Is there a Lighthouse at the End of the Tunnel?

Paul Lancey seems to think so. On May 15th, the Booster Club was treated to a brief presentation on the progress of the Lighthouse project. Those who have been to the two past Open House functions have seen the very slick commercial. But the presentation brought forth some things I found very interesting.

A project of this magnitude is expected to take a certain amount of time, but as was brought up by Mr. Lancey, a similar project called Westgate was recently completed in Phoenix AZ. It’s the place they just played the Super Bowl in February. That project started approximately the same time as the Lighthouse. The difference? We know the difference. This is Long Island and you can’t change a street lamp without four layers of government spending time and tax dollars simply investigating the impact on the town should said lamp post be changed. Meanwhile, political terms will end and the process will start anew. Those of us who grew up on this Island know this dynamic all too well. It’s called running to stand still.

Here we have 150 acres total of prime Nassau County real estate with a large portion of it sitting cold, stark and barren with the exception of that aging, unimpressive oval in the middle of a parking lot. The good thing about the emptiness is that in order to build this proposed project it will not require any condemnation of private property. The field mice can’t revolt.

There is a 10 year build out plan for this project, and if they start when they’re supposed to, sometime in July of 2009, I might actually still be alive when it’s completed…. If I’m lucky. The Coliseum renovation will take about 2 ½ years and is supposedly not going to interfere with any Islander Hockey season. After all… The Devils started out on the road in order for their building to be completed. The NHL is willing to work with scheduling. I’m certain they will have to do a little juggling and there will be some areas of the building that won’t be finished when we arrive for a new season. But who cares? We’ll deal.

Some numbers that impressed me for this “mixed use” project were as follows:

2,300 residences will be built, with 20% of them being next generation housing. (I’ll be eyeing a retirement condo myself.)
The project is estimated to be able to generate $218,000 a DAY in tax revenue.
The project should generate 50,000 construction related jobs.
It will create 20,000 permanent jobs upon completion.
There will be 1,000 hotel rooms.
There will be 250,000 sq ft of conference center space capable of hosting some major sports related events like, let’s say… THE NHL DRAFT!
There will be 17,230 subterranean parking spaces. (You’ll get a miner’s helmet and a map.. J/k)
The project is 8.5 million square feet of space, and the Empire State building is only 1.3 million square feet of space. (I can’t count that high.)
There are 2.8 million people on Long Island. (70% of them are on the LIE at 5 pm on any given weekday.)
The government is spending $17,000,000 just to study transportation on this Island…. AGAIN.
80% of the wealth of most Long Islanders is their homes, and the housing market is declining.
30% of the sub-prime mortgage mess is right here… on Long Island. (I just threw that in there because it still bothers me.)

Ok, so impressed and scared. Even more scary than the numbers game is the fact that there were really “Jetsons” style parking technologies brought up that scared me to no end. Could there be GPS style parking spots guiding you to your underground space from the highway? There is “Smart” technology out there to do just that. To me, it would probably call me by name when I park and ask me how many drinks I had during the evening, and report back to my husband, or worse… not let me leave. No thanks. I‘ll be parking across the street, and taking that Trolley enjoying the night air.

If you can actually get to a train station, and get off at Mineola, the Lighthouse Trolley will be able to pick you up there. That may be the best bet if gas prices don’t get any better.

But in order to get this done in a timely manner, we all need to do our part. Visit the new Lighthouse project website at http://www.lighthouseli.com for all the news and upcoming events. Become part of the solution by getting involved. On May 22nd is the first public scoping meeting at the Town of Hempstead at 10 am. If you can’t make that meeting, there is another one at 7 pm on May 27th. If you’d like more information but would like to speak to someone, see a Lighthouse representative at the next NY Islanders Open House event on June 4th.

Let’s put Long Island back on the map for something more than the Hamptons and our traffic.