LI's newest friendly neighbor: Las Vegas Sands
Left, residents and business owners gather at a procurement academy run by Las Vegas Sands at Suffolk County Community College Thursday. Among the companies was one that makes personalized dog biscuits, right. Credit: Newsday/Randi F. Marshall
Daily Point
Sands doggedly pushes on
Residents of Uniondale and East Meadow officially have a new neighbor.
Las Vegas Sands has closed on its deal with Nassau County to take over the Nassau Coliseum lease. And Sands already has paid Nassau County $54 million, the initial payment it owed as outlined in the lease, a county official told The Point.
And, as anyone new to the block might do, Sands is also beginning to reach out to residents and businesses with whom it might work if its proposal for a casino resort at the Coliseum site moves forward.
Wednesday night, Sands held a procurement academy at Suffolk County Community College, where nearly 400 individuals and business representatives gathered to learn about how they might be able to do business with Sands, what Sands looks for in vendors, and the process to become a vendor.
A Sands representative told The Point that Sands expects to need between $300 million and $500 million annually in outside procurement. The company’s goal is to source at least 75% of that from New York State businesses and individuals.
The academy, run by Sands procurement executives, included breakout sessions for different sectors — food and beverage, technology, construction and design, and professional services. But the event attracted a wider array of business owners, from interior designers and outdoor landscapers to graphic designers and videographers; from accounting and security firms to one man who designs balloon displays and a Hempstead woman who is a veteran selling desserts she makes from a food truck.
Then there was The Barking Biscuit, a Wantagh company that came to the academy with dog biscuits already sporting a “Sands NY” logo.
This is the second such procurement academy Sands has held, after doing one in Nassau in April. Company representatives told The Point they’ve already begun working with businesses they met at the first one. That includes a printing company that can personalize items like water bottles, which Sands uses at local street fairs, and Wantagh-based Mama’s Cookies, which makes poker chip-shaped confections Sands uses at other events.
Sands and about 10 other companies vying for the three available downstate casino licenses continue to wait for the state Gaming Facility Location Board to finish answering hundreds of questions submitted back in February. A Gaming official told The Point Thursday that the board was “making great progress,” though there is no firm date for when those answers would be released, a move that will kick off the next stage of the lengthy application process.
— Randi F. Marshall randi.marshall@newsday.com
Pencil Point
Inflation eases
Credit: San Diego Union-Tribune / Creators.com/Steve Breen
For more cartoons, visit www.newsday.com/nationalcartoons
Reference Point
Old salvos in the housing battle
The Newsday editorial entitled "A Second Look," from July 13, 1973.
In June, Gov. Kathy Hochul’s attempt to bypass local zoning to build more housing collapsed. One month later, affordable housing advocates are celebrating the long-awaited start of construction on Matinecock Court, the controversial East Northport project that was decades in the making.
Fifty years ago, Newsday’s editorial board went to bat for a different project that foreshadowed both Hochul’s ill-fated power move and the long fight over Matinecock — one of many eerie echoes in Long Island’s tortured history of housing.
On July 13, 1973, the board praised a state Urban Development Corporation proposal for affordable housing in Wyandanch, then and now one of the most economically distressed communities on Long Island. The backdrop was Gov. Nelson Rockefeller’s recent signing of what the board called the apparent “death warrant” for the project, a measure that limited the UDC’s power to override local zoning codes by giving towns and villages veto power over UDC housing developments. The bill was a reaction to a controversial UDC proposal to build 100 units of low- and moderate-income housing in each of nine communities in similarly suburban Westchester County.
In a piece called “A Second Look,” Newsday’s board wrote that the Wyandanch project wasn’t dead yet, noting that the co-sponsors, the Wyandanch and Suffolk County community development corporations, “are not quitters” and that additional support was coming from a new alliance of “Clergymen and Laymen” prior to a hearing on a needed zoning change. The board noted the proposal was “modest” and “well-planned” and that “it would do little to ease the serious low- and moderate-income housing shortage on Long Island, but it would be a start in that direction.”
Wyandanch, a predominantly Black community, had reached out to the UDC seeking such a housing plan, and the resulting 182-unit project on 12 acres was reportedly designed by a Black architect. As has been the case with so many affordable housing proposals on Long Island, it drew both praise and vehement criticism.
According to a UDC timeline, the Deer Park Conservative Club held a meeting to oppose the project in September 1972 and “a racially charged debate” ensued. In July 1973, 1,000 people attended a rally and signed a petition supporting the $5.5 million development.
“Essentially, this is an attempt by the people of a community to solve a community problem,” Newsday’s board wrote. “The proposal is reasonable and necessary. We think the people of Babylon and their elected officials should take a second look at it. At the very least, it deserves a dispassionate appraisal.”
But on Aug. 26, 1973, the Babylon Town board rejected the proposal, 3-2, before what the UDC called “90 silent onlookers.”
A 2019 Bloomberg story said the project was rejected “on the suspect basis of its ‘adverse impact’ on the community’s high water table.” Other stories noted the racial overtones: Wyandanch was overwhelmingly Black, Babylon Town was predominantly white.
The Wyandanch saga has played out again and again as Long Island still struggles with the need to provide adequate housing, raising the same questions asked in August 1973 in a New York Times editorial about the doomed project:
“How much housing is actually needed? What will new development do to local taxes and the school system? Will ‘new people’ flood in to settled neighborhoods, and if so, who will they be? Who has the right to make the final decision?”
Fifty years later, those questions are no closer to being answered.
— Michael Dobie michael.dobie@newsday.com, Amanda Fiscina-Wells amanda.fiscina-wells@newsday.com
