Think of Long Island and pedestrian-friendliness isn’t the first thing that comes to mind. The Island is full of expressways leading people from town to town, with subdivisions and strip malls dotting the landscape.
However, developers, government officials and advocacy groups are now attempting to change the area from its car-dependent ways. The concept of “new urbanism” calls for the construction of mixed-use pedestrian-friendly hamlets in towns throughout Long Island. Advocates of such “smart growth” favor both retail and residential projects that allow residents to walk around.
Eric Alexander, director of Vision Long Island, a smart-growth advocacy organization, said the movement in recent years has been to center development around mass transit hubs, such as Long Island Railroad train stations, in order to promote walking to and from the train as a part of the commute. He said that Glen Cove, Westbury, Rockville Centre and Farmingdale have seen development of these pedestrian-friendly communities.
“Historically, Long Island has been built on the village model,” Alexander said, noting that that was consistent with the statewide trend of having one central village in a town with the rest being open farmland to build upon. That changed with the development of the suburban tract homes of Levittown in the 1940s, one of the first projects of its kind in the country, he said. “The last 50 years has been sprawl.”
New anti-Levittown town centers have been popping up all over Long Island in both Nassau and Suffolk Counties. Alexander points to the setting aside of 100 acres of Nassau County land in Old Plainview for the creation of a new hamlet and the retrofitting of a big box store in Shirley as a new community.
The new urbanism movement has been primarily located in central Long Island: Alexander noted that the North and South Shores of the Island are full of older suburbs that allowed for the development of more traditional downtowns.
The central Long Island region, by contrast, is home to many strip malls and larger-scale malls, such as Roosevelt Field Mall. Alexander noted the malls do pose a problem in the development of new downtowns.
“The malls force the tenants to sign leases with radius clauses,” Alexander said of the practice which prohibits stores from opening new branches within a certain radius of the mall. “The reality is that this creates a whole swath of areas that they can’t go in.” Smartgrowth advocates counter radius clauses by focusing on smaller, non-chain stores for the new downtowns.
Suffolk County Economic Development Commissioner Jim Morgo said that his county has to combat the other fear of Long Islanders — density — while seeking to control sprawl. This has lead to a focus on small downtown villages.
The most ambitious project is Heartland Town Center in Islip, where developer Jerry Wolkoff is seeking to create a new mini-city with residential, retail and office space. The 450-acre-plus development, on the site of the former Pilgrim State Psychiatric Hospital, will house 9,000 apartments, 3 million square feet of office space and 1 million square feet of retail space, along with basketball courts, pools, community centers and other recreational amenities. Wolkoff is currently conducting an environmental impact study and hopes to break ground in the next year or two. He sees the project taking a decade to complete.
“It is something that is necessary in a place like Suffolk,” Wolkoff said. “For a young person in their 20s who is single, what do they do? We lose a lot of them. Suffolk is one of the most boring places to live for young people.”
Wolkoff envisions a pedestrian-friendly community where residents can walk to bars, restaurants and movies from their apartments. In addition, they can visit the community areas such the gyms, pools and basketball courts after work. He hopes people will be able to get to know one another and possibly find romantic relationships in the new community.
In addition to young professionals, Wolkoff sees empty nesters looking to move into Heartland.
“I’m over 55 and I don’t want to live in 55-and-over housing,” he said. “When I go downstairs, I want to see young people laughing and meeting each other.”
Morgo said that his office has been working with local officials on land-use approval processes and to help generate the creation of new downtown centers in the county. This includes a new development in Yaphank, which is an unincorporated hamlet in the Town of Brookhaven. The development, slated to start in 2008 and as yet unnamed, will include a new indoor sports and entertainment venue, and the creation of affordable housing. Some of the residential units will be set aside for volunteer firefighters and emergency medical personnel.
In future planning, Morgo said recruiting small stores in new downtowns will be a focus of his office.
“We have more retail per capita than any region in the U.S. except the state of Florida,” he said. “We are saturated with big-box stores.”