EDITORIAL: Long Island's suburban stagnation

The stage was small, but the drama and the meaning were huge: The Huntington Town Board's rejection of a proposal for transit-oriented development at Huntington Station was a gut punch to rational development for Long Island.

Here's the stark reality: We've pushed the sprawling, every-family-in-a-castle form of development as far as it can go. With sprawl comes gridlock-level traffic. With single-family homes come larger numbers of schoolchildren than with apartments, and that means higher property taxes. So any future development has to focus more on higher-density growth in downtowns and near railroad stations, to make both mass transit and walkable communities more viable.

Tom Suozzi, the former Nassau County executive, had the right idea, a 90-10 solution: preservation of 90 percent of the Island as it is - picket fences, lawns and parks - but higher-density development in a strategic downtowns and a few large projects, like the area around the Nassau Coliseum. His idea is still valid. Further development of Long Island on the old pattern is a prescription for high-tax, traffic-choked disaster.

A lot of factors unique to Huntington went into its decision not to approve the 490 units, 25 percent of them at affordable prices, proposed by AvalonBay Communities. But the fears that opponents stoked, mostly the fear of increased density, are universal on Long Island. If we can't get past those irrational attitudes, we're condemned to a bleak future. hN