HEMPSTEAD, NY-Nine months after Nassau County and the developers of the Lighthouse at Long Island announced a proposed ground lease for the $3.8-billion mixed-use mega-project, the two stakeholders have apparently come to another agreement: that the Town of Hempstead’s scaled-down plans for the project are “economically unviable.” A joint statement from the Lighthouse Development Group and county executive Edward Mangano says that while neither party has had time to review the town’s new zoning blueprint for the redevelopment of the Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum site, “it does not appear to achieve the goals of the county and the developer.”
The proposed rezoning, released Monday at a news conference by town supervisor Kate Murray, comes as Mangano is reportedly continuing talks with the Shinnecock Nation about possibly building a casino at the coliseum site. The Southampton-based tribe was recognized by the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs last month, a recognition that opens the door to the Shinnecocks eventually opening a casino in the New York metro area.
That being said, Mangano told Newsday on Monday that the continued involvement of Lighthouse Development principal Charles Wang in any development on the coliseum site is crucial. Wang owns the New York Islanders hockey franchise, which is based at the coliseum, and has been working on the Lighthouse project for seven years with partner Scott Rechler, CEO at RXR Realty. “Keeping the Islanders in Nassau County is our priority and it remains my priority,” Mangano was quoted as saying.
Whether that project comes to fruition on the scale envisioned by Wang and Rechler is now up in the air. The town’s scaled-down proposed zoning for the county-owned 77 acres surrounding the coliseum caps building heights at no more than nine stories for hotels and three to four stories for retail, residential and office space rather than Lighthouse Development’s plans for towers of up to 35 stories. It calls for 500 housing units rather than the 2,306 proposed by the developers, part of a lower-density rezoning that limits redevelopment at the site to 5.4 million square feet, about half what the Lighthouse developers proposed.
In a release, the town says the new plan permits “many of the same elements/priorities included in the Lighthouse proposal in a scaled back, sustainable form.” It’s intended to “complement the suburban character of surrounding communities,” the release states.
Moreover, Murray in published reports has said the scaled-done rezoning is an attempt “to jump-start a stalled Lighthouse plan.” Wang has not spoken publicly about the project for months, and the Lighthouse website was taken down earlier this year. At present, it exists as a place-holder web page with the joint statement from Mangano and the developers.
Although Murray told Newsday that the rezoning is essentially the town’s plan for the project and is not subject to extensive tweaking, the town has not yet completed its review of the project. It will submit the rezoning as part of the final environmental impact statement.
In the meantime, some of the project’s advocates expressed hope that the revised zoning could get it back on track. “It’s not everything I wanted but you’re still talking about five million square feet of construction,” John Durso, president of the Long Island Federation of Labor, told Newsday. “It could put a lot of people to work and get our economy going, and that’s nothing to sneeze at."
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Paul Bubny
Paul Bubny is managing editor of Real Estate Forum and GlobeSt.com. He has been reporting on business since 1988 and on commercial real estate since 2007. He is based at ALM Real Estate Media Group's offices in New York City.
