Developer: I'm serious about Sound tunnel

Garden City developer Vince Polimeni has spent $3 million of his own money, and he says he is willing to spend far more, to chase a dream many consider an impossibility -- the construction of an 18-mile-long tunnel beneath Long Island Sound.

The project might seem little more than a pipe dream if it did not come from a well-respected developer who built the 380,000-square-foot Islandia shopping center -- since sold -- the 250,000-square-foot Pavilion center in Mineola, and seven similar centers in Poland.

Only last week, Polimeni received the Long Island Developer of the Year Award from the Association for a Better Long Island, the region's largest commercial real estate industry group. (ABLI also wanted to make a bit of a joke: It said there has been so little development on the Island that it gave the award to Polimeni . . . for his work in Poland.)

Earlier this week, Polimeni said he and his company, Polimeni International Inc., are anything but joking about the so-called Cross Sound Link Project, which would connect Route 135 in Syosset with Rye in Westchester County. It would be the largest tunnel in America, and would cost an estimated $12 billion to build.

Polimeni and his son, Michael Polimeni, the company's chief operating officer, say they have spent $3 million for studies and say they are willing to shell out at least another $2 million for a traffic study to prove the tunnel would be viable. The tunnel, the Polimenis said, would be privately funded.

Soaring gas prices, the Polimenis said earlier this week, underscore the need for a cross-Sound tunnel. The existing bridges and roads, they say, are aging; pollution is getting worse. Eighty-thousand vehicles a day could use the tunnel, at a cost of $25 each way per car and $100 for trucks.

But, said Matt Metz, "That's a little pricey." Metz, president of Ranco Sand & Stone Corp. in Manorville, said his trucks currently pay $65 per round-trip over the bridges. "I think the only time it would pay is if there were a major traffic jam" at the bridges, he added.

Kendra Adams, executive director of the New York State Motor Trucking Association, raised the issue of hazardous-material problems for truckers, in addition to costs.

If the traffic study showed the project was not viable, the Polimenis said they would not proceed. But, they said, don't doubt their sincerity. "We're for real," Vince Polimeni said.