Edge Issues Will Fuel LI's Comeback

OLD WESTBURY, NY-Major real estate projects are on the boards, promising job growth and tax breaks for beleaguered Long Island. But revitalization is going to take more than construction cranes, and at a meeting of the Long Island Real Estate Group here this morning, a representative of the Empire State Development Corp. talked about the issues on the edge of real estate–but central to the region’s economy–that are being addressed in Albany.

EDC’s downstate chairman Patrick Foye assaulted more than 100 local brokers, developers and funding experts with a laundry list of Long Island’s problems. These include flat population, income and job growth and a lagging island GDP. Quoting Gov. Eliot Spitzer, Foye said the island is in “a perfect storm of unaffordability.”

But Foye also brought the potential for good news, recapping Spitzer’s State of the State address and bringing home the goals stated therein to the assembled business crowd. High on the list of drivers of a comeback is education, and Foye reported that Albany has proposed a “$4-billion endowment” to the state university system, explaining that the funds would come from “a partial privatization of the state lottery.”