AvalonBay opponents won by using social media

In March, AvalonBay's proposal for a huge housing development in Huntington Station seemed headed for success.

Last week, the project was rejected by the town board.

What happened in between has become a cautionary tale for developers and something of a primer - on social media.

After supporters dominated a March town board meeting on the project, a group of five critics by the end of April set up a Facebook page called "Say NO to Avalon Bay Huntington Station" and they, along with other protesters, swamped other Facebook pages with comments, helping to rally opposition.

Both sides agree AvalonBay was caught off guard, and its attempts to counter the campaign, including its own "Say Yes" Facebook page launched in June, came too late.

"With social media . . . you can instantly publish and reach 8,000 people," said Vivienne Wong of Huntington, one of the Facebook page creators. "We got the information to the people. We were able to have rebuttals. If somebody said something like, 'Avalon said the carpeting is pink,' we were able to go to the site and say, 'The carpet samples are blue.' "

For Long Island's real estate industry, the saga was an eye-opener on the promise and threat of social media.

"Before it was social, a rather benign activity," said Russell G. Matthews, executive vice president of the Albanese Organization, a Garden City-based developer. "But now it's being used to manipulate public opinion."

The three board members who voted down AvalonBay's proposal say they formed their own opinions on the project.

The process was such a wake-up call that Long Island's four big industry trade groups are sponsoring "Social Media and Real Estate Development," a Hofstra University symposium on Nov. 16.

The conclusion: Much like politicians in a campaign, developers must manage social media "distortion" quickly, some real estate veterans said.

"It's going to be very difficult or much more challenging to get something through if you're not using social media," said David Pennetta, who helped set up the panel as a commercial broker and vice chairman of the Huntington Economic Development Corp.

"Forty people, 50 people sound like 300, especially with social media today," Christopher Capece, AvalonBay's development director, said at a recent panel discussion.

The Facebook organizers point out that hundreds of opponents showed up at the Town Board vote on the project.

The Long Island Progressive Coalition, which supported AvalonBay's project for its affordable housing component, countered on its Facebook page YIMBY (Yes In My Back Yard) but closed it to the public, said Maritza Silva-Farrell, a community organizer for the coalition. Not only did the project's adversaries swamp YIMBY with their comments, she said, the coalition suspected the other side was using the page to find out about events supporting the proposal and going there to disrupt them.

Both sides say social media helped turn the tide against AvalonBay, but the three town board members who voted no said they weren't influenced by remarks there.

Mark Mayoka, the board's lone Republican, said the big factors were constituent e-mails, letters and phone calls, not Facebook. Susan Berland said she never looked at the Facebook pages nor any of the blogs that chronicled the AvalonBay proposal.

Mark Cuthbertson, the third no vote, said people trying to push through projects in the future are going to have to use social media to get their points across because the medium so quickly dispenses information.

"You have to have your talking points down and disperse it quickly," he said, ". . . so you have fact-based information to counteract what isn't fact-based."