Long Island Cheat Sheet: $1.2B Belmont Park project faces further review, small property near Wyandanch Rising seeks surprising sum… & more

Nassau seeks further review of Belmont Park project impact
Nassau County officials want New York State’s Empire State Development Corporation (ESD) to further investigate the potential impacts of the $1.18 billion Belmont Park arena project, Long Island Business News reported. County officials made the request in a 13-page letter to ESD’s president and CEO Howard Zemsky that also pointed out deficiencies and omissions in the project’s draft environmental impact statement. ESD is overseeing the 43-acre plan to build a 19,000-seat arena, 250-room hotel and 435,000-square-foot retail village. Nassau County Executive Laura Curran, who spoke with The Real Deal earlier this year, previously directed the county’s Department of Public Works to take another look at the project. Curran and others are concerned about its potential impact on traffic, transportation, community character, water resources, open space, utilities and socioeconomic conditions. For instance, the draft impact statement calls for a shuttle to run between the proposed arena and nearby Long Island Rail Road stations and county officials want to know whether the LIRR will pay for the service and run it after hours. The developers behind the project, a group called New York Arena Partners, had hoped to break ground in the spring, but with the final environmental impact statement now expected in June, construction likely will not start before the end of the summer. [LIBN]

Small home near ‘Wyandanch Rising’ lists for $1.2M
A less than one-acre parcel with an 88-year-old Colonial home on it in the hamlet of Wyandanch has hit the market with a whopping $1.2 million price tag, Newsday reported. The reason for the surprising ask is that the property is located across from Wyandanch Rising, a $500 million public-private redevelopment project that began in 2002. As a point of comparison, the largest-ever recorded sale for a residential property in Wyandanch was the 2007 sale of a Colonial for a mere $451,000, according to the Multiple Listing Service of Long Island. The next buyer for the seven-bedroom home at 1620 Straight Path in Wheatley Heights could tear it down and get rezoning from the Town of Babylon for multifamily housing or commercial uses, listing agent Cheron Dinkins of Keller Williams Points North told Newsday. The 40-acre Wyandanch Rising project is slated to include apartments, a train station and a health and wellness center. The redevelopment was supposed to become the home of the Long Island Music Hall of Fame, but those plans fell apart earlier this year. Suffolk County had given $1.2 million to Babylon to build the museum’s interior, but that money will now go toward a YMCA-run event space. [Newsday]

Garden City medical building trades for $11.5M
Meridian Imaging Group has sold a 16,920-square-foot medical office building in Garden City to an undisclosed buyer for $11.47 million, according to GlobeSt. The outlet cited a press release from HFF, which brokered the deal and is itself poised to be acquired by fellow commercial brokerage JLL in a $2 billion cash-and-stock transaction announced last week. The New York University School of Medicine holds a 14-year triple net master lease on the building at 224 Seventh Street, which was built in 1969 and converted to a medical imaging facility in 2007. HFF’s team handling its sale included senior managing directors Jose Cruz, Kevin O’Hearn and Andrew Scandalios, along with senior directors Ben Appel, Michael Oliver and Steve Simonelli. Inland Real Estate Acquisitions facilitated the purchase of the property. [GlobeSt]

Plaintiffs seek putative class action against property manager
A lawsuit filed against Lindenhurst-based NPS Property Corporation for allegedly discriminating against would-be renters based on disability, race and source of income has been amended by plaintiffs in an effort to make it a class action, according to Newsday. NPS Property owns five apartment complexes in Suffolk County. A federal judge in Central Islip must certify the class action in order for it to move forward. The litigation was filed last June by Doreen Kernozek, Long Island Housing Services and Suffolk Independent Living Organization. Patchogue resident Lori Gerardi has been added as a plaintiff to the amended civil complaint. She gets a federal subsidy for disabled people and was allegedly turned down twice for units at South Shore Commons, an NPS complex in West Babylon. NPS allegedly told her that they had “reached their quota” for disability subsidy recipients. Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll, a national plaintiffs firm, is representing the Gerardi, Kernozek and others in the putative class action. Ilene Jaroslaw, a former federal prosecutor who in February joined New York-based Phillips Nizer, is now advising NPS Property in the case. [Newsday]

Cuomo touts new bridge, clean energy projects for Long Island
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo plans to spend $28.2 million to replace the Walt Whitman Road Bridge in the Town of Huntington, Long Island Press reported. The poet’s namesake bridge was built in 1962 and only has one northbound lane and one southbound lane, along with a sidewalk on the west side. The replacement will have five lanes, sidewalks on both sides and shoulders for cyclists. The bridge will have better materials that will require less maintenence. Its construction will be staged, allowing drivers to continue using the existing bridge, and is slated to finish by late 2020. The replacement comes after the state spent $42.2 million repairing and updating 31 bridges in Nassau and Suffolk counties by repairing concrete beams, replacing joints, waterproofing bridge decks and building parapet walls. The bridge initiative by Cuomo comes as the governor’s office announced another major infrastructure project for Long Island, a large food waste facility planned in Yaphank that is expected to produce four megawatts of clean energy and reduce gas emissions in the region by 85,000 metric tons per year when complete in 2020. [Long Island Press]