pitch offers glimpse of better Long Island

Whoa, what a week.

Nassau County was fighting over a new bus system. A bond-rating agency flipped Suffolk County's outlook from positive to negative. There was more on the college admissions cheating scandal, word of a serial killer likely on the loose and a U.S. senator dissed -- before praising -- Long Island on the Senate floor.

To some, it might have felt like a heap of troubling news served with a side order of bad. Which is why a pitch made by a local group trying to win a state funding competition in Albany deserves a second look.

For more than an hour in the ceremonial Blue Room of the state Capitol on Monday, the Long Island Regional Economic Development Council touted the region's strengths, acknowledged its weaknesses and offered up ideas to make both better. The council was launched by the Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo in July.

The presentation made for a rare -- last week, at least -- imagining of a Long Island future that could be better than its storied past.

Yes, Nassau and Suffolk are losing young workers as the region grows older. And yes, there are problems of inadequate transportation, housing and sewers, and a frightful decline in the high-pay manufacturing jobs that once were an Island staple.

Add to that the region's fragmented government, which too often embraces the damaging status quo rather than finding solutions and successfully selling them to residents, and it's easy to feel glum.

Still, as one of 200 or so watching the council's presentation of a five-year economic growth plan via a buggy Internet feed, it was easy to be pulled in to the council's vision of what could be.

The council pitched its plan to "incubate and accelerate" the rise of major new industries by making the most of what already works on Long Island, including (most of) its schools and research facilities.

What kinds of new industries and projects did the council envision? Surprisingly, not all of them had nothing to do with the boring -- but necessary -- job of putting up houses and extending sewers.

The council believes that, through innovation and technology, Long Island can grow good-paying jobs and prepare the region's children to fill them.

Those jobs, according to the presentation, could be in life sciences, defense, homeland security, information technology, clean energy -- or re-imagined legacy occupations like fishing. One project, for example, is to seed gourmet scallops and sell them to New York City restaurants to address a shortage of the delicacy.

The council -- in a truncated presentation that barely synthesized its 80-plus-page application -- offered plenty of other proposals, too. Some, like creating a transit hub near Long Island MacArthur Airport, have been well publicized.

But here are two others:

A proposed state-of-the art cold storage and distribution facility in Calverton. The super refrigerator would allow local farmers to store and ship local foods, increasing farm profit while reducing customer costs for increasingly desirable locally grown foods.

Construction of the region's first "Thought Box," in Hicksville, where fledging high-tech ventures would have access to housing, offices, labs, recreation and commercialization services under one roof. The concept, in the future, could be applied to other Long Island communities, too.

There's more, lots more, in the council's report.

On Thursday, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo will announce the winners of the competition. Long Island is hoping to make the top four, each of which would receive $40 million in state money to jump-start their proposals.

Keep fingers crossed, please. Because the region could use the boost.