Group prepares to fight Syosset mall proposal

Syosset area civic leaders are convinced mall developer Taubman Centers Inc. of Minneapolis is about to try once again to build a giant shopping center on the abandoned Cerro Wire property off the Long Island Expressway in Syosset, and they are mobilizing for a resumption of a 15-year-old fight.

The leaders base their belief on comments made by Mitch Pally of the Melville-based Weber Law Group, which represents Taubman. According to the weekly Farmingdale Observer, Pally recently told a meeting of the Nassau County Planning Commission that ground breaking on a mall "could occur in spring 2011." Pally told the commission that Taubman "is committed to building a first-class mall on the old Cerro Wire property, not only because it's good business but because it meets all the criteria of the [Nassau] Master Plan" and will provide jobs and tax revenues," the Observer article said.

Pally said he had gone to the commission only to point out that Nassau's Master Plan made no mention of the abandoned Cerro Wire site. "We said, 'Here is open land,' " Pally said in a phone interview. " 'It could be developed.' "

Attorney Morton Weber, head of the law group, declined to say whether Taubman planned to restart its efforts.

In 2009, the state Court of Appeals, the state's highest court, denied a request by Taubman to overturn an Appellate Division ruling that sent plans for a 750,000-square-foot mall on the 39-acre site back to the beginning of Oyster Bay town's approval process. Weber said that the only action regarding the mall project at this point is a preliminary conference to be held in Supreme Court in Suffolk County in January regarding an old environmental issue.

"What we're doing is going through the process, and the process right now is this [court] conference," Weber said.

Todd Fabricant, chairman of the Cerro Wire Coalition, who has been leading the fight against the proposed mall for more than a decade, said Pally's comments were "a big enough message to say that the gloves are off."

Fabricant said the coalition will be communicating with its members, organizing meetings and talking to town officials. In June 2007, the coalition called on Taubman to forgo its plan for the mall in favor of the coalition's plans for a development that would include a Marriott hotel, senior housing, offices and shops.

The coalition's efforts have received funding in the past from Taubman's chief competitor on Long Island, Indiana-based Simon Property Group, owner of the Roosevelt Field Mall in Garden City.