Greater Fool: Final Edition

[don]

Our Towns
In Suburbia, a Megaproject Offers Hope

By PETER APPLEBOME
MINEOLA, N.Y.

“It’s potentially a game changer, and after this, there’s nothing else,” said Lawrence Levy, executive director of the National Center for Suburban Studies at Hofstra University. “This is a region that hasn’t been able to get much done in a long time, and this would show that it could. And you think, if they can’t do this, they can’t do anything.”

And what might that be?

The project, as proposed for 150 acres in the heart of Nassau County, includes a renovated Nassau Coliseum, 2,300 residences including two hotel and residential towers nearly 40 stories tall, canal and pedestrian plaza, sports complex and sports technology center, convention center, office buildings — in effect, the first ambitious urban space in a county that developed as a rejection of exactly that.

So with Long Island having given birth to the modern suburbs in the days of Robert Moses and Levittown, what happens with the Lighthouse could go a long way to answering whether the island has a second act or just an increasingly embattled version of the first.

A Lighthouse to rescue the SS Suburbia from the shoals of obsolescence.

It sounds like a lot of significance to put on one development, however big — and, even taken with a few shakers of salt, the projected $4 billion in investment, the 5.5 million square feet of mixed-use development, the 75,000 construction and secondary jobs and 19,000 permanent jobs claimed for the project, the Lighthouse at Long Island, qualify as suitably big.

“We don’t want to be postsuburban,” he says. “We don’t want to be a new urbanism. We want to be a new suburbia. We want to keep the good stuff about suburbia and get rid of the bad stuff about suburbia. But the old model of suburbia began 60 years ago with Levittown. It’s no longer sustainable.”

And can be made 'shovel ready' with the right connections....

We are friggin' doomed.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/18/ny...l?ref=nyregion

[Diarmuid]

Re: Greater Fool: Final Edition

Our Towns
In Suburbia, a Megaproject Offers Hope

2,300 residences including two hotel and residential towers nearly 40 stories tall, canal and pedestrian plaza, sports complex and sports technology center, convention center, office buildings

“We don’t want to be postsuburban,” he says. “We don’t want to be a new urbanism. We want to be a new suburbia. We want to keep the good stuff about suburbia and get rid of the bad stuff about suburbia. But the old model of suburbia began 60 years ago with Levittown. It’s no longer sustainable.”

And can be made 'shovel ready' with the right connections....

We are friggin' doomed.

It has been many years since I read Fitzgeralds' the Great Gatsby but much of the language in this peice as well as the obvious geographical reference to New York, Long Island etc.. brought the imagery, the decadence etc.. from the book flooding back.

"She was appalled by West Egg... by its raw vigor that chafed... and by the too obtrusive fate that herded its inhabitants along a short-cut from nothing to nothing. She saw something awful in the very simplicity she failed to understand."


"They were careless people, Tom and Daisy--they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money of their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made."

"This is a valley of ashes--a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens; where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and, finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air. Occasionally a line of gray cars crawls along an invisible track, gives out a ghastly creak, and comes to rest, and immediately the ash-gray men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud, which screens their obscure operations from your sight."

It seems to me there is much truth in the adage - The more things change the more they stay the same

[cjppjc]

Re: Greater Fool: Final Edition

This project is not going to happen. The key feature is a new stadium. There is no stomach for the costs associated with the building of the stadium.

[don]

Re: Greater Fool: Final Edition

It has been many years since I read Fitzgeralds' the Great Gatsby but much of the language in this peice as well as the obvious geographical reference to New York, Long Island etc.. brought the imagery, the decadence etc.. from the book flooding back.

"She was appalled by West Egg... by its raw vigor that chafed... and by the too obtrusive fate that herded its inhabitants along a short-cut from nothing to nothing. She saw something awful in the very simplicity she failed to understand."


"They were careless people, Tom and Daisy--they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money of their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made."

"This is a valley of ashes--a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens; where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and, finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air. Occasionally a line of gray cars crawls along an invisible track, gives out a ghastly creak, and comes to rest, and immediately the ash-gray men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud, which screens their obscure operations from your sight."

It seems to me there is much truth in the adage - The more things change the more they stay the same

Great tie-in.

[don]

Re: Greater Fool: Final Edition

This project is not going to happen. The key feature is a new stadium. There is no stomach for the costs associated with the building of the stadium.

Yankee Stadium fatigue?

[cjppjc]

Re: Greater Fool: Final Edition

Not really. This plan has been on the board for a while. That area of Long Island is one of the most taxed places in the northeast. There also is no real need for it. The Islanders can just move to another city. They are the real reason for the project.

[cjppjc]

Re: Greater Fool: Final Edition

Move they did.

The voters of Long Island earlier in the year having voted down the plans for a new arena, Mr. Charles Wang will be moving the franchise to Brooklyn. A great town for a young man like BadJuju to relocate to. Nothing says urban hip like Brooklyn. Be sure to bring lots of money. It aint cheap living. You wont believe what a ticket to a Nets game will run you.

I know many not familiar with the ownership of the Islanders will say he is just being greedy. This owner got killed in that awful buiding, with that awful lease. The voters spoke, this is the result. The lease runs out in 2015.

http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/ho...icle-1.1190943

The Islanders are Brooklyn-bound.

The Barclays Center and Islanders announced the relocation of the NHL franchise Wednesday afternoon to the $1 billion arena on the corner of Flatbush & Atlantic Avenues.



Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/ho...#ixzz2AG5t9ISd

[wayiwalk]

Re: Greater Fool: Final Edition

As a former Nassau County resident, I can say that this outcome doesn't surprise me. What is left of open space in NC is minimal, and any encroachment from the city is despised, Wang blew it by thinking too big with the towers, a more reasonable 10 stories but with more buildings might have carried the day. The county really is not much less of an urban-suburban area than parts of brooklyn and queens, which of course are part of NYC. The residents all know that, many work in the city and live in suburbia to be sure they escape the city's tireless drain on one's energy.

On a comment that caught my eye from the times article- I would say that the county is an area where suburbia does work and is efficient, no need of rescuing the SS Suburbia - public transportation is decent (not that I ever took the buses). The train rides into NYC are all relatively short, at least compared to the much slower, longer rides into the city from the suburbs in New Jersey. Couple that with a great climate if you like 4 seasons (being surrounded by ocean/bay moderates temperatures somewhat), proximity to NYC while no more than 20 minutes (without traffic) to beautiful beaches.....it really has the best of all worlds. NYC denizens have a much more complicated haul to get to decent beaches.

[cjppjc]

Re: Greater Fool: Final Edition

Nassau County has some of the highest taxed citizens in the country. I don't think any plan was going to pass. At the very least voters got a say in the matter. And as I'm sure Don would have said, a new "tree grows in Brooklyn."