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Talking Point
Getting the Hub on the right track
When the Long Island Rail Road’s third-track project needed a push, a group of key Long Island advocacy, business and academic groups got together to form the Right Track for Long Island Coalition. It was a partnership that became a clear grassroots player in the effort that eventually got the third track funded and underway.
Now, some of those same area leaders are going to see whether they can make magic again.
This time, their focus is the Nassau Hub.
Former Greenport Mayor Dave Kapell, who served as executive director of Right Track, is leading the charge. This week, he emailed the members of the Right Track group and sought their involvement in a Nassau Hub Coalition. Kapell, who also serves on the community advisory committee for development at Belmont Park, said he has received positive responses from those who want to be part of the latest advocacy effort. According to Long Island Association Chief Executive Kevin Law, the LIA, the Long Island Builders Institute and Hofstra University are among the organizations committed to being part of the new effort.
“It’s a question of what’s good for the region,” Kapell told The Point. “It’s very important that the big picture be front and center in the room when these decisions are made.”
The Nassau Hub Coalition will start its work with a significant presence at the Nassau County Legislature on Nov. 27, when a hearing on the latest effort to redevelop the property around Nassau Coliseum is scheduled.
The current plan — from developer Scott Rechler, of RXR Realty, and BSE Global, the manager of the Coliseum — involves a mix of housing, entertainment, retail, and office space, including medical or biotech research facilities. While Rechler has said it won’t require a zoning change, it’ll still need community backing and various approvals before a shovel goes into the ground, and to make it work, state funds are necessary, too.
But that won’t be easy. In his email, Kapell noted that the Hub has been “a persistent source of controversy and dysfunction.”
Hence the need for the new effort.
Said Kapell: “There are few sites on the Island that offer the promise that the Hub does.”
Randi F. Marshall
Daily Point
Signatures say it all
Consider the latest prime example of how political winds can shift.
Just over a year ago, a host of City Council members and state lawmakers, along with every borough president and many local members of Congress, signed a letter promising that “no place has more to offer Amazon than New York City.”
“We, as a united body of elected officials, urge Amazon to make New York City the home of its second corporate headquarters,” began the letter, dated Oct. 16, 2017.
Among the signatories were City Councilman Jimmy Van Bramer and State Sen. Michael Gianaris.
But in the last few days, Van Bramer and Gianaris have been two of the loudest voices against Amazon’s plans to place a new headquarters in Long Island City.
“Too much is at stake to accept this without a fight,” the two politicians said in a joint statement Tuesday. “We will continue to stand up against what can only be described as a bad deal for New York and for Long Island City.”
They’re not the only ones. Former City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito and Councilman Jumaane Williams also signed the letter last year, and are speaking out against the deal now.
Why the change of heart?
Well, publicly, many of the deal’s opponents focus on the state and city tax incentives Amazon would receive. But wouldn’t they have known that such tax breaks would be part of an Amazon agreement when they signed the letter?
So that brings us back to politics.
What do Van Bramer, Gianaris, Williams and Mark-Viverito have in common?
They all have their eyes on higher office.
Van Bramer has said he’s interested in the Queens borough president’s slot. Williams and Mark-Viverito may run for public advocate. And then there’s Gianaris — a possible mayoral candidate come 2021.
So perhaps the sudden opposition to Amazon is a sign that their campaigns are underway, tacking left and taking a page from the successful playbook of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, newly elected to the House of Representatives, who, by the way, also opposes the Amazon deal.
Randi F. Marshall
Reference Point
Some things never change
The future of the economy has always been a concern for Long Islanders. Today’s conversation focuses on whether the region can build a new innovation economy centered on biotech industries. A recent added factor is the potential impact of Amazon’s arrival in Long Island City.
More than 70 years ago, the region worried about its post-World War II survival given the economic importance of big defense contractors like Grumman, Sperry, Republic and Liberty. As Newsday’s editorial board noted on May 31, 1944, “It is up to the heads of these industries to get together and decide how best to convert their plants into profitable peacetime enterprises.”
By Aug. 22, 1945, a week after Japan’s surrender and several months following the fall of Nazi Germany, the board was writing about “the unemployment problem now facing Nassau and Suffolk counties due to the sudden termination of war contracts” and arguing that the federal government that canceled those lucrative contracts now had an obligation to offer loans to help companies convert to peacetime production.
Two months later, on Oct. 12, 1945, the editorial board decried the closures of plants big and small but hung onto its optimism about the region’s well-being.
“Don’t get us wrong. We’re not pessimists about Long Island’s industrial future,” the board wrote. “The war taught us that we could have all the advantages, financial and otherwise, that manufacturing brings to a community and still keep the essential flavor that has made Long Island the favorite living place of thousands of sidewalk-weary New Yorkers . . . But we’re not going to mislead ourselves or others into thinking that the future is all beer and skittles.”
What the board did not and could not know was the Grumman would go on to land contracts for postwar fighter jets like the A-6 Intruder and the F-14 Tomcat, as well as the Apollo Lunar Module that landed men on the moon, and became the economic engine that powered what arguably was Long Island’s economic heyday.
Much later, of course, those post-World War II worries came home to roost when Grumman was bought by Northrop, closed up shop and left Long Island, dealing the region a very big blow.
The moral of the story: You can worry and plan all you want, and you absolutely should, but sometimes stuff happens you didn’t foresee, and sometimes it’s good, and sometimes not.
Michael Dobie
